silkidelic

At Valentine’s Day, I mostly think about friends and community, especially queer community, and how our obsession with cis-hetero monogamous romantic love as the be-all and end-all human relationship is harming people with loneliness and disconnection.

Obviously right now, there’s a much larger direct harm at work in the world, but it’s interconnected. 

I keep hearing “progressive” people slyly justify a genocide by saying the culture of Palestinians is not supportive of LGBTQ+ people and women. I expect to hear this as a gotcha from right-wing people, but it’s more insidious and dangerous when it comes from love-and-light liberals in the Berkshires.

This talking point is nothing more than an attempt to justify torture and slaughter. Again. Or continuously, since before I can remember. It’s xenophobic. It’s Islamophobic. When you point this out, the response is often, “What about Jewish people?” Yes, what about Jewish people too? We can care about both and all. Ending a cycle of violence is better for all.

My liberation as a queer person is connected to the liberation of Palestinian people no matter what. Not to colonization, starvation, and murder.

But tying our “freedom” to others’ murder is a diseased idea that quickly spreads. It’s the idea that we have every right to bully anyone into thinking a specific way. We’re the heroes exporting democracy (through hellish violence). 

Not only is that a smokescreen for other motives, it has the opposite effect in the long run. 

I don’t want to be OK with the systematic slaughter of innocents, as long as the media tells me that it vaguely supports my rights as a queer white middle-class American person. 

Is that what it takes to be free? 

Then why are none of us free yet? 

Haven’t we been at this strategy a while?

None of this violence has anything to do with the humanity we all want. It’s power, power, power.

As Americans, we’ve deluded ourselves that because we gab about democracy, we have a right to act like fascists. And as queer people, we’re supposed to be grateful the patriarchy is protecting us and shut the hell up.

Meanwhile, LGBTQ+ rights in our own white-picket-fence backyard are being eviscerated. Women’s rights have taken a huge step back in the US. Trans people are in direct danger and are dying every day. That’s because of our own country’s deep issues with white Christian saviorism, which is the viewpoint I hear when someone says, “But they don’t have rights for women over there.” Clearly we don’t have an answer yet either. 

Full democracy doesn’t exist if the government holds a weapon to its constituents’ heads, or warps their minds with fairy tales about knights in shining armor creating justice in the world. 

The idea that we’re exporting democracy through violence, and not just hoarding resources and power, is American propaganda that I’ve been confused and frightened by since I was a kid watching post-9/11 coverage. 

I’m no longer the lone person at school who says that it’s illogical and gross. Plenty of other people have said this before me, so I’m just adding my voice to the chorus. It’s clear that a lot of Americans still think we are in a perpetual just war against evildoers and not complicit in committing ethnic cleansing of regular people.

If my post is upsetting you but you can see my point: it’s never too late to change your mindset and counteract this harmful idea.