It’s called the foot-in-the-door method. First, you propose something that is slightly outside of allowable norms: denying gay people wedding cakes on grounds of “religious freedom”. Then, you slowly ramp up how extreme your demands are, coercing the other side to giving a tiny bit of ground each time, until you’ve shifted the entire fucking playing field. Conservatives are also very fond of the door-to-face method, which is demanding something completely outlandish that you know will be refused, and then asking for something less ridiculous by way of compromise, again resulting in a gradual shift in norms until views that were once considered moderate or reasonable become unthinkably liberal by destroying people’s sense of standards. The combination of these methods is called the “foot-in-the-face” method, which sums up where this whole thing is headed quite nicely.
i am shaking a lot right now and my heart is in my mouth and i’ve been crying on and off and on and off for the past two weeks, and i know that none of you give a fuck about brazil, and that none of you care about politics outside of the ones that directly affect you, but i am terrified. as a bissexual, socialist, umbandista, brazilian woman, i am terrified. and i am begging you to care.
in this year, we hold presidential elections. these elections are the most important in the history of brazil, for a very simple reason: now, that we are on the second round, we either elect a far-right candidate with authoritarian tendencies who flirts with fascism, or we elect a center-left candidate who belongs to the party that was in power for from 2002-2016, before a coup occurred mid 2016.
one of the candidates is fernando haddad, the man seen on this gif:
he was the mayor of são paulo, has been called by the new york times a ‘visionary’, was considered the greatest mayor of latin america, as his time as minister of education made over 100 federal, free institutes, ensured that the history of africa was taught in schools. he has a bacharel degree in law, a masters in economy and a phd in philosophy. he is currently a professor at an university. he gave free buses to children in public education, who could not afford it otherwise, lowered the corruption in the state of são paulo, created a better system for women to denounce harrassment and assault, and overall did a lot of good. i’m not going to spend 3 hours finding different sources for this, because you all don’t actually care.
the other candidate, is jair bolsonaro, and he is not the “tropical trump”, he is not our version of berlusconi. he is worse.
he has praised general carlos alberto brilhante ustra, who is known as the mastermind behind the tortures that occurred during the dictatorship. when he praised him, he did so when voting to impeach our former president dilma rouseff, who was tortured during the dictatorship, and fought for freedom. he has said that “if the crisis gets worse, we’ll shut down the congress” and install a dictatorship. he has said that the dictatorship should have killed more people, and tortured less. that it should have killed 30.000 people. that it should have killed our then president fernando henrique cardoso. he has said that his son would never marry a black woman because he gave him education. he has said that gay people are only gay because they were not beaten as children. he has said that indigenous people are lazy and greedy, that immigrants are the scum of the earth. he has said that women should earn less because they get pregnant. he has said that he would not rape a congresswoman, maria do rosário, because she is not worthy of it. he has said that his daughter is a woman because he got weak and could not produce another man. are you horrified yet? do you understand the problem yet? do you care yet?
in the beginning of the year, marielle franco, a poor, black, bissexual politician was executed. a street was named after her. here’s what people in his party did:
he is leading the polls currently, around 54-58% against 42-46%. ever since the first round of elections, last sunday (07/10), over 50 cases of assaults to people against bolsonaro have been reported.
here are some of them:
a black man was stabbed to death 12 times for saying he voted for haddad.
a woman had a swastika carved onto her belly for walking around with a shirt that said “ele não”, not him, the name of a campaign against bolsonaro.
a swastika was painted in front of a university, alongside the saying “get out blacks”
in different stadiums, football crowds sing “hey, fruit, beware, bolsonaro is going to kill f*gs”
to make things more worrying, the united states, who has knowingly backed up a military coup in 1964, has donated 96 BULLETPROOF MOBILS TO THE BRAZILIAN ARMY.
here are some cartoons on american newspapers:
if you want to get informed, if you care enough to do so, here are some sources in english:
1. “Eu tenho cinco filhos. Foram quatro homens, aí no quinto eu dei uma fraquejada e veio uma mulher.” // “I have 5 kids. There were 4 boys, on the fifth I had a moment of weakness and had a girl.”
2. “O erro da ditadura foi torturar e não matar.” // “The mistake of the dictatorship was to torture and not kill.”
3. “Eu sou favorável à tortura. Tu sabe disso.” // “I’m in favor of torture. You know that.”
4. “Eu não empregaria [mulheres e homens] com o mesmo salario. Mas tem muita mulher que é competente.” // “I would not employ [women and men] with the same salary. But there are many women who are competent.”
5. “Prefiro que um filho meu morra num acidente do que apareça com um bigodudo por aí.” // “I would rather my son die in an accident than show up around here (dating) a mustachioed man.”
6. “Não vou combater nem discriminar, mas, se eu vir dois homems se beijando na rua, vou bater.” // “I am not going to fight it nor discriminate against it, but if I see two men kissing on the street, I am going to beat them.”
7. “Pinochet devia ter matado mais gente.” // “Pinochet (a dictator) should have killed more people.”
8. “Vamos fuzilar a petralhada toda aqui do Acre!” // “We are going to shoot all the PT (Worker’s Party) supporters in Acre!”
If the straight girls in this scenario leave, gay men aren’t going to magically appear. The bar will just be empty, the bartenders will make less money, and if it keeps up like that for long enough, guess what bar won’t exist anymore? Yeah.
No offense hon but we’ve never needed the straights in order to keep our bars existing.
Gay people ain’t there because straight hoes maxed out capacity so thy can’t get in. No gay bar has suffered because straight people didn’t show up.
Straight people at gay bars are like the porn bots in your notes.
LMAO! Imagine thinking that the only way gay establishments will survive is with the patronage of straight people.
Hey guess what! Without straight people, no one would procreate, therefore all humans would die, thus gay people wouldn’t exist, nor would the rest of humanity.
Are you really dumb enough to think that straight people are the only ones who want or have kids? Do us a favor and get your head out of your ass.
I am so not qualified to talk about the Jewish concept of g-d or even whether there’s just one concept, so if anyone Jewish wants to talk about it feel free. I can talk briefly about the Christian God, but keep in mind I used to belong to a fairly conservative Protestant sect heavily influenced by U.S. Evangelical Christianity so this likely doesn’t represent all Christians. I mean my old sect, the Korean Presbyterian Church, recently declared Catholicism a heresy I can’t with these fuckers 😂
Much antisemitism below
So in the version of Christianity I’m familiar with God is a unity and Trinity at the same time, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He is heavily gendered, translated with exclusively masculine titles such as King. Not so much gendered pronouns though, since Korean doesn’t truck much with them. Jesus, the Holy Son, is considered to be the Messiah and the fulfillment of prophecies by the Jewish prophets and holy books. (I’m still embarrassed about ever believing this, ouch.) Jesus is considered human and divine at the same time, a concept so tricky–much like all this Trinity stuff–that historically they literally had to kill people who didn’t believe it.
The Virgin Mary is NOT a part of the divine and we were taught nothing about there being anything feminine in God. It’s a big beef my particular sect, and probably many Protestant sects, have with Catholicism that Catholics over-exalt Mary. Some even accuse Catholics of worshipping her as a goddess, which I have seen no evidence of but may not be that far from the history of Mary taking over local goddesses as Christianity spread. But at least we let her have sex after she had Jesus, I think most Protestants believe she had Jesus’s brothers and sisters the good old-fashioned way with Joseph. Evidently Catholics believe she and Joseph never had sex and the siblings of Jesus mentioned in the Bible were cousins or step-siblings, something that had me completely agog when I first heard it.
God as I was taught is all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing, a trilemma I struggled with until I couldn’t keep up my faith anymore. I’ve since come to think God could be at best two out of three, but from talking to Jewish friends they hardly grant one out of three which is, like, a pretty harsh grade to give the creator of the entire universe lmao. I’ve also been taught Scripture is flawless and perfect and to be read literally, so the pronouncements of God are not to be questioned ever. Like, not the genocides, not the slavery, not anything.
Speaking of God’s shady past, it was a pretty common line in my church that the God of the New Testament was a kinder and gentler one than the God of the Old Testament, and that Jewish people worshipped the, I guess, cruel and barbaric pre-makeover god who ordered slaughters and kept His people to an unbearably harsh set of laws while our God was kindly and full of love (but still homophobic as hell because the Old Testament suddenly becomes super important then and only then). The event that perpetuated this huge character growth in God was evidently the coming of Jesus/a.k.a. Messiah, because now our sins were all forgiven as long as we accepted Jesus as our lord and savior so we didn’t need animal sacrifices or all those technical laws anymore. Yeah, again, I’m embarrassed I ever believed any of this.
So those are the headcanons of God from my old corner of the Bible fandom. It’s far from universal but fairly widespread, and I believe very damaging between its cultural appropriation, antisemitism, and regressive attitudes toward women and queer people.
Talking to my father is an exercise in holding back screams of rage.
“I’m not blaming you or tearing you down, I’m just worried for your future!”
This, after he went on a five-minute tirade about how I’m going to end up a loser and never amount to anything unless I do exactly as he says. Bitch, like abusers don’t justify the shit out of the former all the time with the latter excuse?
Also, did I mention that “exactly as he says” means assuring a fundamentalist Christian potential employer that I am a good little homophobic Christian? Talk about would literally rather die. There are of course people who are financially desperate enough that they have to do this kind of degrading shit–not to mention seriously abnormal shit, we’re talking about an academic employer here–and I sympathize with that. But I am not in that kind of strait and can’t bring myself to do it, especially at his insistence.
“I think homosexuals are disgusting too, do you think that’s so terrible?”
YOU IDIOT. YOU UTTER FOOL. YOU’RE TELLING ME I’M DISGUSTING AND YOU DON’T EVEN FUCKING KNOW. This shit right here is EXACTLY why I never came out to you even though I came dangerously close for one heart-stopping second of my life. It’s why there are huge parts me that I will never ever share with you and why we will never be close as a father and daughter should be. I’ve had to let go of that bone-deep hope, a process that took me decades, but I will never stop mourning what might have been. It’s why I would rather die rather than hurt my own child the way you hurt me, despite your disingenuous and insidious insistence that I’ll end up being like you once I’m a parent. Fuck out of here with that noise.
Guess what, asshole, I’m better than you and I am a better parent and better person than you. Not because I’m smarter or richer or anything, but because I do not believe as you do that my child is an extension of me and owes it to me to live as I want them to. I don’t have your fucking sense of narcissist entitlement, and from that alone I’m already light-years ahead of you.
If you don’t identify as queer, have trauma with it or have other objections to it, then we’re not including you when we say “queer community.” Full stop. Also nearly every word LGBTQ+ people have been using for themselves have been slurs at some point, or still are used as such. If you think an alternative would be better, present one and fight for it to be used. Do what you need to do to protect your mental health, filter words, block people, but don’t tell people who need an inclusive term that they can’t have their own identity because you personally object to a word that has been so thoroughly reclaimed that there are “queer studies” and “queer theory.”
@sophrosynic Obviously reclamation is not universal. Words in such common usage by the community such as “gay” and “dyke” are still slurs in many contexts and places, but we don’t see the “queer is a slur” crowd running around trying to shut down these terms.
Also, queer can’t be an umbrella term for all people who are not straight/not cis, and the claim that we’re trying to use it to describe the whole LGBT+ community is false. “Queer” is associated with radical activism and resistance to heteronormativity specifically as a reaction to mainstream LGBT+ politics, so it can’t be replaced with LGBT+ and vice versa.
If you’re not queer then you’re not queer. Simple as that.
Except the problem with the word queer has never really been what you’re saying here. No one is saying that people who use the term as an identity can’t do that, or that the word has to be scrubbed entirely out of existence even in historical & certain contemporary contexts. What people have overwhelmingly tried to critique are the politics of reclamation that people ascribe to when it comes to the word queer, specifically the idea that reclaiming a slur on a personal level somehow stops it from being a slur, period, when this is really not true.
It’s not comparable to words like ‘gay’ or ‘d*ke’, mainly because the word gay is not an analogous slur to begin with, and ‘d*ke’ is a slur that is overwhelmingly derogatory towards lesbians and no one else. Many of the lesbians who use the term don’t deny that it’s still a slur, regardless of their own personal usage of the word, which is exactly why non-lesbians are not allowed to use it to refer to lesbians, even if said lesbian happens to use the word as a personal descriptor.
It’s great that you’re happy with identifying as queer, and that this is empowering to you. That’s your personal decision, and no one should dictate to you otherwise on the subject. But it’s not a “reclaimed” slur, and it hasn’t stopped being a slur because some folks have chosen to identify as such. It’s still a slur. Acknowledging that is important.
So not being called queer against your wishes isn’t enough for you. Here you are getting honest, telling me you want it to be relegated to historical and **limited** contemporary contexts. You want us to sharply cut back on its use, to the personal and whatever specific contents you decree.
Like, buddy, of course it’s a slur. If it wasn’t a slur it would never have had to be reclaimed. The reclamation is part of the radical act, turning derision and hatred and violence against us into strength. And no it’s not just personal, it’s a political movement with a lot of history–bold of you to try to erase that on your say-so lmao. Queer is purposefully not respectable like LGBT+ because it is meant to be a giant fuck you to heteronormativity. It is a different politics and replacing it with a word that is not a slur misses the entire point. You don’t like that it’s a slur? Then stay in your respectable LGBT+ boxes where you never have to hear a bad word with bad connotations. Queer isn’t for you and it’s not about you.
You want to know what some of the biggest Pride events in my country are? Queer Culture Festival and Queer Parade. Not Gay Pride, because we reject the idea that cis gay men and cis lesbians represent us all. Not LGBT+ because we don’t all fit into neat categories, and no one gets to play cute little tricks like “Drop the T” or “A is for Ally.” Queer, because we are an indivisible whole, and those who want to pull shit like “Lesbian, not queer” know to stay home. We’re not changing that just because you have an issue with how inclusive the term is and the fact that dirty little aceys can claim it just as easily as you.
We’re here. We’re queer. Cover your damned ears and stay in your fucking lane.
I’m gonna be real here, I have way more trauma around the word gay than queer. For the most part gay is what people called me when threatening me with violence – queer is what they called me when they wanted to build a community. Not to say it didn’t go the other way round but, for me and honestly a lot of people, gay and d*ke were just as likely to be used against us, if not more so, so given the logic here I should be policing people who use those words. I’m not because I’m not a giant ass but I could very easily use your same arguments. Not to mention they were historically slurs too – pretty much every term for us has been a slur.
L.J.'s Obsessions 