Does LGBTQ Make You Feel Unheard?

Like tens of millions of other right-thinking Americans, I was greatly heartened by the Supreme Court’s recent decision regarding workplace discrimination against the LGBTQ folk. But I remain bewitched, bothered, and bewildered about what the acronym means. I’m fine up to and including T, but what’s with the Q? One school of thought is that it stands for questioning, while another holds that it stands for queer. Doesn’t B, for bisexual, implicitly welcome those not entirely sure about their eroticism? And don’t those in the queer camp feel adequately acknowledged by L and G?

 If we’re going to stick a Q at the end for homosexuals who wish to express that “queer”, traditionally a vicious pejorative, doesn’t ruffle their feathers even a little — that is, if we’re going to take pains to accommodate both defiant gays and lesbians whose credo is Hit me with your best shot, homophobe and more demure gays and lesbians whose credo is I would much prefer that you don’t use that ugly word in my hearing — shouldn’t we ensure that other subgroups be recognized?

How about LGBTQTwBe, which would acknowledge the gay male subsets twink and bear? But let’s not short-sheet their female counterparts. LGBTQTwBeBuF would ensure that butch and femme lesbians felt, you know, unexcluded?

Too cumbersome, you say? Too reminiscent of high school chemistry? Well, fair enough. But I continue to believe that the maddeningly (and, if you're in the questioning camp, appropriately) ambiguous Q’s got to go. How about, if we’re acknowledging and validating erotic minorities, we replace the Q with K, for kinky? The problem being that Ks are exactly the opposite of (questioning)  Qs, in the sense that we have a very clear sense of what makes us hard or wet. Fetishists, in fact, don’t get fully turned on absent a particular inanimate object, like a high-heeled shoe.

Once added to the fold, it’s entirely conceivable that K people will want to be seen as non-monolithic, in the same way that gays and lesbians who are just fine with “queer” insist on being acknowledged as distinct from the fainter-hearted. This would lead to such subsets as Bo, for bondage, and F, for fetishists. LGBTKBoF, you see. And how long would it be before various different sorts of fetishists started clamoring for, for instance, LGBTKFRhGb, with Rh standing for red hair (the musician Richard Thompson admits to a red hair fetish in his famous song 1952 “Vincent Black Lightning”) and Gb for garter belts?  

Just try to tell me you wouldn’t enjoy hearing a television news anchor, on a day when the Supreme Court has done the right thing again, say, for instance, “Good news for the LGBTQTwBeBuFKFRhGb today…” Just try!

My Moral Integrity As a Human Being Is Called Into Question

Several weeks ago, not too long after the ghastly video of George Floyd’s virtual execution, another video appeared on line. It had been shot by one of a quartet of young black entrepreneurs being hassled by a white venture capitalist, Tom Austin, who wondered if they were genuinely entitled, by virtue of having leased offices in a building in Minneapolis, to use of the building’s apparently posh gym.

For all I know, Tom Austin might secretly be the Grand Wizard of the Upper Midwest Ku Klux Klan, the most virulent white supremacist in all of America.

And he may not be.

From the video, it’s impossible to know whether he would have challenged four unfamiliar white guys trying to get into the gym in exactly the same way that he challenged the young black men. But in the eyes of at least a few people, I betrayed myself as Mr. White Privilege by pointing that out. What I was apparently meant to do was reflexively conclude that Austin was indeed a racist (one of those with whom I tussled on the social media asserted that his racism was obvious), and go into a frenzy of self-flagellation because Austin and I are roughly the same colour.

No sale, I’m afraid. I’m not exactly a stranger to self-flagellation, but I think I’ll continue to do self-flagellate because of awful things I’ve done personally, and not awful things others of comparable pigmentation have done.

One of the key features of fascism is the suppression of dissent. There’s a wonderful essay by the excellent Andrew Sullivan in New York magazine about how fascistic some “woke” thinking can be. “Question any significant part of [the argument that…individual liberty, religious freedom, limited government, and the equality of all human beings have always always been  falsehood to cover for and justify racism],” he observes — quite accurately, I think — “and your moral integrity as a human being is called into question. There is little or no liberal space in this revolutionary movement for genuine, respectful disagreement, regardless of one’s identity, or even open-minded exploration. In fact, there is an increasingly ferocious campaign to quell dissent, to chill debate, to purge those who ask questions, and to ruin people for their refusal to swallow this reductionist ideology whole.

“In this manic, Manichean world you’re not even given the space to say nothing. “White Silence = Violence” is a slogan chanted and displayed in every one of these marches. It’s very reminiscent of totalitarian states where you have to compete to broadcast your fealty to the cause. In these past two weeks, if you didn’t put up on Instagram or Facebook some kind of slogan or symbol displaying your wokeness, you were instantly suspect. 

Tom Austin, by the way, has said that he was having a rotten day, and “was oblivious to the perception that my actions could be perceived as racist." He nonetheless offered to wear a hair shirt, and to make "[a] public apology for stupid behavior (but not for racism), but nobody has responded and most of the public seems [unable] to care less”.

If you ask me, that sucks. And if, in response to my saying so, you come back with, “Yeah, well, it doesn’t suck as bad as George Floyd having been murdered in broad daylight,” I’ll spit in your eye, not because I think what happened to Austin was a billionth as shameful, but because you’re stifling dissent.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President!

Yesterday was President Trump’s 74^th birthday, though, looking at him — noting how spry and vigorous and, yes, sexy he is — few would imagine him to be even two-thirds that age. As every other day, he got up at a few minutes after five in the morning and, with the help of his Marine valet personal trainer Emilio, read briefings for half an hour while working out on the Sportstech RSX600 rowing machine in the presidential gym in the Northeast Wing. Then it was over to the Sportstech SX500 exercycle for 20 minutes and more briefings, and finally onto the Sportstech LCX800 crosstrainer for 28 minutes. (Usually on Sundays, he’ll do “only” 20 minutes, but he prides himself on reading every syllable of the briefings his staff prepares for him every day, and wanted to finish the white paper on the economic re-opening Dr.Anthony Fauci’s team of epidemiologists had put together for him.) After a 20-minute game of half-court basketball with several former NBA reserve players (the President scored only four points, considerably below his average of 7.2, but had  three assists and the steal that led to his team to its last-minute victory.

After a rejuvenating hot shower and a few minutes with White House hairdresser Mr. Kenneth, the President enjoyed a vegan burrito, washed down with a jackfruit smoothie, while reading the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Sydney Morning Herald, the president hurried out to the White House to continue instructing son Bannon, whose name I might be misspelling, in the manly art of fly fishing. (Over the course of his presidency, Mr. Trump has also found time to teach the lad how to hunt, sail, whittle, and replace the alternator in a wide range of GM, Ford, and Chrysler sedans, and throw a treacherous curveball). Then it was up to the First Lady’s quarters, where the first couple enjoyed tantric lovemaking until 8:45, when President Trump has his daily yoga session. En route down to presidential limousine the U.S.S American Hegemony, he accepted on his iPhone the birthday felicitations of a succession of world leaders, artists, and intellectuals, ranging from “Bibi” Netanyahu to former rock girlfriend-to-the-superstars Bebe Buell, to Burma’s Aug San Suu Kyi.

Until mid-afternoon, the president, disguised as Galician potato farmer Ana Agramonte Suarez, delivered Meals on Wheels and read from the New Testament to shut-ins in the District of Columbia’s impoverished Ward 8. He washed the feet of lepers at the little-known Our Lady of Unassailable Sanctimony leper colony in Cascades, Virginia, and then, back at the White House, meditated on the West Lawn with his friend Mike Love, formerly of the Beach Boys, and longtime operative Corey Lewandowski.

You might imagine that the president would have devoted at least an hour or two to opening some of the thousands of gifts world leaders and ordinary Americans had sent him, but he left that pleasant task to new press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, she of the whimsically spelled first name, and longtime apologista Kellyanne Conway, who is said to loathe Kayleigh for being younger and prettier than she, and not yet as widely loathed.

At half past four, the United States Marine Corps Mixed Chorus, Ms. Sha’Neeka Higgup’s third grade class from Emmett Till School in Ward 8, and the choir of the Exalt Him Daily African Methodist church of Baltimore squeezed into the Oval Office to sing both the familiar white folks'  “Happy Birthday”, for public performance of which Warner/Chappell Music is no longer able to collect licensing royalties, and Stevie Wonder’s rather hipper song of the same title. The president pronounced the performance “extraordinarily moving,” and asserted that he would never forget it, which, given that he was in the process of turning 74, may very well be true.

After an hour of overturning environmental regulations designed by previous administrations to thwart American economic growth, and to ensure the ongoing drinkability of its water, the president retired with the First Lady and son Bannon to the White House cinema to enjoy Ingmar Bergman’s “Smiles Of A Summer Night” together though there is no trace of Jean-Claude van Damme in it.

Happy birthday, Mr. President!