Just some thoughts, but more than just a random thought!

[Sappho]

Harvey Milk

I couldn't bring myself to go see the movie made about the man. I couldn't stand to visit that time again. Finally I decided it was time to watch. Lucky for me, instead of making me sad, it made me wonder about the spirit of Harvey Milk. What the hell has happened to the activists of 2009? Where are the voices? There is no one like him today with the courage to shout about LGBT rights. Who brings the community to it's feet? What one person can stand up, call up the crowds, light the fire? There is no LGBT activist/politician with the guts of Harvey Milk.

The wimpy queers today are busy blending in. Too busy acting like heterosexuals. Too easy to surrender to acting in acceptable ways and not fighting the fight. Taking the newly aquired sense of tollerance for granted and as a sign of acceptance. Unaware of what it was like to witness the Stonewall Riots, the first March on Washington for LGBT Rights. Never attending the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. Not able to understand the significance of those events or the essence of womyn only space or what it took to accomplish that. They don't know Harvey Milk. They don't feel the sense of community. They've been divided and conquered, lulled into the idea that it's better. Most are riding on the backs of the few that are still inspired by the beat that drove Harvey Milk.

We need a Harvey Milk. Thankfully he lived to leave a legacy that a movie could be based on. Without Harvey Milk no one would know our history. There would not have been a person to showcase. It would all be mere memories of the activist who lived in the time. Activist that are passing with time. So what Harvey Milk accomplished while he was alive was monumental, the more important work may be in the story of his life and assination that comes now to inspire the ones with whom the work has been left to, to continue with. I hope they feel the passion.

[spinetingler]

<shakes fist> you kids today!

[Keef Riffers]

Sappho!
Have you ever read any Camille Paglia? I think you would like her. She is some type of art historian/social philosopher. You guys would agree on a lot and you would probably get a pretty big kick out of her.

[Sappho]

Sappho!
Have you ever read any Camille Paglia? I think you would like her. She is some type of art historian/social philosopher. You guys would agree on a lot and you would probably get a pretty big kick out of her.

Oh yeah! One of my radical sheros! If you like Camille, you'll love Mary Daly and my one time mentor and guru, Sonia Johnson!

Raincrow gave me a copy of New Yorker, March 2nd 2009. Article by Ariel Levy titled Lesbian Nation. Check it out!

Now that I've slipped back and fallen off the edge to the 1970's, I must go put on some womin's music (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Records) and call my pals from the day!

[gypsy]

yeah when i saw milk one thing i thought was, man, if he was still around -- or someone enough like him -- prop. 8 never would have passed. but that kind of fearless, galvanizing voice doesn't come around all that often.

i'm sure it's true younger gays and lesbians take a lot of things for granted (although not that much, what with still being legally discriminated against and all), in the same way younger women don't necessarily appreciate feminism even though they benefit hugely from it. but otoh, isn't that sort of the point? that people should be able to take freedoms and rights for granted? i don't know that younger gays and lesbians have been divided and conquered so much as (to some degree) liberated to not have to think of their sexuality primarily as a political or social cause. (at least, relative to maybe a generation ago.) it is progress, of a sort.

[Hildegard]

Harvey Milk was a one-of-a-kind leader, that's for sure. But the only people who were out and proud before his day (as you have oft told) were people who didn't mind living in the margins of society if it was what they had to do to be sexually free. The people who preferred living in the safer zones of society had to closet themselves or deny themselves altogether. What Milk and activists who followed him did was pave the way for society becoming safer for the gay and bisexual people who wanted to live relatively normal lives, even mundane lives, and be with the partners they wanted. You complain about gays "acting like heterosexuals," but guess what? Most people want the house, the kids, the schools, the neighbors, the comforts of ordinary living, whether they are gay or straight. Being gay was once pushed to margins of a world in which only seekers of bohemian exclusion were able to get away with it, to be curiosities like freaks in a sideshow, and that's only when they were being tolerated. Harvey Milk ushered in the age when all that changed.

You can't have it both ways. I don't think you're saying this, but it sounds kind of like, Only the really cool gay people should come out? Not very many women want to live in an all-female commune growing their own crops and practicing Hinduism and hanging out at all-women music festivals and poring over issues of On Our Backs. Plenty still do. But the more gay people are encouraged to come out and be proud, the more average and unexciting they are going to be, because that's people. That's what Milk fought for, IMHO. Everybody is invited to the freedom party. It's the whole point of being free.

[gypsy]

right, yeah, i think there is this sort of wistful sense of outlaw mythology as part of gay identity -- which totally makes sense (the new yorker article sappho mentioned, which i really enjoyed, is chock full of it). there's a kind of freedom that comes with marginalization, the freedom to not fit in, to challenge society in all its failings and constraints. and i understand the exhilaration of that and the sense that something real is being lost in normalization -- but at the same time, normalization is an inevitable consequence of the move toward equality.

the good news is, there are a lot of different ways to be an outlaw. it's not gonna everybody's choice, by a long shot, but just because gays get normalized doesn't mean all gays have to be normal.

[gypsy]

and of course harvey milk was a great force for normalization. he wanted to work inside the system, not tear it down.

[Hildegard]

And by the way, while I have mixed feelings about Camille Paglia*, I will say one issue on which she and I see totally eye to eye is human sexuality, which she has repeatedly, over and over, propounded as a complex system of orientations. (On a personal level, she has always preferred the society of gay men, and has always had an uneasy and sometimes hostile rapport with lesbian/feminist groups. Her partner of many, many years is bisexual, and they live in a suburb and have a little kid.)

*I admire her relentless advocacy of absolute sexual freedom, including homosexuality as both an orientation and a choice (which is what any gay relationship is for a bisexual person: exercising an option).

*I also like her taste in art and literature.

*I think she should lay off politics, foreign policy, and music, however. She doesn't know wtf she's talking about on those issues.

*I have no opinion of her strident attacks on post-structuralism, however, and will leave it to toby to slam her intellectual weaknesses.

[toby]

*I have no opinion of her strident attacks on post-structuralism, however, and will leave it to toby to slam her intellectual weaknesses.

The problem is: They aren't that strident.

I think your criticism of Foucault probably applies to her more than the intended: She really is just up to justifications for getting laid.

(Anyhow, I'm a Rorty man.)