Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Pochahontas/Avatar Mashup
I think this nicely illustrates the concept of hegemony in film making and popular culture.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Free Speech and Cultural Relativism
This should be sung from the roof tops and embedded every where. Just click the title. It's a link to Pat Condell's discussion of the Gert Wilders' farce, er, trial.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Marriage Rights and Hetero-normativity; Anti-gay marriage is bad economic policy
Long live hetero-normativity in the homosexual community!
Contradictions and Paradoxical ideals unite!
I am a big supporter of gay rights and the right to marriage for all people who want it, but at the same time, I am critical of constantly reififying hetero-normativity.
I think it makes people feel that I am anti-gay AND anti-straight, although for MYSELf, on my personal social and political level, I am anti-marriage.
But I am neither anti-gay, nor anti-straight.
I just wish there was equal support of non-marriage and non-traditional ideals about community responsibility toward all and one another, without it having to be sanctified within the confines of marriage.
How about sanctifying independence and care-taking of the elderly and neglected as something we all should and could be "married" to? In our current economic and family system, eldercare has become commodified in the development of further segregation of the elderly into old folks' homes and retirement communities, so that marriage and family ties become increasingly irrelevant, except in terms of the almighty dollar needed to pay for that segregational system.
There are so many different kinds of life and lifestyle and ways and measures of commitment, but the governments tend to reward hetero-normativity over all others and this is unfair to everyone else - the elderly, the disabled, the un-marriageable, the ones who do not want to marry, the ones too young to marry, the widowed, on and on and on.
Offering sympathy to people who are single is not as useful as offering friendship and support and recognizing their legitimacy in the system with the same kinds of tax breaks and social support as the married (or widowed). It's not as if singlehood in and of itself is a disability, but its perception among the general public often renders it so.
Rewarding single people with sympathy and unequal socio-economic status is just as wrong as denying marriage rights to anyone.
The irony of gays needing and demanding marriage rights - something I wholly support -- is that in so doing we demand the continued reification of hetero-normativity at the expense of other-normativity.
It is both a disturbing paradox and perhaps a good joke on society.
Dolly Parton said recently in an interview when asked about her feelings in the matter, something like,"Well, I think they should be allowed to be just as miserable as the rest of us," as if the rest of us were all married (and miserable).
Of course, it was hilarious, and I greatly appreciate the levity of her response, and of course her desire to support gay rights, but again we have the irony that being able to marry affords more equality (and it does), because of the enhancement of individual positionality in society, whereby marriage as an institution affords social, political and economic advantages - greater positionality, and it does so most particularly for white males.
This arrangement is quite likely one of the most unfair aspects of human existence, and ought to be ended. It is particularly an unequal arrangement for women who are dependent on the system and the arrangement, and who usually make much less money than their (usually male) partners, and who often are dependent on abusive mates (talking about ALL society, not just ours). And THAT, my friends is not a partnership.
Perhaps one of the reasons so many fundamentalists have trouble with gay marriage is in how it threatens the capitalist system (on which contemporary churches depend) because it threatens to equalize some of these unequal power relations - at least for gay males, and perhaps for gay married women, but because marriage functions to traditionally maintain unequal power relations between opposite sexes, and to provide care for future cogs in the machine at individuals's expense, rather than at the states' expense, it may also serve to maintain unequal power relations among and between straights and gays, as it always has and will continue to reify inequality, as we all continue to sanctify marriage with social, economic, and political benefits, but reward single people less, regardless of the merits of either in terms of their contributions to society.
The main merit of marrieds in this system is that they freely offer and provide continued means of reproduction in the form of children who become more cogs in the machine, and they are required to take care of the upcoming cogs at their own expense, not at the state's expense, which will bitch and scream at welfare MOTHERS every time it has to care for another "bastard", a term that would not exist if children were the responsibility of the community AND the family, rather than just individual families (or abandoned parents); whereas, unconsciously, at least, there is the perception of no reproduction among gays, so they will produce fewer cogs for the machine.
The irony and profound contradiction is that the system seeks often to control and repress gays from becoming parents (and also from becoming married), even though they could just as readily adopt (or find surrogates) for children when they wanted them IF NOT FOR their repression by capitalism, which manages to profiteer off gay marginalization, exploiting gays and infertile heterosexual couples by charging shitloads of money to make kids. Additionally, there is intense profiteering off gays paying lawyers buttloads of money to have kids and marry, while avoiding all this by sanctifying gay marriage just as much as we sanctify straight marriage would benefit the system MORE so married gays could freely make more cogs for the damned machine.
So whether or not you support capitalism or socialism, the denial of gay marriage is irrational, and it's just plain bad economics. And in terms of human rights, it's just plain wrong.
Whether or not marriage is the best basis for societies to function is entirely debatable, considering the fucking mess our culture and economy is in now.
Long live greed and fucking binaries of hetero-normativity and capitalistic "choice."
Contradictions and Paradoxical ideals unite!
I am a big supporter of gay rights and the right to marriage for all people who want it, but at the same time, I am critical of constantly reififying hetero-normativity.
I think it makes people feel that I am anti-gay AND anti-straight, although for MYSELf, on my personal social and political level, I am anti-marriage.
But I am neither anti-gay, nor anti-straight.
I just wish there was equal support of non-marriage and non-traditional ideals about community responsibility toward all and one another, without it having to be sanctified within the confines of marriage.
How about sanctifying independence and care-taking of the elderly and neglected as something we all should and could be "married" to? In our current economic and family system, eldercare has become commodified in the development of further segregation of the elderly into old folks' homes and retirement communities, so that marriage and family ties become increasingly irrelevant, except in terms of the almighty dollar needed to pay for that segregational system.
There are so many different kinds of life and lifestyle and ways and measures of commitment, but the governments tend to reward hetero-normativity over all others and this is unfair to everyone else - the elderly, the disabled, the un-marriageable, the ones who do not want to marry, the ones too young to marry, the widowed, on and on and on.
Offering sympathy to people who are single is not as useful as offering friendship and support and recognizing their legitimacy in the system with the same kinds of tax breaks and social support as the married (or widowed). It's not as if singlehood in and of itself is a disability, but its perception among the general public often renders it so.
Rewarding single people with sympathy and unequal socio-economic status is just as wrong as denying marriage rights to anyone.
The irony of gays needing and demanding marriage rights - something I wholly support -- is that in so doing we demand the continued reification of hetero-normativity at the expense of other-normativity.
It is both a disturbing paradox and perhaps a good joke on society.
Dolly Parton said recently in an interview when asked about her feelings in the matter, something like,"Well, I think they should be allowed to be just as miserable as the rest of us," as if the rest of us were all married (and miserable).
Of course, it was hilarious, and I greatly appreciate the levity of her response, and of course her desire to support gay rights, but again we have the irony that being able to marry affords more equality (and it does), because of the enhancement of individual positionality in society, whereby marriage as an institution affords social, political and economic advantages - greater positionality, and it does so most particularly for white males.
This arrangement is quite likely one of the most unfair aspects of human existence, and ought to be ended. It is particularly an unequal arrangement for women who are dependent on the system and the arrangement, and who usually make much less money than their (usually male) partners, and who often are dependent on abusive mates (talking about ALL society, not just ours). And THAT, my friends is not a partnership.
Perhaps one of the reasons so many fundamentalists have trouble with gay marriage is in how it threatens the capitalist system (on which contemporary churches depend) because it threatens to equalize some of these unequal power relations - at least for gay males, and perhaps for gay married women, but because marriage functions to traditionally maintain unequal power relations between opposite sexes, and to provide care for future cogs in the machine at individuals's expense, rather than at the states' expense, it may also serve to maintain unequal power relations among and between straights and gays, as it always has and will continue to reify inequality, as we all continue to sanctify marriage with social, economic, and political benefits, but reward single people less, regardless of the merits of either in terms of their contributions to society.
The main merit of marrieds in this system is that they freely offer and provide continued means of reproduction in the form of children who become more cogs in the machine, and they are required to take care of the upcoming cogs at their own expense, not at the state's expense, which will bitch and scream at welfare MOTHERS every time it has to care for another "bastard", a term that would not exist if children were the responsibility of the community AND the family, rather than just individual families (or abandoned parents); whereas, unconsciously, at least, there is the perception of no reproduction among gays, so they will produce fewer cogs for the machine.
The irony and profound contradiction is that the system seeks often to control and repress gays from becoming parents (and also from becoming married), even though they could just as readily adopt (or find surrogates) for children when they wanted them IF NOT FOR their repression by capitalism, which manages to profiteer off gay marginalization, exploiting gays and infertile heterosexual couples by charging shitloads of money to make kids. Additionally, there is intense profiteering off gays paying lawyers buttloads of money to have kids and marry, while avoiding all this by sanctifying gay marriage just as much as we sanctify straight marriage would benefit the system MORE so married gays could freely make more cogs for the damned machine.
So whether or not you support capitalism or socialism, the denial of gay marriage is irrational, and it's just plain bad economics. And in terms of human rights, it's just plain wrong.
Whether or not marriage is the best basis for societies to function is entirely debatable, considering the fucking mess our culture and economy is in now.
Long live greed and fucking binaries of hetero-normativity and capitalistic "choice."
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