Okay, folks, I've been reading this stuff on the list since Friday, interspersed with talking to friends and tracking the latest round of queer-bashing hateful crap coming from the right wing. Let me just say that I HATE THIS!
I completely understand the initial round of throwing-up-of-hands and what now and fuck-it-all that came out here cuz I'm feeling it too. As weaver would say, I'm tired.
I'm tired of trying to both take care of myself, make sure I have my ass covered as far as being able to pay the bills, and have health coverage, and hopefully one day save for retirement and a house and kids and yadda yadda yadda, the same fears and worries everyone else in our generation has, AND worry about whether some asshole can come along and kick the whole thing over just cuz he doesn't like who I love or where I choose to post on the internet.
I'm tired of trying to be activist and constructive. I'm tired of trying to talk compromise with people whose idea of a good compromise is (on one side) make enough money so they can't touch *me* personally (dang assimilationists) and on the other, sit down, shut up, try to stay hidden and maybe we won't fuck up your life.
I'm tired of calling and writing my congressfolks and getting replies that almost literally say, "I'm sorry but I don't represent *you*."
I'm tired of Clinton rolling over and playing dead for this bullshit.
As far as the internet censorship stuff goes, I'm scared. I'm not one of those "hold your nose and defend porn as free speech" first amendment types. I LIKE porn. I think, in a sexually repressed society, in a society that sees hiding and mangling and squishing one's sexuality into forms that make everyone else feel better about their own mangled selves as a sign of maturity, we NEED porn. I like seeing it, reading it, writing it and thinking about it. I'll be the first to agree that many people who read it and like it are drooling idiots and it's embarrassing to be associated with them, but that is a product of the piss-poor job we do in this culture of educating people about sex and sexuality, and teaching them how to handle the result of a powerful force of nature attached to a human ability to think and imagine. I agree that the porn industry exploits many of those who work in it but that is a product of the blind eye turned toward it, in the fervent wish that it didn't exist.
Aside from that, I see the internet doing a tremendous amount of good in helping people educate themselves about their own sexuality--their relationships, their non-heterosexual orientation, their fetishes. I have seen a lot of people wander in thinking they were the only people in the world with horrible sick twisted perverse desires and find that not only aren't they the only ones, but their desires aren't so sick and twisted, AND there are responsible, conscious, *safe* ways to express those desires.
All that is about to end, I'm afraid. And that just pisses me off beyond belief. I see a repressive culture that can't stand the thought of sexual expression and sexuality, sees it as something that needs it all to be controlled and repressed--controlling almost all of mainstream culture, all the outlets for desperately needed education, now reaching its grubby little fingers into our last safe space.
Anyone who thinks that "Internet Decency" is about kiddie porn is an idiot. Or even just "pornography" or sexually explicit material in general. It's about being safe to be out about your nonheterosexuality, your kinks, even your curiosity in the one place that was relatively safe. I think that the idea that "decency" was extended to cover issues of reproductive health says more than the sponsors intended about their fear and hatred of sexuality in general.
I'm tired of idiotic disinformation being spread about people like me. I'm tired of people believing it.
And I'm really really fucking sick and tired of people who think they are above the whole thing, so worthwhile in their teeny tiny worlds that they can't be bothered to educate themselves about anything outside of it.
Yeah, I'm being melodramatic. I do that when I'm pissed off and scared. And yeah, I'll go pick up my placard again and get back to marching in a bit. I just needed to cut loose for a few minutes.
| |
|