Boycotting the Stonewall movie

[marnanel]

Homophobia seems to me as if the straight people are crammed into a small and dimly-lit circular compound, holding on to all the power and hating the queer people outside full of colours and sunshine. Most of us want to break the wall down, stop the hatred, let the power flood out and the colours flood in. But some say the answer is for everyone outside to run away from the sunshine and climb into the courtyard too.

For years before the Stonewall riots, queer people had held peaceful protests asking to be respected in the same way that straight people are respected. Nobody listened. Then the riot happened, queer people fought back, not assimilated and not ashamed. And the wall began to break.

But the wall-climbers haven’t gone away. We’ve often seen LGBT associations forget trans folk in their hurry to climb over the wall into respectability. And this film is selling a lie. The rioters weren’t the acceptable face of gay culture. They weren’t even trying to be.

They lived on the outside.

So do we.

Comments

[ofearthandstars]

Not only transfolk, but POC, and drag queens (who have also been actively kicked out of otherwise queer-friendly spaces lately). It still stands that the only acceptable face of gayness is the white, cis-gendered version. *sigh*

[brainwane]

This is a useful analogy and thank you for sharing it!

[marnanel]

Thank you! I got the idea from medieval philosophy, oddly enough-- they called it apophasis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology . When I learned about that I realised it was a similar idea to "othering", but with the infinity on the *outside*. I don't know whether anyone else has made this synthesis-- I should probably write more about it.

[treeowl]

I'm missing the connection. Could you help me understand?