Queer Watch: 'Breeder' is NOT a nice term. Don't use it carelessly.

July 27, 2010

Queer Watch: 'Breeder' is NOT a nice term. Don't use it carelessly.

 I HATE STRAIGHTS

(from QUEERS READ THIS A leaflet distributed at pride march in NY
Published anonymously by Queers, June, 1990)

I have friends.  Some of them are straight.
Year after year, I see my straight friends.  I want to
see them, to see how they are doing, to add newness to our
long and complicated histories, to experience some
continuity. Year after year I continue to realize that the
facts of my life are irrelevant to them and that I am only
half listened to, that I am an appendage to the doings of a
greater world, a world of power and privilege, of the laws
of installation, a world of exclusion.  "That's not true,"
argue my straight friends.  There is the one certainty in
the politics of power: those left out of it beg for
inclusion, while the insiders claim that they already are.
Men do it to women, whites do it to blacks, and everyone
does it to queers.  The main dividing line, both conscious
and unconscious, is procreation ...  and that magic word ---
Family.  Frequently, the ones we are born into disown us
when they find out who we really are, and to make matters
worse, we are prevented from having our own.  We are
punished, insulted, cut off, and treated like seditionaries
in terms of child rearing, both damned if we try and damned
if we abstain.  It's as if the propagation of the species is
such a fragile directive that without enforcing it as if it
were an agenda, humankind would melt back into the primeval
ooze.
   I hate having to convice straight people that lesbians
and gays live in a war zone, that we're surrounded by bomb
blasts only we seem to hear, that our bodies and souls are
heaped high, dead from fright or bashed or raped, dying of
grief or disease, stripped of our personhood.
   I hate straight people who can't listen to queer anger
without saying "hey, all straight people aren't like that.
I'm straight too, you know," as if their egos don't get
enough stroking or protection in this arrogant, heterosexist
world. Why must we take care of them, in the midst of our
just anger brought on by their fucked up society?!  Why add
the reassurance of "Of course, I don't mean you.  You don't
act that way." Let them figure out for themselves whether
they deserve to be included in our anger.
   But of course that would mean listening to our anger,
which they almost never do.  They deflect it, by saying "I'm
not like that" or "Now look who's generalizing" or "You'll
catch more flies with honey ... " or "If you focus on the
negative you just give out more power" or "you're not the
only one in the world who's suffering."  They say "Don't
yell at me, I'm on your side" or "I think you're
overreacting" or "BOY, YOU'RE BITTER."
   They've taught us that good queers don't get mad.
They've taught us so well that we not only hide our anger
from them, we hide it from each other.  WE EVEN HIDE IT FROM
OURSELVES. We hide it with substance abuse and suicide and
overarhcieving in the hope of proving our worth.  They bash
us and stab us and shoot us and bomb us in ever increasing
numbers and still we freak out when angry queers carry
banners or signs that say BASH BACK.  For the last decade
they let us die in droves and still we thank President Bush
for planting a fucking tree, applaud him for likening PWAs
to car accident victims who refuse to wear seatbelts.  LET
YOURSELF BE ANGRY.  Let yourself be angry that the price of
our visibility is the constant threat of violence, anti-
queer violence to which practically every segment of this
society contributes.  Let yourself feel angry that THERE IS
NO PLACE IN THIS COUNTRY WHERE WE ARE SAFE, no place where
we are not targeted for hatred and attack, the self-hatred,
the suicide --- of the closet.  The next time some straight
person comes down on you for being angry, tell them that
until things change, you don't need any more evidence that
the world turns at your expense.  You don't need to see only
hetero couple grocery shopping on your TV ...  You don't
want any more baby pictures shoved in your face until you
can have or keep your own.  No more weddings, showers,
anniversaries, please, unless they are our own brothers and
sisters celebrating. And tell them not to dismiss you by
saying "You have rights," "You have privileges," "You're
overreacting," or "You have a victim's mentality."  Tell
them "GO AWAY FROM ME, until YOU can change."  Go away and
try on a world without the brave, strong queers that are its
backbone, that are its guts and brains and souls.  Go tell
them go away until they have spent a month walking hand in
hand in public with someone of the same sex.  After they
survive that, then you'll hear what they have to say about
queer anger.
Otherwise, tell them to shut up and listen."