Everywhere I look today it’s all about Tiger, and I don’t mean Tony. I’ve only been following the story peripherally but know the gist of it: He cheated on his wife, got caught, and now there’s a big brouhaha as he apologizes on live TV. The last time I checked space shuttle launches were not given this much attention.
You have permission to dismiss this opinion as excessively cynical, but really, at the end of the day, who gives a crap? You could say that since it’s all over the news someone must, but then we get into a chicken-and-egg thing where you wonder if it’s only news because the media tells you it’s news. You can’t go into a supermarket or open up a major news website without seeing someone’s body, character, clothing or politics being held up for public scrutiny, and all signs point to it being a lucrative business.
But really, this whole Tiger Woods is just another example of a story we’ve heard dozens of times before. People cheating on their significant others is not news, and every year we get the same story with different names about people in high places behaving in tawdry ways that pretty much tells us the same thing, and yet we’re still expected to be shocked and appalled.
I don’t get it. Perhaps I’m just an unusually private person in this day and age, but I neither care nor particularly want to hear about people’s personal affairs, nor would I want my own plastered all over the front page for people to scrutinize. There are a few instances where I find it more justified, but those have specific conditions. I thought that the media coverage last year when the Governor of South Carolina ran off for a few days to visit his mistress it was a bit more legitimate, since when a head of state vanishes it is cause of concern, but after he was found the story devolved into the usual hand-wringing about men and power and the hypocrisy of a social conservative “family values” man engaging in an elicit affair. I’m willing to give the media a bit more slack with this one, since it was an elected official who engaged in this sort of behavior, but an athlete? That’s when I draw the line.
An elected official who has the power to make and enforce laws is also under public scrutiny as far as their character is concerned, since people want to know if the person they give their vote to is honest. If they cheat on their significant other and engage in hypocritical behavior it’s within the voter’s right to withhold their vote or vote for an opponent, but a golfer? Tiger Woods is famous because he can play golf well, and whether or not he cheats on his wife or not doesn’t affect that. Several of his sponsors have dropped him in the wake of this in order to preserve their image, but at the end of the day this really isn’t going to affect the lives of everyday people?
That’s the thing that bothers me about this “apology” to the American people. “Apology” implies that harm was done, but was anyone (other than his wife) really hurt by his actions? I’m not counting the sponsors who may have lost money on him, I’m talking about a more philosophical concept of harm. I know my reaction to this was to roll my eyes at both him and the media, but I have to wonder, is he apologizing because he’s honestly sorry or is it because there’s an idea that we “own” part of him, or is it the “I’m sorry because I got caught” apology that seems everywhere these days? We can debate his intentions and thoughts all we want, but at the end of the day it just doesn’t pass muster for me as something I should give a crap about. And where do we get off taking a clearly hurtful event for this family and shining a spotlight on them when we really have no stake in the outcome? Looking at all of this, I have to wonder if that's where the real harm in all this is occurring and if in fact it falls on us.
The question I’m continuing to ask as all this unfolds (and there is no indication that it will go away any time soon) is whether it is worth our time and attention, but all I have to do is glance at a magazine rack and see that a decent amount of people think it is.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Friday, February 19, 2010
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Access to Bathrooms and Gender Identity
One issue that frequently comes up when discussing gender identity and transgender and transsexual people has to do with access to bathrooms, an issue most of us never think twice about. We take advantage of the fact that in a public setting we can walk into the gendered bathroom of our choice and not face retaliation or even a second look. But if you're a person who identifies otherwise an essential part of daily life becomes a stressful ordeal each and every time you have to use the bathroom.
The Advocate covered a story about a transgender woman was was barred from using a Denny's restroom consistent with her gender identity until she had finished transitioning, and the question now is whether or not she has the right to sue the company. Denny's denied the charge of discrimination, saying that "allowing a biological male to use the female restroom despite gender identity will pose a direct threat to the health and well-being of staff and customers". The story goes on to use the "slippery slope" argument, arguing that someone with "devious intent" could take advantage of any concessions.
There's a growing body of literature on this issue and a growing awareness of the issues in and outside the LGBT community, with sites like safe2pee compiling city-by-city lists of gender neutral or single bathrooms, and several college campuses have started instituting gender neutral facilities to help transgender students.
Before the end of the school year I was interviewed by two students in a media class who had been interviewing students about the proposed introduction of gender neutral bathrooms on our campus. After I did my spot, where I argued that since every middle class home in America already has a gender neutral bathroom without issue this should not be that big of a deal, I was told by the two students that in taking interviews they had found the female students more receptive to the idea, while the male students expressed nervousness at the idea of women being in the same bathroom. This surprised me, but it got me thinking.
Why is this such a contemptuous issue shows that it's an intersection between gender, sexuality and social norms, as well as bringing in issues of privacy and access. In some ways bathrooms represent the last significant and formal gender divide in our society, so it's understandable that it causes people to react strongly to it no matter where they stand on it. But when it comes to denying people access to the bathroom of the gender they identify with it crosses into human rights and privacy, since it opens up large avenues of legal issues. Whether the person who needs to use the facility has more right than a person who may be uncomfortable with the idea of a person who is still biologically another sex using the same facilities is a philosophical debate that I can't fully cover here, but it's a fight that we usually aren't aware of.
I was in a multiple -stall gender neutral bathroom at an LGBT conference last year, and while I was a bit startled when a man walked in it didn't seem especially weird. Just about everyone was some variant of LGBT at that conference, but the point still stands. It doesn't seem like this should be as big an issue as it is, but one thing I've found is that whenever an issue like this is brought up people's reactions are unpredictable and sometimes very revealing of how deeply we hold certain sociological norms.
The Advocate covered a story about a transgender woman was was barred from using a Denny's restroom consistent with her gender identity until she had finished transitioning, and the question now is whether or not she has the right to sue the company. Denny's denied the charge of discrimination, saying that "allowing a biological male to use the female restroom despite gender identity will pose a direct threat to the health and well-being of staff and customers". The story goes on to use the "slippery slope" argument, arguing that someone with "devious intent" could take advantage of any concessions.
There's a growing body of literature on this issue and a growing awareness of the issues in and outside the LGBT community, with sites like safe2pee compiling city-by-city lists of gender neutral or single bathrooms, and several college campuses have started instituting gender neutral facilities to help transgender students.
Before the end of the school year I was interviewed by two students in a media class who had been interviewing students about the proposed introduction of gender neutral bathrooms on our campus. After I did my spot, where I argued that since every middle class home in America already has a gender neutral bathroom without issue this should not be that big of a deal, I was told by the two students that in taking interviews they had found the female students more receptive to the idea, while the male students expressed nervousness at the idea of women being in the same bathroom. This surprised me, but it got me thinking.
Why is this such a contemptuous issue shows that it's an intersection between gender, sexuality and social norms, as well as bringing in issues of privacy and access. In some ways bathrooms represent the last significant and formal gender divide in our society, so it's understandable that it causes people to react strongly to it no matter where they stand on it. But when it comes to denying people access to the bathroom of the gender they identify with it crosses into human rights and privacy, since it opens up large avenues of legal issues. Whether the person who needs to use the facility has more right than a person who may be uncomfortable with the idea of a person who is still biologically another sex using the same facilities is a philosophical debate that I can't fully cover here, but it's a fight that we usually aren't aware of.
I was in a multiple -stall gender neutral bathroom at an LGBT conference last year, and while I was a bit startled when a man walked in it didn't seem especially weird. Just about everyone was some variant of LGBT at that conference, but the point still stands. It doesn't seem like this should be as big an issue as it is, but one thing I've found is that whenever an issue like this is brought up people's reactions are unpredictable and sometimes very revealing of how deeply we hold certain sociological norms.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
As far as Storms go, we're already at the Eye
An article in today's edition of The Economist took a look at the spread of gay marriage and the potential sociological effects of it. The tone generally seems to be “so what?” and it suggests that this is increasingly the public’s response to the issue. I also saw an article about a Maine Bishop calling gay marriage a “dangerous sociological experiment”, a phrase that made me raise an eyebrow. Despite the so-called “Storm” that has been brewing, this issue is not new in a sociological sense.
First off, gay families have existed for quite some time already, this is nothing new. All current legislation does is formally recognize them, so in a strictly literal sense not much changes when marriage is legalized. Most of the benefits of being married do not take directly visible form, so a gay couple who is married will more or less continue to live the same way, so there will be very few visible effects on the community they live in.
Similarly, even though there are prohibitions in place to prevent gay couples from adopting in several states gay people have and will continue to give birth to and adopt children. Though it’s hard to measure the exact statistics of gay adoption, the fact is that gay people do have children one way or another and there’s little that can be done to prevent it. The whole “protecting children” argument also hits an iceberg, since it's been shown that the children of same sex couples have better mental health when their parents' union is recognized, as reported by the Vermont Psychological association.
The tired out argument that gay marriages threaten traditional marriage and the nuclear family hits its biggest pothole when you realize that those two concepts - traditional marriage and the nuclear family - are at this point in history already an endangered species. What always bugs me when this argument is made is that it undermines the experiences of people who have been raised in single parent households for generations. While it is true that children in single-parent families live disproportionately in poverty, society has adapted to cope with these situations, and now even the President of the United States is the product of such a family, so it can't be said that a single parent put a child at an automatic disadvantage.
Likewise, the argument that children need both a mother and a father hits a similar logical snare when you take single parents and other family situations into account. The first linked article makes an interesting point about how even in gay families there tends to be a "mom" role and a "dad" role, but this may be applying gender roles that don't entirely fit the situation. And if we look at the pure concept of "mom" and "dad" as social roles we can also see that these have been changing for quite some time, since there is no longer a strict divide between the two now that most households have two working parents rather than a single breadwinner.
In short, if they've been trying to prevent a storm they're far too late, if anything they're at the eye already.
First off, gay families have existed for quite some time already, this is nothing new. All current legislation does is formally recognize them, so in a strictly literal sense not much changes when marriage is legalized. Most of the benefits of being married do not take directly visible form, so a gay couple who is married will more or less continue to live the same way, so there will be very few visible effects on the community they live in.
Similarly, even though there are prohibitions in place to prevent gay couples from adopting in several states gay people have and will continue to give birth to and adopt children. Though it’s hard to measure the exact statistics of gay adoption, the fact is that gay people do have children one way or another and there’s little that can be done to prevent it. The whole “protecting children” argument also hits an iceberg, since it's been shown that the children of same sex couples have better mental health when their parents' union is recognized, as reported by the Vermont Psychological association.
The tired out argument that gay marriages threaten traditional marriage and the nuclear family hits its biggest pothole when you realize that those two concepts - traditional marriage and the nuclear family - are at this point in history already an endangered species. What always bugs me when this argument is made is that it undermines the experiences of people who have been raised in single parent households for generations. While it is true that children in single-parent families live disproportionately in poverty, society has adapted to cope with these situations, and now even the President of the United States is the product of such a family, so it can't be said that a single parent put a child at an automatic disadvantage.
Likewise, the argument that children need both a mother and a father hits a similar logical snare when you take single parents and other family situations into account. The first linked article makes an interesting point about how even in gay families there tends to be a "mom" role and a "dad" role, but this may be applying gender roles that don't entirely fit the situation. And if we look at the pure concept of "mom" and "dad" as social roles we can also see that these have been changing for quite some time, since there is no longer a strict divide between the two now that most households have two working parents rather than a single breadwinner.
In short, if they've been trying to prevent a storm they're far too late, if anything they're at the eye already.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The LGBT Community and Minority Recognition
The other day I was having a discussion with someone I know when gay rights came up. I try not to shoehorn the subject into my conversations, but it happened to come up then because of the whole Miss California debacle. Somehow during the conversation I ended up mentioning something about LGBT people being a minority, and this person (who happens to be Hispanic, but that’s not relevant to the topic) objected to me classifying LGBT people as a minority.
Once I managed to avoid going into huffy mode I tried to ask what she meant by minority versus what I meant, and it got me thinking about how this seems to be a pervasive topic. When legislation is introduced in wider non-discrimination causes to protect LGBT people it often raises people’s hackles, and a lot of work in the LGBT community has revolved around building to community’s strength and having it be recognized as a minority. But what does it really mean to be a minority, and what are the criteria for being a “real” minority?
In a purely descriptive sense LGBT people are a minority in the sense that they are not the majority. Depending on who you ask the percent of LGBT people in the United States is anywhere between less than 1% and 10%, and it’s nearly impossible to nail down exactly how many LGBT people there are both in and out of the closet. But in the United States to be a “minority” carries with it a special status and certain implications. We don’t consider people with blue eyes to be a minority, but we consider people of African descent to be. So it can’t be said that minority status is just based on physical characteristics, instead there has to be some consequence to belonging to a particular group for it to be a recognized minority.
These consequences don’t have to be as formal as institutionalized racism and homophobia, but those are certainly forms they can take. It seems that we only get a recognized minority when there’s some system in place that splits people up along lines of belonging or not belonging, which usually takes the form of race or ethnicity. Now we have laws in place that prohibit discrimination based on race, but it does not stop all of it. Now you just can’t be formal about it, it has to take more covert forms.
I think we’re all familiar with how race and racism manifests in our society, but when it comes to sexual orientation some people get up in arms about classifying LGBT people as a minority. I can only speculate, but I imagine that it in part has to do with the fact that some people don’t like that in asserting themselves LGBT people are “intruding” on a space that used to be reserved for races and ethnicities. Since there are still a large number of people who think that you “choose” to be gay that may also impact whether they consider LGBT people a minority. We don’t, for instance, consider as small group of Democrats in a mostly Republican town to be a minority in the same sense that a community of color would be, since you choose which political party you affiliate with and can change it relatively easily. It gets complicated when you get into religious minorities, since they are often closely tied to ethnicity and cultural identity, and historically persecution of religious minorities has been a vigorous as the persecution of races (the repeal of the Edict of Nantes is a perfect example of how this sort of religious persecution can take a concrete form).
There’s no doubt that LGBT people are persecuted in formal and informal ways. One needs look no further than Proposition 8 to see the extreme form this can take, when people spend millions of dollars of their own money to prevent one group from having a right. Persecution can also take the form of lack of protection, and this indeed the case in many LGBT issues. Hate crimes are a way of recognizing minority status, but there has been much opposition to widening the umbrella of what’s considered a “hate crime” since in declaring that an attack against one group is a hate crime minority status is implicitly granted.
So there’s little doubt that LGBT are indeed a minority in the strictly numerical sense, and there’s little doubt that systems exist to deprive LGBT people of rights and liberties and formal and informal settings. But there is still resistance to recognizing the LGBT as a legitimate minority despite this, and this is where we get into the meat of it.
The idea that you can only be “born” into a minority may contribute to why it’s so hard for the LGBT community to assert itself as a legitimate minority. The vast majority of LGBT people I know say that they were born that way, but that’s not a widely held view at this point. Since a person can also hide their orientation this may also contribute to the idea that LGBT are not a “real” minority, since it’s not like skin color or bone structure and short of passing for another race one cannot “change” their race.
In the wider sense I think the reluctance to recognize the LGBT community as a minority stems from the fact that calling a group a minority grants them a certain amount of legitimacy and power, especially in the legal arena. To recognize the LGBT community as a minority means that anti-discrimination laws have to be enforced in the case of discrimination based on orientation or gender identity, and it forces judges to apply equal protection statues to cases involving LGBT issues.
This naturally opens up a whole slew of issues that opponents of marriage equality and LGBT rights do not want this to happen, since it not only grants rights they want taken away but frames them as bigots going after a persecuted minority and undermines the legitimacy their authority and cause. They become bullies, and at that point it becomes harder and harder for them to justify their actions to the public. They clearly do not want this to happen, so a large part of their campaign works to frame LGBT people as a dangerous “other” who threaten the minority by their existence and in the process deny the very real discrimination that they perpetrate against a community that has few protections against their actions.
As for my friend, I do not believe she meant any ill will, but she was a good demonstration of why it is so hard for the LGBT movement to gain ground when we’re still struggling to even be recognized as a minority whose rights are being impeded on.
Once I managed to avoid going into huffy mode I tried to ask what she meant by minority versus what I meant, and it got me thinking about how this seems to be a pervasive topic. When legislation is introduced in wider non-discrimination causes to protect LGBT people it often raises people’s hackles, and a lot of work in the LGBT community has revolved around building to community’s strength and having it be recognized as a minority. But what does it really mean to be a minority, and what are the criteria for being a “real” minority?
In a purely descriptive sense LGBT people are a minority in the sense that they are not the majority. Depending on who you ask the percent of LGBT people in the United States is anywhere between less than 1% and 10%, and it’s nearly impossible to nail down exactly how many LGBT people there are both in and out of the closet. But in the United States to be a “minority” carries with it a special status and certain implications. We don’t consider people with blue eyes to be a minority, but we consider people of African descent to be. So it can’t be said that minority status is just based on physical characteristics, instead there has to be some consequence to belonging to a particular group for it to be a recognized minority.
These consequences don’t have to be as formal as institutionalized racism and homophobia, but those are certainly forms they can take. It seems that we only get a recognized minority when there’s some system in place that splits people up along lines of belonging or not belonging, which usually takes the form of race or ethnicity. Now we have laws in place that prohibit discrimination based on race, but it does not stop all of it. Now you just can’t be formal about it, it has to take more covert forms.
I think we’re all familiar with how race and racism manifests in our society, but when it comes to sexual orientation some people get up in arms about classifying LGBT people as a minority. I can only speculate, but I imagine that it in part has to do with the fact that some people don’t like that in asserting themselves LGBT people are “intruding” on a space that used to be reserved for races and ethnicities. Since there are still a large number of people who think that you “choose” to be gay that may also impact whether they consider LGBT people a minority. We don’t, for instance, consider as small group of Democrats in a mostly Republican town to be a minority in the same sense that a community of color would be, since you choose which political party you affiliate with and can change it relatively easily. It gets complicated when you get into religious minorities, since they are often closely tied to ethnicity and cultural identity, and historically persecution of religious minorities has been a vigorous as the persecution of races (the repeal of the Edict of Nantes is a perfect example of how this sort of religious persecution can take a concrete form).
There’s no doubt that LGBT people are persecuted in formal and informal ways. One needs look no further than Proposition 8 to see the extreme form this can take, when people spend millions of dollars of their own money to prevent one group from having a right. Persecution can also take the form of lack of protection, and this indeed the case in many LGBT issues. Hate crimes are a way of recognizing minority status, but there has been much opposition to widening the umbrella of what’s considered a “hate crime” since in declaring that an attack against one group is a hate crime minority status is implicitly granted.
So there’s little doubt that LGBT are indeed a minority in the strictly numerical sense, and there’s little doubt that systems exist to deprive LGBT people of rights and liberties and formal and informal settings. But there is still resistance to recognizing the LGBT as a legitimate minority despite this, and this is where we get into the meat of it.
The idea that you can only be “born” into a minority may contribute to why it’s so hard for the LGBT community to assert itself as a legitimate minority. The vast majority of LGBT people I know say that they were born that way, but that’s not a widely held view at this point. Since a person can also hide their orientation this may also contribute to the idea that LGBT are not a “real” minority, since it’s not like skin color or bone structure and short of passing for another race one cannot “change” their race.
In the wider sense I think the reluctance to recognize the LGBT community as a minority stems from the fact that calling a group a minority grants them a certain amount of legitimacy and power, especially in the legal arena. To recognize the LGBT community as a minority means that anti-discrimination laws have to be enforced in the case of discrimination based on orientation or gender identity, and it forces judges to apply equal protection statues to cases involving LGBT issues.
This naturally opens up a whole slew of issues that opponents of marriage equality and LGBT rights do not want this to happen, since it not only grants rights they want taken away but frames them as bigots going after a persecuted minority and undermines the legitimacy their authority and cause. They become bullies, and at that point it becomes harder and harder for them to justify their actions to the public. They clearly do not want this to happen, so a large part of their campaign works to frame LGBT people as a dangerous “other” who threaten the minority by their existence and in the process deny the very real discrimination that they perpetrate against a community that has few protections against their actions.
As for my friend, I do not believe she meant any ill will, but she was a good demonstration of why it is so hard for the LGBT movement to gain ground when we’re still struggling to even be recognized as a minority whose rights are being impeded on.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Outing, Privacy and The Frank Rule
Despite the fact that, to put it mildly, I’m thrilled that the number of states where I can get legally married doubled in a little under a week, I haven’t had much to say on here lately, mostly because of end of the semester work and general life craziness. But the occasional philosophical and sociological trains of thought do come up, it’s just a matter of whether or not I have the energy to write them down after everything else that's on my plate. Nonetheless, I’ll try to keep this going with the occasional update, of which this is one.
In my Philosophy of Race & Gender class we had a discussion about the outing of gay, lesbian and bisexual people (and presumably trans people as well, though this was not discussed in this particular case) and whether it is appropriate to out these people and under what circumstances. My position is that under most circumstances it's not appropriate to out someone without their permission, since outing a person who is not ready to be outed is fundamentally taking the control of that event away from them, and I can say from personal experience that the process of outing is terrifying, and being outed without your permission increases that terror substantially. But I disagree that outing is bad in all circumstances, especially in the case of a politician who engages in gay behavior in secret but uses their political power to persecute other LGBT people. In this discussion I cited The Frank Rule, coined by and named after the Congessional Representative from my home state and the chair of House Financial Services Committee, the one and only Barney Frank.
Congressman Frank is famous for several things: First, being grumpy, second, having a razor sharp sense of humor, third, for being a stanch critic of government spending, and fourth, being openly gay since 1981 and an outspoken LGBT advocate, and I've had the good fortune to meet Congressman Frank in person at a talk he gave at the University of Massachusetts many years ago. My father took me to this talk, and though I was too young to really understand what he was talking about or what the fact that he was gay really meant, I remember he was funny, and that despite my expectations I was not in fact bored by what he was saying. I mention this because I've also had the dubious honor of interrupting fellow Massachusetts Congressman John Olver at a talk he was giving, though I was even younger at the time and Congressman Olver is by all accounts both incredibly intelligent and extremely boring.
Back to the subject, The Frank Rule can best be summed up by the Congressman himself:
It has been interpreted that we right to privacy guaranteed in our Constitution, and in the LGBT rights movement this has been key to throwing out discriminatory laws and practices that intrude on that right. Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court case that invalidated all the remaining sodomy laws in the U.S. and basically said that the government has no right to regulate the sex lives of two consenting adults. I could go into just what "sodomy" is, but that's another "What Does That Really Mean?" post on its own. When it comes to privacy in the case of outing, it becomes a philosophical and normative question, which happen to be my specialties.
"Privacy" in the purest definition of the word is simply to be free from unwanted intrusion. When you compare this to the idea of "Secrecy", or the intentional concealment of something, it becomes clear that why most secrets are considered private not all private things are secret. I may have privacy in a bathroom stall, but it's no secret what I'm doing in there. When you approach outing as an issue privacy and secrecy overlap, and if someone does not want to be outed the question then becomes whether that part of them is considered private or if it's a secret that is fair game.
In most cases I'm inclined to say that no one has the right to out you without your permission. One analysis I read on the issue tried to address the points of privacy and secrecy, but in it the author failed to acknowledge the vast and varied consequences the process of being outed carries with it. You can lose your job, be thrown out of your home, disowned, beaten up, and even killed, and because these events are far too common the process of outing carries with it an extreme fear. LGBT people have to navigate their lives based on who they are and are not out to, and with just about every relationship there's the question of whether it's safe to be out to this person. I have another post in the works that discusses issues like this and how they're symptomatic of heteronormativity, but that's for another day, and all we need to know now is that it's a downright scary concept.
I'm in no way suggesting that politicians and other public figures who are outed do not face these same issues, but because of their positions their lives are already in the in-between space between public and private, and the issue becomes more complicated. Politicians especially are meant to represent the values of the communities they represent, so intentional deceit and secrecy on their part has an element of power abuse that goes with it.
In cases where a closeted politician is staunchly anti-gay it takes on an even more malicious bent, and besides deceiving their constituents a closeted anti-gay politician creates a cycle of self destruction through their actions that enables further discriminatory action to take place. While politicians are not exempt from a right to privacy merely because of their positions, their privacy is of a different sort and carries broader consequences, especially in cases of deceit. As awful as it is to lie to your family and friends, when you lie to your constituents and work to demonize and disenfranchise an already vulnerable group while engaging in that same behavior yourself the weight of the hypocrisy becomes much greater. As much as I realize that these politicians must go through great mental anguish because of their hatred for themselves, my sympathy stops at the point where they channel that hatred towards causing harm to people in the same position, and I believe they should be accountable for their actions if they are indeed shown to be engaging in hypocritical behavior as they would be in any context where their behavior is shown to be contrary to their rhetoric.
In short, I agree with Congressman Frank. I have no right to out someone without their permission, but in cases of hypocrisy and abuse of power the right of the people to know what their representatives are doing outweighs their right to keep secrets as long as we want an accountable and transparent system of government. You can do what you want with your life, but once you start using your own issues to restrict mine I draw the line. Or to quote the Congressman:
In my Philosophy of Race & Gender class we had a discussion about the outing of gay, lesbian and bisexual people (and presumably trans people as well, though this was not discussed in this particular case) and whether it is appropriate to out these people and under what circumstances. My position is that under most circumstances it's not appropriate to out someone without their permission, since outing a person who is not ready to be outed is fundamentally taking the control of that event away from them, and I can say from personal experience that the process of outing is terrifying, and being outed without your permission increases that terror substantially. But I disagree that outing is bad in all circumstances, especially in the case of a politician who engages in gay behavior in secret but uses their political power to persecute other LGBT people. In this discussion I cited The Frank Rule, coined by and named after the Congessional Representative from my home state and the chair of House Financial Services Committee, the one and only Barney Frank.
Congressman Frank is famous for several things: First, being grumpy, second, having a razor sharp sense of humor, third, for being a stanch critic of government spending, and fourth, being openly gay since 1981 and an outspoken LGBT advocate, and I've had the good fortune to meet Congressman Frank in person at a talk he gave at the University of Massachusetts many years ago. My father took me to this talk, and though I was too young to really understand what he was talking about or what the fact that he was gay really meant, I remember he was funny, and that despite my expectations I was not in fact bored by what he was saying. I mention this because I've also had the dubious honor of interrupting fellow Massachusetts Congressman John Olver at a talk he was giving, though I was even younger at the time and Congressman Olver is by all accounts both incredibly intelligent and extremely boring.
Back to the subject, The Frank Rule can best be summed up by the Congressman himself:
"I think there's a right to privacy. But the right to privacy should not be a right to hypocrisy. And people who want to demonize other people shouldn't then be able to go home and close the door and do it themselves."It's a simple enough concept, don't be a hypocrite. I think we can all agree that there are few things worse than someone who crusades against something one minute and participates in it themselves the next. But what stuck out to me in light of today's class was how Congressman Frank makes a distinction between privacy and secrecy, which was one of our topics.
It has been interpreted that we right to privacy guaranteed in our Constitution, and in the LGBT rights movement this has been key to throwing out discriminatory laws and practices that intrude on that right. Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court case that invalidated all the remaining sodomy laws in the U.S. and basically said that the government has no right to regulate the sex lives of two consenting adults. I could go into just what "sodomy" is, but that's another "What Does That Really Mean?" post on its own. When it comes to privacy in the case of outing, it becomes a philosophical and normative question, which happen to be my specialties.
"Privacy" in the purest definition of the word is simply to be free from unwanted intrusion. When you compare this to the idea of "Secrecy", or the intentional concealment of something, it becomes clear that why most secrets are considered private not all private things are secret. I may have privacy in a bathroom stall, but it's no secret what I'm doing in there. When you approach outing as an issue privacy and secrecy overlap, and if someone does not want to be outed the question then becomes whether that part of them is considered private or if it's a secret that is fair game.
In most cases I'm inclined to say that no one has the right to out you without your permission. One analysis I read on the issue tried to address the points of privacy and secrecy, but in it the author failed to acknowledge the vast and varied consequences the process of being outed carries with it. You can lose your job, be thrown out of your home, disowned, beaten up, and even killed, and because these events are far too common the process of outing carries with it an extreme fear. LGBT people have to navigate their lives based on who they are and are not out to, and with just about every relationship there's the question of whether it's safe to be out to this person. I have another post in the works that discusses issues like this and how they're symptomatic of heteronormativity, but that's for another day, and all we need to know now is that it's a downright scary concept.
I'm in no way suggesting that politicians and other public figures who are outed do not face these same issues, but because of their positions their lives are already in the in-between space between public and private, and the issue becomes more complicated. Politicians especially are meant to represent the values of the communities they represent, so intentional deceit and secrecy on their part has an element of power abuse that goes with it.
In cases where a closeted politician is staunchly anti-gay it takes on an even more malicious bent, and besides deceiving their constituents a closeted anti-gay politician creates a cycle of self destruction through their actions that enables further discriminatory action to take place. While politicians are not exempt from a right to privacy merely because of their positions, their privacy is of a different sort and carries broader consequences, especially in cases of deceit. As awful as it is to lie to your family and friends, when you lie to your constituents and work to demonize and disenfranchise an already vulnerable group while engaging in that same behavior yourself the weight of the hypocrisy becomes much greater. As much as I realize that these politicians must go through great mental anguish because of their hatred for themselves, my sympathy stops at the point where they channel that hatred towards causing harm to people in the same position, and I believe they should be accountable for their actions if they are indeed shown to be engaging in hypocritical behavior as they would be in any context where their behavior is shown to be contrary to their rhetoric.
In short, I agree with Congressman Frank. I have no right to out someone without their permission, but in cases of hypocrisy and abuse of power the right of the people to know what their representatives are doing outweighs their right to keep secrets as long as we want an accountable and transparent system of government. You can do what you want with your life, but once you start using your own issues to restrict mine I draw the line. Or to quote the Congressman:
I take it personally when people decide to take political batting practice with my life.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Transsexual Rights, Social Order and Political Compromise
Recently in the news it came to light that the Human Rights Campaign has adopted a policy on the inclusion of trans-inclusive protections in the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), and have said that they will not support the Act if it does not include trans protection. This is a reversal of a 2007 decision to support the Act without trans protection, and the backlash over the original decision was immense, leading to the resignation of several prominent members of the HRC and intense criticism from the LGBT community.
The HRC’s official statement on the matter is that the 2007 decision was a “one time exception” made because of the political climate of the time and the belief that ENDA would pass with sexual orientation defined and the trans protections left out. Though they have been lauded for this new development and the fact that they've rescinded their original policy, the memory of their 2007 stance is still fresh in the minds of many, and is symptomatic of a major rift in the LGBT community between the LGB and the T.
Within every social movement and political movement there are lines drawn and loyalties defined, and inevitably someone is left out or seen as expendable. In this case the transgender communities felt betrayed by the HRC’s refusal to push for inclusion in ENDA, and as in this case very often the ones who are left out are also the most vulnerable. This was nearly the case in the Women’s Rights Movement and the push for the Equal Rights Amendment, and lesbians almost found themselves thrown under the bus for the sake of political advancement, though it was thankfully averted at the last moment, and perhaps because of that the Amendment died in the water. And now some gays have similarly turned on the trans community when passage of ENDA is so close, but it doesn't have to be that way.
A way of understanding this phenomenon can be found in the social order theory, which states that certain groups move upwards as they gain more prominence and acceptance within society. I grew up near a town that was a perfect example of this theory in action: The top of the hill was the most desirable place to live, and through the decades the ethnic makeup the area changed from white Anglo-Saxon Protestant to Catholic and Irish and later people of color, first wealthy African Americans and then Asians. At the moment the people below the hill are mainly Hispanic and Caribbean, though some of them have begun to advance up the hill. Within that town we see a snapshot of American culture and cultural acceptance, with those at the top of the hill being “true” Americans while those below are still struggling to assert their place within our society.
The state of the LGBT community can similarly be seen as tiered. At the top are “regular” gays and lesbians, people who can “pass” for straight and are seen as culturally acceptable by Americans who don’t mind a gay person as long as they “act straight” (note the quotation marks in the last sentence and throughout this article). This is the type most commonly seen in the media and the least likely to arouse extreme hatred. Following these are the ones seen as flamboyant or behave outside their expected gender role, and in this level the possibility of retaliation is much higher, and jokes and stereotypes about this group are more widely accepted. Following them are bisexuals, and besides facing persecution within the LGBT community, many people still doubt the existence of true bisexuality and not just “confusion” or “indecisiveness”. This is also expressed in media, which has a continuing reluctance to accept that some people are attracted to both men and women and are under no obligation to "choose" a "side".
We then get to the T, and even below them are the Is, the Intersexuals. While it can be said that most people have at least a passing familiarity with the concept of transsexuality the same cannot be said of Intersexuals, who sometimes find themselves subjected to persecution by transsexuals. No one is talking about intersexual rights at the moment in any national venue, so instead it's the transsexuals who most often find themselves left out and discarded for the sake of “advancing the cause” and securing rights of the “majority”.
Perhaps in the case of transsexuals (and by extension, intersexuals) a certain amount of this can be attributed to just how deeply rooted the concept of a binary male/female gender system is, so by extension those who cross gender lines are seen as a threat by people who might accept gay men and women as long as they act like men and women respectively. Mainly, though, this can be seen as another manifestation of the social order, and the desire for one group to advance itself even if that means sacrificing some of its allies.
This is in no way meant to excuse that behavior, as I said the most unjust part of this is that those who are the most vulnerable are the ones left behind, but it is simply in the nature of our current political system for the fringes to be discarded. In presidential elections both parties will attempt to distance themselves from the far right and far left once they clinch the nomination in an attempt to reach for the all-important center and the majority in the national election. Any group that enters the national stage will eventually do this, but in cases such as this the abandonment of the vulnerable should rightly be thought as sickening and threatening to the very purpose of the group itself, which is to ensure protection for all people regardless of any personal qualities or identity. What the HRC did in 2007 was a betrayal, plain and simple, and though they are now making a valiant attempt to rectify it the memory won't fade any time soon, and the HRC's reputation will remain low within the LGBT community until they show that they will not do this again.
I end with an applicable and well-known quote from Benjamin Franklin:
The HRC’s official statement on the matter is that the 2007 decision was a “one time exception” made because of the political climate of the time and the belief that ENDA would pass with sexual orientation defined and the trans protections left out. Though they have been lauded for this new development and the fact that they've rescinded their original policy, the memory of their 2007 stance is still fresh in the minds of many, and is symptomatic of a major rift in the LGBT community between the LGB and the T.
Within every social movement and political movement there are lines drawn and loyalties defined, and inevitably someone is left out or seen as expendable. In this case the transgender communities felt betrayed by the HRC’s refusal to push for inclusion in ENDA, and as in this case very often the ones who are left out are also the most vulnerable. This was nearly the case in the Women’s Rights Movement and the push for the Equal Rights Amendment, and lesbians almost found themselves thrown under the bus for the sake of political advancement, though it was thankfully averted at the last moment, and perhaps because of that the Amendment died in the water. And now some gays have similarly turned on the trans community when passage of ENDA is so close, but it doesn't have to be that way.
A way of understanding this phenomenon can be found in the social order theory, which states that certain groups move upwards as they gain more prominence and acceptance within society. I grew up near a town that was a perfect example of this theory in action: The top of the hill was the most desirable place to live, and through the decades the ethnic makeup the area changed from white Anglo-Saxon Protestant to Catholic and Irish and later people of color, first wealthy African Americans and then Asians. At the moment the people below the hill are mainly Hispanic and Caribbean, though some of them have begun to advance up the hill. Within that town we see a snapshot of American culture and cultural acceptance, with those at the top of the hill being “true” Americans while those below are still struggling to assert their place within our society.
The state of the LGBT community can similarly be seen as tiered. At the top are “regular” gays and lesbians, people who can “pass” for straight and are seen as culturally acceptable by Americans who don’t mind a gay person as long as they “act straight” (note the quotation marks in the last sentence and throughout this article). This is the type most commonly seen in the media and the least likely to arouse extreme hatred. Following these are the ones seen as flamboyant or behave outside their expected gender role, and in this level the possibility of retaliation is much higher, and jokes and stereotypes about this group are more widely accepted. Following them are bisexuals, and besides facing persecution within the LGBT community, many people still doubt the existence of true bisexuality and not just “confusion” or “indecisiveness”. This is also expressed in media, which has a continuing reluctance to accept that some people are attracted to both men and women and are under no obligation to "choose" a "side".
We then get to the T, and even below them are the Is, the Intersexuals. While it can be said that most people have at least a passing familiarity with the concept of transsexuality the same cannot be said of Intersexuals, who sometimes find themselves subjected to persecution by transsexuals. No one is talking about intersexual rights at the moment in any national venue, so instead it's the transsexuals who most often find themselves left out and discarded for the sake of “advancing the cause” and securing rights of the “majority”.
Perhaps in the case of transsexuals (and by extension, intersexuals) a certain amount of this can be attributed to just how deeply rooted the concept of a binary male/female gender system is, so by extension those who cross gender lines are seen as a threat by people who might accept gay men and women as long as they act like men and women respectively. Mainly, though, this can be seen as another manifestation of the social order, and the desire for one group to advance itself even if that means sacrificing some of its allies.
This is in no way meant to excuse that behavior, as I said the most unjust part of this is that those who are the most vulnerable are the ones left behind, but it is simply in the nature of our current political system for the fringes to be discarded. In presidential elections both parties will attempt to distance themselves from the far right and far left once they clinch the nomination in an attempt to reach for the all-important center and the majority in the national election. Any group that enters the national stage will eventually do this, but in cases such as this the abandonment of the vulnerable should rightly be thought as sickening and threatening to the very purpose of the group itself, which is to ensure protection for all people regardless of any personal qualities or identity. What the HRC did in 2007 was a betrayal, plain and simple, and though they are now making a valiant attempt to rectify it the memory won't fade any time soon, and the HRC's reputation will remain low within the LGBT community until they show that they will not do this again.
I end with an applicable and well-known quote from Benjamin Franklin:
“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Saturday, March 21, 2009
A step forward for International Gay Rights
It appears that the U.S. is finally starting to catch up with the rest of the Western world on human rights and LGBT people. President Obama has said that the U.S. is going to sign onto a U.N. Gay Rights Declaration, stating that sexual orientation and gender identity are covered under international human rights protections. This act also calls for the universal repeal of laws criminalizing homosexuality and other so-called “Sodomy Laws” that allow for the prosecutions and murders of gays, lesbians and transgender people around the world.
It should be noted that earlier the Bush Administration did not sign onto this declaration under the justification of “technical legal grounds concerning federal and state jurisdiction over gay rights.” Excuse me while I roll my eyes at that and the suggestion that the states should be allowed to decide if they can execute me for being gay.
Over 60 other countries signed on to this declaration at the time it was proposed, and the ones who haven’t are places like Egypt, The Vatican, Uganda and other countries I won’t be visiting anytime soon. There are also some people using the old “Slippery Slope” argument to justify not signing it, but that’s an issue for another day.
It should be noted that earlier the Bush Administration did not sign onto this declaration under the justification of “technical legal grounds concerning federal and state jurisdiction over gay rights.” Excuse me while I roll my eyes at that and the suggestion that the states should be allowed to decide if they can execute me for being gay.
Over 60 other countries signed on to this declaration at the time it was proposed, and the ones who haven’t are places like Egypt, The Vatican, Uganda and other countries I won’t be visiting anytime soon. There are also some people using the old “Slippery Slope” argument to justify not signing it, but that’s an issue for another day.
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