The internet has given global voice to people that would otherwise only be able to bounce those ideas back and forth across the barbershop floor
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Because the bigots seemed to have found ways to get in positions of influence to spread their toxic ideologies and get laws passed that targets their 'enemies'. Even when the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that same-sex marriage is legal, I knew in the back of my mind that things are far from over. Because after that? Like one month later, Kim Davis denied legalizing a same-sex marriage.
And things seemed to have worsened thanks to the existence of people like DeSantis, Trump and any GOP still somehow breathing that wants to antagonize everyone over sexual orientation. Because in their psychotic structure, they want America to be purely Christian, purely White and probably Blonde, Blue-eyed and fair skinned.
Even in 2004, George W Bush back then on February was quoted to have said: "Our Nation must defend the sanctity of marriage". What he means is, to protect the sanctity of STRAIGHT marriage because he seems to have it in his head that marriage is the property of the church and all that shit.
Doesn't that sound exactly like the kind of people a certain country named Germany aspired to be like back in WWII? Ironic.
Why are people so interested in defining themselves along sexual identity and orientation in relatively recent western culture?
Why now? Why is it so different from most of human existence?
Because we are no longer facing famine. The Green Revolution has made our relationship with food so secure we no longer define ourselves in relation to it.
Throughout most of history people are farmers or ranchers or shepherds or bakers or butchers or millers.
So, we climb the Biological hierarchy of needs looking for our next characteristic that needs fulfillment.
not even. 1950s we had this idealized version that everyone was heterosexual, owned a home and had strict gender roles.
That shit is now all blown apart. And for most folks the complexities of it all are beyond understanding.
And it cuts both ways. I don't care about other people's genders and identities, but boy they care about mine. Gotten plenty of sexist slurs from queer/trans people based on my gender and lots of shitty assumptions. I'm bi, but I 'present' as a heterosexual dudebro, and it makes non-gender conforming people angry at me for some reason, also many insecure straight men and women. Only people who don't seem to care are people who are bi, or secure in their sexuality. Way too many people feel the need to do that though.
I'd just like to say that I'm not defining myself at any point, I'm describing myself.
A trivial point, maybe, but there's still plenty of bigots around and the ones around me use phrases like "defining yourself" to minimize and erase lbgtq+ people's experiences.
Identifying might be the best word to use, given the psychology literature all tends to use that, but thank you for your critique.
Because gay rights have more and more support so they decided to pick an easier target.
They moved against the gays when abortion stopped being such a wedge issue, which itself replaced school integration to turn out the bigot vote.
Michael Parenti addresses this well:
Class gets its significance from the process of surplus extraction. The relationship between worker and owner is essentially an exploitative one, involving the constant transfer of wealth from those who labor (but do not own) to those who own (but do not labor). This is how some people get richer and richer without working, or with doing only a fraction of the work that enriches them, while others toil hard for an entire lifetime only to end up with little or nothing.
Those who occupy the higher circles of wealth and power are keenly aware of their own interests. While they sometimes seriously differ among themselves on specific issues, they exhibit an impressive cohesion when it comes to protecting the existing class system of corporate power, property, privilege, and profit. At the same time, they are careful to discourage public awareness of the class power they wield. They avoid the C-word, especially when used in reference to themselves as in "owning class;' "upper class;' or "moneyed class." And they like it least when the politically active elements of the owning class are called the "ruling class." The ruling class in this country has labored long to leave the impression that it does not exist, does not own the lion's share of just about everything, and does not exercise a vastly disproportionate influence over the affairs of the nation. Such precautions are themselves symptomatic of an acute awareness of class interests.
Yet ruling class members are far from invisible. Their command positions in the corporate world, their control of international finance and industry, their ownership of the major media, and their influence over state power and the political process are all matters of public record- to some limited degree. While it would seem a simple matter to apply the C-word to those who occupy the highest reaches of the C-world, the dominant class ideology dismisses any such application as a lapse into "conspiracy theory." The C-word is also taboo when applied to the millions who do the work of society for what are usually niggardly wages, the "working class," a term that is dismissed as Marxist jargon. And it is verboten to refer to the "exploiting and exploited classes;' for then one is talking about the very essence of the capitalist system, the accumulation of corporate wealth at the expense of labor.
The C-word is an acceptable term when prefaced with the soothing adjective "middle." Every politician, publicist, and pundit will rhapsodize about the middle class, the object of their heartfelt concern. The much admired and much pitied middle class is supposedly inhabited by virtuously self-sufficient people, free from the presumed profligacy of those who inhabit the lower rungs of society. By including almost everyone, "middle class" serves as a conveniently amorphous concept that masks the exploitation and inequality of social relations. It is a class label that denies the actuality of class power.
The C-word is allowable when applied to one other group, the desperate lot who live on the lowest rung of society, who get the least of everything while being regularly blamed for their own victimization: the "underclass." References to the presumed deficiencies of underclass people are acceptable because they reinforce the existing social hierarchy and justify the unjust treatment accorded society's most vulnerable elements.
Seizing upon anything but class, leftists today have developed an array of identity groups centering around ethnic, gender, cultural, and life-style issues. These groups treat their respective grievances as something apart from class struggle, and have almost nothing to say about the increasingly harsh politico-economic class injustices perpetrated against us all. Identity groups tend to emphasize their distinctiveness and their separateness from each other, thus fractionalizing the protest movement. To be sure, they have important contributions to make around issues that are particularly salient to them, issues often overlooked by others. But they also should not downplay their common interests, nor overlook the common class enemy they face. The forces that impose class injustice and economic exploitation are the same ones that propagate racism, sexism, militarism, ecological devastation, homophobia, xenophobia, and the like.
Identity politics resonates with brain dead public.
We got the government we deserve.
It's finally reaching such widespread acceptance that 1. Actual bigots are getting concerned they can't be bad people anymore and 2. Assorted people are getting tired of the discourse.