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innuendostudios · 5 years

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The newest installment of The Alt-Right Playbook - Endnote 4: How the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationship - is a little different. This installment was presented live at Solidarity Lowell, and includes a bonus Q&A section. This video expands on the ideas put forth in How to Radicalize a Normie.

If you would like more videos like this to come out, please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

He is intriguing, yet unpredictable. He demands unconditional loyalty. He seems to have an intuitive understanding of what people want to hear but no actual empathy; he treats others as simply bodies or objects. And he’s surrounded by a network of subordinates but the personnel is always changing.

Does it sound like I’m describing The President? Because these are, according to Alexandra Stein, qualities of a cult leader.

Hi. My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, the flagship endeavor of which is currently The Alt-Right Playbook, a series on the political and rhetorical strategies the Alt-Right uses to legitimize itself and gain power. And, if that sounds interesting to you, and you haven’t already, please like share and subscribe.

The most recent episode of The Alt-Right Playbook is about how people get recruited into these largely online reactionary communities like the Alt-Right, a subject which, as it turns out, is real fuckin’ hard to research.

What I want to talk about with you today is how I go about studying a population that is incredibly hostile towards being studied. It involves finding the bits and pieces of the Alt-Right that we do have data on - the pockets of good research, the outsider observations, the stories of lived experience - as well as looking at older movements the Alt-Right grew out of, that have been extensively researched, and spotting the ways the Alt-Right is continuous with them, and trying to extrapolate how those structures might recreate themselves in the social media age.

So it’s… a lot. And, in the process of researching, I found a wealth of interesting perspectives that, by focusing the video on recruitment specifically, I barely dipped a toe in. All that stuff is what I’d like to get into with you today. But I’m trying to thread a needle here: you don’t need to have seen my video, How to Radicalize a Normie, to follow this talk, but, if you have seen it already, I will try not to be redundant. This talk is one part making my case for why I think the conclusions in that video are correct, one part repository for all the stuff I couldn’t get into, and one part how I’ve come to look at the Alt-Right as a result of this research, including some pet theories I wouldn’t feel right claiming as truth without further research, but I do think are on the right track.

This talk is called Isolation, Engulfment, and Pain: How the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationship. We’re going to cover a lot of ground, from information processing to emotional development, but we’re necessarily also going to cover racism and violence and abuse dynamics. So this is an introduction and a content warning: if some of these subjects are particularly charged for you, no offense will be taken if you at any point leave the room. I have to research this stuff for a living, and it is rough, and sometimes I have to step away. We don’t judge here.

Now. Requisite dash of self-deprecation: don’t give me too much credit for all this. I am proud of the work I do and I think I’m genuinely good at it, but much of this video was compiling the work of others. Besides research I had already done and my own observations, the video had 27 sources: three books, five research papers, six articles, one leaked document, three testimonials, four videos, four pages of statistics, and one Twitter joke. I also spoke to four professional researchers who study right-wing extremism and one former Alt-Righter.

Without all their hard work, I would have nothing to compile.

OK? Let’s begin.

We’re gonna center on those three main texts: Alt-America by David Neiwert, a history of the Alt-Right’s origins; Healing from Hate by Michael Kimmel, about how young men get into (and out of) extremist groups, be they neo-Nazi or jihadist; and Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein, about how people are courted by and kept inside cults and totalitarian regimes.

I began with Kimmel. The premise of Healing from Hate is that extremist groups tend to be between 75 and 90% male, and that you cannot understand radical conservatism without looking at it through the lens of toxic masculinity. Which makes it all the more disappointing that Kimmel has been accused by multiple women of bullying and harassment. I found the book incredibly useful, and we’re still going to talk about it, I just need to caveat here that retweets are not endorsements. Also, if I spoil the book for you then you don’t need to buy it, give your money to someone who isn’t a creep.

Kimmel’s argument is that extremism begins with a pain peculiar to young men. He calls it “aggrieved entitlement.” I call it Durden Syndrome. You know that scene in Fight Club where Tyler Durden says, “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rockstars, but we won’t, we’re slowly learning that fact, and we are very, very pissed off”? Yeah, that. As men, the world promised us something, and the promise wasn’t kept.

Some men skew towards social progressivism when they realize this promise was never made to women, or men of color, or queer or trans or nonbinary people, and recognize the injustice of that. Some men skew towards economic leftism when they realize that every cishet white man being a millionaire rockstar movie god is mathematically impossible. But they skew towards reactionary conservatism when they feel the promise should have been kept. That’s the life they were supposed to have, and someone took it from them.

Hate groups appeal to that sense of emasculation. “You wanna feel like a Real Man? Shave off your hair, dance to hatecore, and let’s beat the crap out of someone.” Kimmel notes that the greatest indicator someone will join a hate group is a broken home: divorce, foster care, parents with addictions, physical or sexual abuse. The greater the distance between the life they were promised and the life they are living, the more enticing Real Masculinity becomes. Their fellow extremists are brothers, the leaders father figures.

The group does give them someone to blame for their lot in life - immigrants, feminists, the Jewish conspiracy - but that’s not why they join. They’re after empowerment. According to Kimmel, “Their embrace of neo-Nazi ideology is a consequence of their recruitment and indoctrination process, not its cause."

But once an Other has been identified as the locus of a hate group’s hate, new recruits are brought along when the group terrorizes that Other. Events like cross burnings and street fights are dangerous and morally fraught, and are often traumatic for a new recruit. And experiencing an emotional or physical trauma can create an intense bond with the people experiencing it with him, even though they’re the ones who brought him to the traumatic event in the first place. The creation of this bond is one of the reasons some hate groups usher new recruits out into the field as early as possible: the sooner they are emotionally invested in the community, the faster they will embrace the community’s politics.

This Othering also estranges recruits from the people they are supposed to hate, which makes it hard to stop hating them.

So there’s this concept that comes up a lot in my research called Contact Hypothesis. Contact Hypothesis argues that, the more contact you have with a different walk of life, the easier it is to tolerate it. It’s like exposure therapy. We talk about how big cities and college campuses tend to be liberal strongholds; the Right likes to claim this is because of professors and politicians poisoning your mind, but it’s really just because they’re diverse. When you share space with a lot of different kinds of people, a degree of liberalism becomes necessary just to get by. And we see that belief systems which rely on a strict orthodoxy get really cagey about members having contact with outsiders. We see this in all the groups we’re discussing today - extremists, cultists, totalitarians - but also religious fundamentalists; Mormons only wanna send their kids to Brigham Young. They are belief systems that can only be reliably maintained so long as no one gets exposed to other people with other beliefs.

So that’s some of what I took from Kimmel. Next I read Stein talking, primarily, about cults.

Stein’s window into all of this is applying the theory of Attachment Styles to what researchers calls totalism, which is any structure that subsumes a person’s entire life the way cults and totalitarian governments do. Attachment is a concept you may be familiar with if have, or have ever dated, a therapist. (I’ve done both.)

So, for a quick primer:

Imagine you’re walking in the park with a three-year-old. And the three-year-old sees a dog, and ask, “Can I pet the dog?” And you say yes, and the kid steps away from your side and reaches out. And the dog gets excited, and jumps up, and the kid gets scared and runs back to you. So you hold the kid and go, “Oh, no no no, don’t worry! They’re not gonna hurt you! They were just happy to see you!” And you take a few moments to calm the kid down, and then you ask, “Do you still want to pet the dog?” And the kid says “yes,” so they step away from you again and reach out. The dog jumps up again, but this time the kid doesn’t run away, and they pet the dog, and you, the kid, and the dog are all happy. Hooray!

This is a fundamental piece of a child’s emotional development. They take a risk, have a negative experience, and retreat to a point of comfort. Then, having received that comfort, feel bolstered enough to take a slightly greater risk. A healthy childhood is steadily venturing further and further from that point of comfort, and taking on greater risks, secure in the knowledge that safety is there when they need it. And, as an adult, they will form many interdependent points of comfort rather than relying on only one or two.

If all goes according to plan, that is Secure Attachment. But: sometimes things go wrong when the kid seeks comfort and doesn’t get enough. This may be because the adult is withholding or the kid doesn’t know how to express their needs or they’re just particularly fearful. But the kid may start seeking comfort more than seems reasonable, and be particularly averse to risk, and over-focus on the people who give them comfort, because they’re operating at a deficit. We call that Anxious Attachment. Alternately, the kid may give up on receiving comfort altogether, even though they still need it, and just go it alone, developing a distrust of other people and a fear of being vulnerable. We call that Avoidant Attachment.

Now, these styles are all formed in early childhood, but Stein focuses on a fourth kind of Attachment, one that can be formed at any age regardless of the Attachment Style you came in with. It’s what happens when the negative experience and the comfort come from the same place. We see it in children and adults who are mistreated by the people they trust. It’s called Disorganized Attachment.

According to Stein, cults foster Disorganized Attachment by being intensely unpredictable. In a cult, you may be praised for your commitment on Monday and have your commitment questioned on Tuesday, with no change in behavior. You may be assigned a romantic partner, who may, at any point, be taken away, assigned to someone else. Your children may be taken from you to be raised by a different family. You may be told the cult leader wants to sleep with you, which may make you incredibly happy or be terrifying, but you won’t be given a choice. And the rules you are expected to follow will be rewritten without warning.

This creates a kind of emotional chaos, where you can’t predict when you will be given good feelings and when you will be given bad ones. But you’re so enmeshed in the community you have noplace else to go for good feelings; hurting you just draws you in deeper, because they are also where you seek comfort. And your pain is always your fault: you wouldn’t feel so shitty if you were more committed. Trying to make sense of this causes so much confusion and anguish that you eventually just stop thinking for yourself. These are the rules now? OK. He’s not my brother anymore? OK. This is my life now? OK.

Hardly anyone would seek out such a dynamic, which is why cults present as religions, political activists, and therapy groups; things people in questioning phases of their lives are liable to seek out, and then they fall down the rabbit hole before they know what’s happening. The cult slowly consumes more and more of a recruit’s life, and tightly controls access to relationships outside the cult, because the biggest threat to a Disorganized Attachment relationship is having separate, Securely Attached points of comfort.

And at this point I said, “Hold up. You’re telling me cults recruit by offering people community and purpose in times of need, become the focal point of their entire lives, estrange them from all outside perspectives, and then cause emotional distress that paradoxically makes them more committed because they have nowhere else to go for support?”

Isn’t that exactly how Kimmel described joining a hate group?

Now, these are commonalities, not a one-to-one comparison. A cult is far more organized and rigidly controlled than a hate group. But Stein points out that this dynamic of isolation, engulfment, and pain is the same dynamic as an abusive relationship. The difference is just scale. A cult is functionally a single person having a very complex domestic abuse situation with a whole lot of people, #badpolyamory.

So if we posit a spectrum with domestic abuse on one end and cults and totalitarianism on the other, I started wondering, could we put extremist groups, like ISIS and Aryan Nations, around… here?

And, if so, where would we put the Alt-Right?

Now, I have to tread carefully here. There are reasons this talk is called “How the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationship” and not “How the Alt-Right is Like a Cult,” because the moment you say the second thing, a lot of people stop listening to you. Our conception of cults and totalitarianism is way more controlled and structured than a pack of loud, racist assholes on the internet. But we’re not talking about organizational structure, we’re talking about a relationship, an emotional dynamic Stein calls “anxious dependency,” which fosters an irrational loyalty to people who are bad for you and gets you to adopt an ideology you would have previously rejected. (I would also love to go on a rant puncturing the idea that cultists and fascists are organized, pointing out this notion is propaganda and their systems are notoriously corrupt and mismanaged, but we don’t have time; ask me about it in the Q&A if you want me to go off.)

So I started looking through what I knew, and what I could find, about the Alt-Right to see if I could spot this same pattern of isolation, engulfment, and pain online funneling people towards the Alt-Right. And I did not come up short.

Isolation? Well, the Alt-Right traffics in all the same dehumanizing narratives about their enemies as Kimmel’s hate groups - like, the worst things you can imagine a human being saying about a group of people are said every day in these forums. They often berate and harass each other for any perceived sympathy towards The Other Side. They also regularly harass people from The Other Side off of platforms, and falsely report their tweets, posts, and videos as terrorism to get them taken down. (This has happened to me, incidentally.) I found figureheads adored by the Alt-Right who expressly tell people to cut ties with liberal family members.

We talked before about Contact Hypothesis? There’s also this idea called Parasocial Contact Hypothesis. A parasocial relationship is a strong emotional connection that only goes one way, like if you really love my videos and have started thinking of me almost as a friend even though I don’t know you exist? Yeah. Parasocial relationship. They’ve been in The Discourse lately, largely thanks to my friend Shannon Strucci making a really great video about them (check it out, I make a cameo, but… clear your schedule). Parasocial Contact Hypothesis is this phenomenon where, if people form parasocial feelings for public figures or even fictional characters, and those people happen to be Black, white audience members become less racist similar to how they would if they had Black friends. Your logical brain knows that these are strangers, but your lizard brain doesn’t know the difference between empathy for a queer friend and empathy for a queer character in a video game. So of course the Alt-Right makes a big stink about queer characters in video games, and leads boycotts against “forced diversity,” because diverse media is bad for recruitment.

Engulfment? Well, I learned way too much about how the Alt-Right will overtake your entire internet life. There was a paper made the rounds last year by Rebecca Lewis charting the interconnectedness of conservative YouTube. (Reactionaries really hated this paper because it said things they didn’t like.) Lewis argues that, once you enter what she calls the Alternative Influence Network, it tends to keep you inside it. Start with some YouTuber conservatives like but who’s branded as a moderate, or even a “classic liberal.” Take someone like Dave Rubin; call Dave Rubin Alt-Right, people yell at you, I speak from experience. Well, Dave Rubin’s had Jordan Peterson on his show, so, if you watch Rubin, Peterson ends up in your recommendations. Peterson has been on the Joe Rogan show, so, you watch Peterson, Rogan ends up in your recommendations. And Rogan has interviewed Gavin McInnes, so you watch Rogan and McInnes ends up in your recommendations.

Gavin McInnes is the head of the Proud Boys, a self-described “western chauvinist” organization that’s mostly known for beating up liberals and leftists. They have ties to neo-fascist groups like Identity Evropa and neo-fascist militias like the Oath Keepers, they run security for white nationalists, and their lawyer just went on record that he identifies as a fascist. And, if you’re one of these kids who has YouTube in the background with autoplay on, and you’re watching Dave Rubin? You might be as few as 3 videos away from watching Gavin McInnes.

There’s a lot of talk these days about algorithms funneling people towards the Right, and that’s not wrong, but it’s an oversimplification. The real problem is that the Right knows how to hijack an algorithm.

I also learned about the Curation/Search Radicalization Spiral from a piece by Mike Caulfield. Caulfiend uses the horrific example of Dylann Roof. You remember him? He shot up a church in a Black neighborhood a few years ago. Roof says he was radicalized when he googled “Black on white crime” and saw the results. Now, if you search the phrase “crime statistics by demographic,” you will find fairly nonpartisan results that show most crimes are committed against members of the perpetrator’s own race, and Black people commit crimes against white people at about the same rate as any other two demographics. But that specific phrase, “Black on white crime,” is used almost exclusively by white racists, and so Roof’s first hit wasn’t a database of crime statistics, it was the Council of Conservative Citizens. Now, the CCC is an outgrowth of the White Citizens Councils of the 50’s and 60’s which rebranded in ‘85. They publish bogus statistics that paint Black people as uniquely violent. And they introduce a number of other politically-loaded phrases - like, say, “Muslim fertility rates” - that nonpartisan sites don’t use, and so, if Roof googles them as well, he gets similarly weighted results.

I have tons more examples of this stuff. I literally don’t have time to show it all. Like, have you heard of Google bombing? That’s a thing I didn’t know existed. The point is, the same way search engines tailor your results to what they think you want, once you scratch the surface of the Alt-Right they are highly adept at making it so, whenever you go online, their version of reality is all you know and all you see.

Finally, pain. This was the difficult one. Can you create a Disorganized Attachment relationship over the internet with a largely faceless and decentralized movement? I pitched the idea to one the researchers I spoke to, and he said, “That sounds very plausible, and nearly impossible to research.” See, cults and hate groups? They don’t wanna talk to researchers anymore than the Alt-Right wants to talk to me. Stein and Kimmel get their data by speaking to formers, people who’ve exited these movements and are all too happy to share how horrible they were. But the Alt-Right is still very young, and there just aren’t that many formers yet.

I found some testimonials, and they mostly back up my hypothesis, but there’s not enough that I could call them statistically significant. So I had to look where the data was.

My fellow YouTuber ContraPoints made a video last year - in my opinion, her best one - about incels (that’s “involuntary celibate,” men who can’t get laid). Incel forums tend to be deeply misogynistic and antifeminist, and have a high overlap with the Alt-Right. If you remember Elliot Rodger, he was an incel. Contra’s observation was that these forums were incredibly fatalistic: you are too ugly and women too shallow for you to ever have sex, so you should give up. She described a certain catharsis, like picking a really painful scab, in hearing other people voice your worst fears. But there was no uplift; these communities seemed to have a zero-tolerance policy for optimism. She likened it so some deeply unhealthy trans forums she used to visit, where people wallowed in their own dysphoria.

And I remembered the forums I researched five years ago in preparation for my video on GamerGate. (If you don’t know what GamerGate was, I will not rob you of your precious innocence. But, in a lot of ways, GamerGate was the trial run for what the Alt-Right has become.) These forums were full of angry guys surrounding themselves with people saying, “You’re right to be angry.” And, yeah, if everywhere else you go treats your anger as invalid, that scratches an itch. But I never saw any of them calm down. They came in angry and they came out angrier. And most didn’t have anywhere else to vent, so they all came back.

I found a paper on Alt-Right forums that described a similar type of nihilism, and another on 8chan. What humor was on these sites was always shocking, furiously punching down, and deeply self-referential, but it didn’t seem like anyone was expected to laugh anymore, just, you know, catch the reference. I found one testimonial saying that having healthy relationships in these spaces is functionally impossible, and the one former I talked to said, yeah, when the Alt-Right isn’t winning everyone’s miserable.

So I think it might fit. The place they go for relief also makes them unhappy, so they come back to get relief again, and it just repeats. Same reason people stay with abusers. I wanna look into this further, so, I’ll just say this part to the camera: if there are any researchers watching who wanna study this, get at me.

Finally, I read Alt-America by David Neiwert, a supremely useful book that I highly recommend if you wanna know how the Alt-Right is the natural outgrowth of the militia and Patriot movements of the 90’s and early 2000’s, not to mention the Tea Party. Neiwert also does an excellent job illustrating how conspiracism serves to fill in the gap between the complexity of the modern world and the simplistic, might-makes-right worldview of fascism.

Neiwert also provides an interesting piece of the puzzle, suggesting what people are actually looking for when they get recruited. He references work done by John Bargh and Katelyn McKenna on Identity Demarginalization. Bargh and McKenna looked at the internet habits of people whose identities are both devalued in our society and invisible. By invisible, what I mean is, ok, if you’re a person of color, our society devalues your identity, but you can look around a room and, within a certain margin of error, see who else is POC, and form community with them if you wish. But, if you’re queer, you can’t see who else in a room is queer unless one of you runs up a flag. And revealing yourself always means taking on a certain amount of risk that you’ve misread the signals, that the person you reveal yourself to is not only not queer, but a homophobe.

According to Bargh and McKenna, people in this situation are much more likely to seek online spaces that self-select for that identity. A fan forum for RuPaul’s Drag Race is maybe a safer place to come out and find community. And people tend to get very emotionally tied to these online spaces where they can be themselves.

Neiwert points out that the same phenomenon happens among privileged people who have identities that are devalued even as they’re not actually oppressed. Say, nerds, or conservatives in liberal towns, or men who don’t fit traditional notions of masculinity. They are also likely to deeply invest themselves in online spaces made for them. And if the Far Right can build such a community, or get a foothold in one that already exists, it is very easy to channel that sense of marginalization into Durden Syndrome. I connected this with Rebecca Lewis’ observation that the Alternative Influence Network tends to present itself as nerd-focused life advice first and politics second, and the long history of reactionaries recruiting from fandoms.

So I can see all the pieces of the abuse dynamic being recreated here: offer you something you need, estrange you from other perspectives and healthy relationships, overtake your life, and provoke emotional distress that makes you seek comfort only your abuser is offering. And I found a lot more parallels than what I’m sharing right now, I only have half an hour! But the thing that’s missing that’s usually central to such a system is, an abusive relationship orbits around the abuser, a cult around the cult leader, a totalitarian government around a dictator. They are built to serve the whims of an individual. But I look at the ad hoc nature of the Alt-Right and I have to ask: who is the architect?

I can see a lot of people profiting off of this structure; our current President rode it to great success, but he didn’t build it. It predates him. It’s more like Kimmel’s hate groups, which don’t promote an individual so much as a class of individuals, but, even then, their structure is much more deliberate, designed, where the Alt-Right seems almost improvised.

Well… one observation I took from Stein is that cult recruiters often rely on two different kinds of propaganda: the winding diatribe and the thought-terminating cliche. The diatribe is when someone talks at length, sounds smart, and seems to know what they’re talking about but isn’t actually making sense, and the thought-terminating cliche comes from Robert Jay Lifton’s studies into brainwashing. So, I went vegetarian in middle school, and, when I would tell other kids I was vegetarian, some would get kind of defensive and say things like, “humans aren’t meant to be vegetarian, it’s the food chain.” Now, saying “it’s the food chain” isn’t meant to be a good argument, it’s meant to communicate “I have said something so axiomatically true that the argument need not continue.” That’s a thought-terminating cliche; something that may not be true, but feels true and gives you permission to think about something else.

Both these techniques rely on what’s called Peripheral-Route Processing. So, I’m up here talking about politics, and, Solidarity Lowell, you are a group of politically-engaged people, so you probably have enough context to know whether I’m talking out of my ass. That’s Direct-Route Processing, where you judge the contents of my argument. But if I were up here talking about string theory, you might not know whether I was talking out of my ass because there’s only so many people on Earth who understand string theory. So then you might look at secondary characteristics of my argument: the fact that I’ve been invited to speak on string theory implies I know what I’m talking about; maybe I put up a lot of equations and drop the names of mathematicians and say they agree with me; maybe I just sound really authoritative. All that’s Peripheral-Route Processing: judging the quality of my argument by how it’s delivered.

Every act of communication involves both, but if you’re trying to sell people on something that’s fundamentally irrational, you’re going to rely heavily on Peripheral-Route tactics, which is what the winding diatribe and the thought-terminating cliche are.

I noted that these two methods mapped pretty cleanly onto the rhetorical stylings of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. But here’s the question: cults use these techniques to recruit people. But can I say with any confidence that Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro are trying to recruit people into the Alt-Right?

The thing is, “Alt-Right” isn’t a term like “klansman.” It’s more akin to a term like “modernism.” It’s a label applied to a trend. In the same way we debate the line between modernism and postmodernism, we debate the line between Right and Alt-Right. People don’t sign up to be in the Alt-Right, you are Alt-Right if you say you’re Alt-Right. But the nature of the Alt-Right is that 90% of them would never admit to it.

So are Peterson and Shapiro intentionally recruiting for the Alt-Right? Are they grifters merely profiting off of the Alt-Right? Are they even aware they’re recruiting for the Alt-Right? Part of my work has been accepting that you can’t know for sure. It would be naive to say they’re unaware; when they give speeches they get Nazis in their Q&A sections, and they know that. But how aware are they? I suspect Shapiro moreso than Peterson, but that’s just my gut talking and I can’t prove it. Like 90% of the Alt-Right, it’s debatable.

I don’t know if they’re trying to be part of this system, I just know they’re not trying not to be.

A final academic term before we say goodnight that’s been making the rounds among lefty YouTubers is “Stochastic Terrorism.” There’s a really great video about this by the channel NonCompete called The PewDiePipeline. Stochastic Terrorism is the myriad ways you can increase the likelihood that someone will commit violence without actually telling them to. You simply create an environment in which lone wolf violence becomes more acceptable and appealing. It mirrors the structure of terrorism without the control or culpability.

And I hear about this, and I look at this recruitment structure I see approximated in the Alt-Right, and I remember something I learned much earlier in my research, from Bob Altemeyer in his book The Authoritarians. Altemeyer has been studying authoritarianism for decades, he has a wealth of data, and one thing he observes is that authoritarianism is the few exerting power over the many, which means there are two types of authoritarians: the ones who lead and the ones who follow. Turns out those are completely different personality profiles. Followers don’t want to be in charge, they want someone to tell them what to do, to say “you’re the good guys,” and put them in charge of punishing the bad guys. They don’t even care who the bad guys are; part of the appeal is that someone else makes that judgment for them.

So if you can encourage a degree of authoritarian sentiment in people, get them wanting nothing more than to be ensconced in a totalist system that will take their agency away from them, putting them in the orbit of an authoritarian leader, but no leader presents themself… can you just kind of… appoint one?

Like, if you don’t have a leader, can you just find yourself an authoritarian and treat him like one? And, if he doesn’t give you enough directives, can you just make some up? And, if you don’t have recruiters, can you find a conservative who speaks in thought-terminating cliches just because he thinks they win arguments; find a conservative who speaks in meaningless diatribes because he thinks he’s making sense; and then maneuver those speeches and videos in front of people you want to recruit? If you’re sick of waiting for Moses to come down the mountain with the Word of God, can you just build your own god from whatever’s handy?

Every piece of this structure, you can find people, algorithms, and arguments that, put in sequence, can generate Disorganized Attachment whether they’re trying to or not, which makes every part plausibly deniable. Debatable. You just need to make it profitable enough for the ones involved that they don’t fix it. This is a system created collaboratively, on the fly, with the help of a lot of people from hate movements past, mostly by throwing a ton of shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. The Alt-Right is a rapidly-mutating virus and the web is the perfect incubator; it very quickly finds a structure that works, and it’s a structure we’ve seen before, just a little weirder this time.

I’ve started calling this Stochastic Totalism.

Now, again, I’m not a professional researcher; I do my homework but I don’t have the background. I have an art degree. This isn’t something I can prove so much as a way I’ve come to look at the Alt-Right that makes sense to me and helps me understand them. And I got a lot of comments on my last video from people who used to be Alt-Right that echoed my assumptions. But don’t take it as gospel.

Mostly I wanted to share this because, if it can help you make sense of what we’re dealing with, I think it’s worth putting out there.

Thank you.

#video essay

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rose---child · 5 years

Text

a joke about sailormoon bringing openness to queers lead me to this thanks wikipedia

1903 – In New York City on 21 February 1903, New York police conducted the first United States recorded raid on a gay bathhouse, the Ariston Hotel Baths. 34 men were arrested and 12 brought to trial on sodomy charges; 7 men received sentences ranging from 4 to 20 years in prison.

1906 – Potentially the first openly gay American novel with a happy ending, Imre, is published

1910 – Emma Goldman first begins speaking publicly in favor of homosexual rights. Magnus Hirschfeld later wrote "she was the first and only woman, indeed the first and only American, to take up the defense of homosexual love before the general public.

1912 – The first explicit reference to lesbianism in a Mormon magazine occurred when the "Young Woman's Journal" paid tribute to "Sappho of Lesbos[7] "; the Scientific Humanitarian Committee of the Netherlands (NWHK), the first Dutch organization to campaign against anti-homosexual discrimination, is established by Dr. Jacob Schorer.

1913 – The word faggot is first used in print in reference to gays in a vocabulary of criminal slang published in Portland, Oregon: "All the faggots [sic] (sissies) will be dressed in drag at the ball tonight".

1917 – The October Revolution in Russia repeals the previous criminal code in its entirety—including Article 995.[8][9] Bolshevik leaders reportedly say that "homosexual relationships and heterosexual relationships are treated exactly the same by the law."

1919 – In Berlin, Germany, Doctor Magnus Hirschfeld co-founds the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sex Research), a pioneering private research institute and counseling office. Its library of thousands of books was destroyed by Nazis in May 1933

1921 – In England an attempt to make lesbianism illegal for the first time in Britain's history fails

1922 – A new criminal code comes into force in the USSR officially decriminalizing homosexual acts.

1923 – The word fag is first used in print in reference to gays in Nels Anderson's The Hobo: "Fairies or Fags are men or boys who exploit sex for profit."

1923 – Lesbian Elsa Gidlow, born in England, published the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry in the United States, titled "On A Grey Thread."

1923 – The word fag is first used in print in reference to gays in Nels Anderson's The Hobo: "Fairies or Fags are men or boys who exploit sex for profit." 1923 – Lesbian Elsa Gidlow, born in England, published the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry in the United States, titled "On A Grey Thread." 1923 – The word fag is first used in print in reference to gays in Nels Anderson's The Hobo: "Fairies or Fags are men or boys who exploit sex for profit."1923 – Lesbian Elsa Gidlow, born in England, published the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry in the United States, titled "On A Grey Thread."

1937 – The first use of the pink triangle for gay men in Nazi concentration camps.

1938 – The word Gay is used for the first time on film in reference to homosexuality

1941 – Transsexuality was first used in reference to homosexuality and bisexuality.

1945 – The Holocaust ends and it is estimated that between about 3,000 to about 9,000 homosexuals died in Nazi concentration and death camps, while it is estimated that between about 2,000 to about 6,000 homosexual survivors in Nazi concentration and death camps were required to serve out the full term of their sentences under Paragraph 175 in prison. The first gay bar in post-World War II Berlin opened in the summer of 1945, and the first drag ball took place in American sector of West Berlin in the fall of 1945.[26] Four honourably discharged gay veterans form the Veterans Benevolent Association, the first LGBT veterans' group.[27] Gay bar Yanagi opened in Japan

1946 – Plastic surgeon Harold Gillies carries out sex reassignment surgery on Michael Dillon in Britain.

1951 – Greece decriminalizes homosexuality.

1956 – Thailand decriminalizes homosexual acts.

1957 – The word "Transsexual" is coined by U.S. physician Harry Benjamin; The Wolfenden Committee's report recommends decriminalizing consensual homosexual behaviour between adults in the United Kingdom; Psychologist Evelyn Hooker publishes a study showing that homosexual men are as well adjusted as non-homosexual men, which becomes a major factor in the American Psychiatric Association removing homosexuality from its handbook of disorders in 1973. Homoerotic artist Tom of Finland first published on the cover of Physique Pictorial magazine from Los Angeles.[36]

1965 – Vanguard, an organization of LGBT youth in the low-income Tenderloin district, was created in 1965. It is considered the first Gay Liberation organization in the U.S

1967 – The Advocate was first published in September as "The Los Angeles Advocate," a local newsletter alerting gay men to police raids in Los Angeles gay bars

1970 – The first Gay Liberation Day March is held in New York City; The first LGBT Pride Parade is held in New York; The first "Gay-in" held in San Francisco; Carl Wittman writes A Gay Manifesto;[56][57] CAMP (Campaign Against Moral Persecution) is formed in Australia;[58][59] The Task Force on Gay Liberation formed within the American Library Association. Now known as the GLBT Round Table, this organization is the oldest LGBTQ professional organization in the United States.[60] In November, the first gay rights march occurs in the UK at Highbury Fields following the arrest of an activist from the Young Liberals for importuning.

1974 – Chile allows a trans person to legally change her name and gender on the birth certificate after undergoing sex reassignment surgery, becoming the second country in the world to do so.[86] Kathy Kozachenko becomes the first openly gay American elected to public office when she wins a seat on the Ann Arbor, Michigan city council; In New York City Dr. Fritz Klein founds the Bisexual Forum, the first support group for the Bisexual Community; Elaine Noble becomes the second openly gay American elected to public office when she wins a seat in the Massachusetts State House; Inspired by Noble, Minnesota state legislator Allan Spear comes out in a newspaper interview; Ohio repeals sodomy laws. Robert Grant founds American Christian Cause to oppose the "gay agenda", the beginning of modern Christian politics in America. In London, the first openly LGBT telephone help line opens, followed one year later by the Brighton Lesbian and Gay Switchboard;[citation needed] the Brunswick Four are arrested on 5 January 1974, in Toronto, Ontario. This incident of Lesbophobia galvanizes the Toronto Lesbian and Gay community;[87] the National Socialist League (The Gay Nazi Party) is founded in Los Angeles, California.[citation needed] The first openly gay or lesbian person to be elected to any political office in America was Kathy Kozachenko, who was elected to the Ann Arbor City Council in April 1974.[88] Also in 1974, the Lesbian Herstory Archives opened to the public in the New York apartment of lesbian couple Joan Nestle and Deborah Edel; it has the world's largest collection of materials by and about lesbians and their communities.[89] Also in 1974, Angela Morley became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Academy Award, when she was nominated for one in the category of Best Music, Original Song Score/Adaptation for The Little Prince (1974), a nomination shared with Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe, and Douglas Gamley. The world's first gay softball league was formed in San Francisco in 1974 as the Community Softball League, which eventually included both women's and men's teams. The teams, usually sponsored by gay bars, competed against each other and against the San Francisco Police softball team

1977 – Harvey Milk is elected city-county supervisor in San Francisco, becoming the first openly gay or lesbian candidate elected to political office in California, the seventh openly gay/lesbian elected official nationally, and the third man to be openly gay at time of his election. Dade County, Florida enacts a Human Rights Ordinance; it is repealed the same year after a militant anti-homosexual-rights campaign led by Anita Bryant. Quebec becomes the first jurisdiction larger than a city or county in the world to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in the public and private sectors; Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Vojvodina legalise homosexuality.[citation needed] Welsh author Jeffrey Weeks publishes Coming Out;[99] Original eight-color version of the LGBT pride flagPublication of the first issue of Gaysweek, NYC's first mainstream gay weekly. Police raided a house outside of Boston outraging the gay community. In response the Boston-Boise Committee was formed.[100] Anne Holmes became the first openly lesbian minister ordained by the United Church of Christ;[101] Ellen Barrett became the first openly lesbian priest ordained by the Episcopal Church of the United States (serving the Diocese of New York).[102][103] The first lesbian mystery novel in America was published; it was Angel Dance, by Mary F. Beal.[104][105] The National Center for Lesbian Rights was founded. Shakuntala Devi published the first[106] study of homosexuality in India.[107][108] Platonica Club and Front Runners were founded in Japan.[95] San Francisco hosted the world's first gay film festival in 1977.[109] Peter Adair, Nancy Adair and other members of the Mariposa Film Group premiered the groundbreaking documentary on coming out, Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives, at the Castro Theater in 1977. The film was the first feature-length documentary on gay identity by gay and lesbian filmmakers.[110][111] Beth Chayim Chadashim became the first LGBT synagogue to own its own building.[78] On March 26, 1977, Frank Kameny and a dozen other members of the gay and lesbian community, under the leadership of the then-National Gay Task Force, briefed then-Public Liaison Midge Costanza on much-needed changes in federal laws and policies. This was the first time that gay rights were officially discussed at the White House

1980 – The United States Democratic Party becomes the first major political party in the U.S. to endorse a homosexual rights platform plank; Scotland decriminalizes homosexuality; The Human Rights Campaign Fund is founded by Steve Endean; The Human Rights Campaign is America's largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.[120] Lionel Blue becomes the first British rabbi to come out as gay;[121] "Becoming Visible: The First Black Lesbian Conference" is held at the Women's Building, from October 17 to 19, 1980. It has been credited as the first conference for African-American lesbian women.[122] The Socialist Party USA nominates an openly gay man, David McReynolds, as its (and America's) first openly gay presidential candidate in 1980.[123]

1987 – AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power(ACT-UP) founded in the US in response to the US government's slow response in dealing with the AIDS crisis.[142] ACT UP stages its first major demonstration, seventeen protesters are arrested; U.S. Congressman Barney Frank comes out. Boulder, Colorado citizens pass the first referendum to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.[143][144] In New York City a group of Bisexual LGBT rights activist including Brenda Howard found the New York Area Bisexual Network (NYABN); Homomonument, a memorial to persecuted homosexuals, opens in Amsterdam. David Norris is the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in the Republic of Ireland. A group of 75 bisexuals marched in the 1987 March On Washington For Gay and Lesbian Rights, which was the first nationwide bisexual gathering. The article "The Bisexual Movement: Are We Visible Yet?", by Lani Ka'ahumanu, appeared in the official Civil Disobedience Handbook for the March. It was the first article about bisexuals and the emerging bisexual movement to be published in a national lesbian or gay publication.[145] Canadian province of Manitoba and territory Yukon ban sexual orientation discrimination.

1990

Equalization of age of consent: Czechoslovakia (see Czech Republic, Slovakia)

Decriminalisation of homosexuality: UK Crown Dependency of Jersey and the Australian state of Queensland

LGBT Organizations founded: BiNet USA (USA), OutRage! (UK) and Queer Nation (USA)

Homosexuality no longer an illness: The World Health Organization

Other: Justin Fashanu is the first professional footballer to come out in the press.

Reform Judaism decided to allow openly lesbian and gay rabbis and cantors.[148]

Dale McCormick became the first open lesbian elected to a state Senate (she was elected to the Maine Senate).[149]

In 1990, the Union for Reform Judaism announced a national policy declaring lesbian and gay Jews to be full and equal members of the religious community. Its principal body, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), officially endorsed a report of their committee on homosexuality and rabbis. They concluded that "all rabbis, regardless of sexual orientation, be accorded the opportunity to fulfill the sacred vocation that they have chosen" and that "all Jews are religiously equal regardless of their sexual orientation."

The oldest national bisexuality organization in the United States, BiNet USA, was founded in 1990. It was originally called the North American Multicultural Bisexual Network (NAMBN), and had its first meeting at the first National Bisexual Conference in America.[150][150][151] This first conference was held in San Francisco in 1990, and sponsored by BiPOL. Over 450 people attended from 20 states and 5 countries, and the mayor of San Francisco sent a proclamation "commending the bisexual rights community for its leadership in the cause of social justice," and declaring June 23, 1990 Bisexual Pride Day.

The first Eagle Creek Saloon, that opened on the 1800 block of Market Street in San Francisco in 1990 and closed in 1993, was the first black-owned gay bar in the city.

1993Civil Union/Registered Partnership laws:Repeal of Sodomy laws: Australian Territory of Norfolk IslandDecriminalisation of homosexuality: Belarus, UK Crown Dependency of Gibraltar, Ireland, Lithuania, Russia (with the exception of the Chechen Republic);Anti-discrimination legislation:End to ban on gay people in the military: New ZealandSignificant LGBT Murders: Brandon TeenaMelissa Etheridge came out as a lesbian.The Triangle Ball was held; it was the first inaugural ball in America to ever be held in honor of gays and lesbians.The first Dyke March (a march for lesbians and their straight female allies, planned by the Lesbian Avengers) was held, with 20,000 women marching.[156][157]Roberta Achtenberg became the first openly gay or lesbian person to be nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate when she was appointed to the position of Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity by President Bill Clinton.[158]Lea DeLaria was "the first openly gay comic to break the late-night talk-show barrier" with her 1993 appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show.[159]In December 1993 Lea DeLaria hosted Comedy Central's Out There, the first all-gay stand-up comedy special.[159]Before the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy was enacted in 1993, lesbians and bisexual women and gay men and bisexual men were banned from serving in the military.[160] In 1993 the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy was enacted, which mandated that the military could not ask servicemembers about their sexual orientation.[161][162] However, until the policy was ended in 2011 service members were still expelled from the military if they engaged in sexual conduct with a member of the same sex, stated that they were lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and/or married or attempted to marry someone of the same sex.[163]Passed and Came into effect: Norway (without adoption until 2009, replaced with same-sex marriage in 2008/09)US state of Minnesota (gender identity)New Zealand parliament passes the Human Rights Amendment Act which outlaws discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation or HIVCanadian province Saskatchewan (sexual orientation)

1998Anti-discrimination legislation: Ecuador (sexual orientation, constitution), Ireland (sexual orientation) and the Canadian provinces of Prince Edward Island (sexual orientation) and Alberta (court ruling only; legislation amended in 2009)Significant LGBT Murders: Rita Hester, Matthew ShepardDecriminalisation of homosexuality: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa (retroactive to 1994), Southern Cyprus and TajikistanEqualization of age of consent: Croatia and LatviaEnd to ban on gay people in the military: Romania, South AfricaGender identity was added to the mission of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays after a vote at their annual meeting in San Francisco.[182] Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays is the first national LGBT organization to officially adopt a transgender-inclusion policy for its work.[183]Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay or lesbian non-incumbent ever elected to Congress, and the first open lesbian ever elected to Congress, winning Wisconsin's 2nd congressional district seat over Josephine Musser.[184][185]Dana International became the first transsexual to win the Eurovision Song Contest, representing Israel with the song "Diva".[186]Robert Halford comes out as being the first openly gay heavy metal musician.[187]The first bisexual pride flag was unveiled on 5 December 1998.[188]Julie Hesmondhalgh first began to play Hayley Anne Patterson, British TV's first transgender character.[189]BiNet USA hosted the First National Institute on Bisexuality and HIV/AIDS.[190]

sorry its long just these i didnt know half of all this and thought we should all know

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_LGBT_history,_20th_century

#lgbt #lgbtq #gay #queer #lesbian

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galliproof · 4 years

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(awesome art by @mostlyharmlessdesigns - find these pride crochet friends on their etsy shop here ✨)

today’s pride recommendations are:

fiction: we are totally normal by rahul kanakia

“nandan’s got a plan to make his junior year perfect. he’s going to make sure all the parties are chill, he’s going to smooth things over with his ex, and he’s going to help his friend dave get into the popular crowd—whether dave wants to or not. the high school social scene might be complicated, but nandan is sure he’s cracked the code. then, one night after a party, dave and nandan hook up, which was not part of the plan—especially because nandan has never been into guys. still, dave’s cool, and nandan’s willing to give it a shot, even if that means everyone starts to see him differently.” - description taken from goodreads

non-fiction: real queer america: lgbt stories from red states by samantha allen

“a transgender reporter's narrative tour through the surprisingly vibrant queer communities sprouting up in red states, offering a vision of a stronger, more humane america.

ten years ago, samantha allen was a suit-and-tie-wearing mormon missionary. now she's a senior daily beast reporter happily married to another woman. a lot in her life has changed, but what hasn't changed is her deep love of red state america, and of queer people who stay in so-called "flyover country" rather than moving to the liberal coasts.

in real queer america, allen takes us on a cross-country road-trip stretching all the way from provo, utah to the rio grande valley to the bible belt to the deep south. her motto for the trip: "something gay every day." making pit stops at drag shows, political rallies, and hubs of queer life across the heartland, she introduces us to scores of extraordinary lgbt people working for change, from the first openly transgender mayor in texas history to the manager of the only queer night club in bloomington, indiana, and many more.” - description taken from goodreads

send in your art and book recommendations if you wanna see them on one of our daily posts!

#lgbtqia+#lgbtqia #lgbtq+#lgbtq #lgbt #pride #pride month #books #fiction #literature #reading #non fiction #we are totally normal #rahul kanakia #real queer america #samantha allen

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redheadedfemme · 5 years

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“The greatest gift is unconditional love and acceptance”

This is a combination travel book and memoir, with the common thread of finding and relating the stories of LGBT people in red states. The author was once a Mormon missionary before leaving the LDS church and transitioning, and the author tells both her story and the stories of others she finds on the road in an easy, conversational style.

This book is a bit of a revelation, as I'm sure many have heard the stories of queer people leaving their hometowns as soon as they possibly can, lighting out for big cities and more tolerant environments. Samantha Allen finds the stories of those who refuse to leave the places they love, and who are determined to drag those places into the 21st century. A lot of those places, needless to say, are in the Deep South--Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia--as well as the author's home state of Utah. She visits queer bars, clubs, and communities, and her friends in those states. The important point is made that it is the close-knit bonds of these people, their chosen families, and their determination to fight for change for themselves and others, that sets them apart.

There are some interesting and emotional stories in this book, and Allen captures them very well. Her use of description and setting to ground the stories she relates is also done well. Despite the understandable fear and anxiety LGBT people are feeling over the current occupant of the White House, this is an encouraging, uplifting and even optimistic book. As the author states towards the book's end:

In twenty years, maybe sooner, it will matter even less which parts of the country queer people choose to inhabit because this is the generation that will be in power--a generation that believes in facts, that sees anti-LGBT discrimination as an archaic holdover from the past, that refuses to erase their lived authenticity to satisfy their elders. Queer kids in the future won't think twice about going to school in Georgia because acceptance will be the new nationwide status quo. Like transitioning, change is not a thing that happens all at once. But these kids will make it happen faster than anyone sees coming.

More power to them.

#book reviews books read in 2019 travel memoir lgbt

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wowbright · 1 year

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Random thoughts about Autoboyography and Mormon stuff, since I'm still thinking about it two weeks later.

Spoilers ahead:

Why did Tanner's ex-mormon mother give her kid such a Mormon name?

Was the only reason the authors gave Sebastian Brother that last name was so they could make the "Brother Brother" joke? (No judgment. Just curious.)

Since Sebastian broke the law of chastity, how was his mission call not delayed? Did his parents not know about him breaking the law of chastity? Did they know but, since his dad was the bishop, his dad had the discretion to keep it quiet and not pursue any disciplinary action?

Or wait I guess if Sebastian is in a singles ward (a possibility, though I don't remember if it was mentioned one way or another), his dad isn't his Bishop.

BUT his parents are so against homosexuality it seems like they would want him disciplined by whoever's his bishop, since in their beliefs that would be the only way for him to fully repent of his "sin" and have any chance of progressing to the celestial kingdom.

Why didn't he get called into the honor code office at BYU? Again, was this a matter of people not knowing, or just the "right" people not knowing?

Did he get called in & kicked out of BYU sometime after the main story ended and before the epilogue began? Will BYU refuse to release his transcripts to another college he might want to attend so that he has to start from zero?

Is it just me or did Sebastian take the news of Tanner sleeping with their friend a little too easily? His response makes sense for a mature secular teen--they weren't dating so really it's none of Sebastian's business who Tanner got involved with. But Sebastian has been drenched in sexual shame. LDS kids get taught that any sexual activity (typically including masturbation) is essentially cheating on your future spouse. In that worldview, it very much would matter to Sebastian who Tanner has slept with. Even if Sebastian logically knows he shouldn't judge Tanner for it, even if he doesn't *want* to judge Tanner, he probably would.

Or maybe he does judge, but we don't see it because Sebastian is so good at painting on his Mormon "everything's fine" face? That feels like stretching the text too far, though.

Did release time seminary get mentioned anywhere in the story? This is neither here nor there, but I assume it's a thing in Provo and something that Tanner would be like, "Well that's crazy." But I don't remember whether it came up.

Very interesting how little Tanner knows about Mormon history. For all she encourages her kids to talk about their emotions and experiences, his mother sure doesn't talk much about hers, at least in this realm. (Again, not judging.) The part where Tanner unquestioningly repeats the line that polygamy happened in order to support widows made me do a double take.

Not really Mormon related: was that out-of-left-field plot twist included for the sole purpose of proving Tanner's bisexuality? I didn't need it proven. I already believed it. (Also, my surprise at Tanner's breadth of sexual experience at his age makes me feel a bit Mormon LOL.)

@redheadgleek Anything to add or detract?

#autoboyography #christina lauren #mormon stuff #wow reads books #lds #queer mormon book club

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lakeblutomski · 3 years

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belle haven office table talk

my position so i was in the military and met people briefly that freeze

different conspirators and always another rebuttal

people eliciting energy

teeth education credit score and so on professional

will i some day go back to richmond? according to philip k dick documentaries

different parts on it fact checking

the crowds me solo other responses eyes addictions business

not getting ending up a corpse the favor system the south

charlottesville fault finding pictures drawn in my times

each part the trash colonizing luray page county

food family weather simplicity

queer eye for the straight guy

forgotten stereotypes the club the busker the restaurant

consistent reliable college campus television virginia

the end point dealer recruiter my buddy in the usmc and his brother next

meanness unending issues conditions so lots of relationships

in hindsight i think sonny’s point too may have been about timing

my aunt bonnie my other aunts my uncle grandma dead

being weird guitars display case

chris langley aubrey nesbitt others not getting sued

end goal military service reservoir dogs my passion

the titles

the red scare groucho marx hearing damage

the story having to be tight and go to alexandria and luray

settling setting up

the belle view shopping center river towers

safeway grocery store fairfax county

lawyers police black panthers para militaries 29 gorrillaz

my paycheck

do not irritate me

do not insult me

zelda link zelda fitzgerald male harlequin

type writer

family

next generation

injury

ian mcklelen gandalf magneto

so lots of people out there

cat leth the vacuum a blow job my failures

sex with bob dylan

the fire escape

the video games reality picking out shoes online the skate stores and music

jack of all trades

the unit

germany africa asia budweiser pabst scotch

my works

when i got a joy out of hearing someone referencing me being like inxs who did a soundtrack for the lost boys twilight so maybe that was gross so the response for each mistep error watching porn john lennon injuries jaded the right way apples

the market

the best

premeditation

hawthorne heights the killers daewon song

eliciting something the cia

this side of the map the region virginia wines

next issue minority celebrity

teeth

starting fights drama

the delayed response

was that right or wrong

jesus christ

scientology mormons rabbi temple pig headed

women and transgenders

lgbtq

hamphradite not knowing that explanation but maybe being sensitive to it

foreskin

hoody

corey brazilller adam leder

so i was i walked to cavalier drive near west potomac and quander

michael richards record deal camper van beethoven

someone cutting your breaks not being able to stop

the awesome new york picture oceanside city but it was

the parents and the kids the humor charlie boyce lifted research group

it was like at stuart’s being ghetto and vulgar breaking down weight

all down the line so someone in their sort of hip hop clothes

def jam vendetta nintendo game cube nintendo wii nintendo switch

records and rarities springfield northern va community college

self taught

youtube

bill gates

hearing damage ignore block warn banned books barred

sam tenorio phil munoz landscaping gators hurricanes

ghosts of mars ice cube friday uncle elroy

back to the story jotis the unit how it works cash

tobacco mount vernon old town tourism chadwick’s sports

we were indoors nyc homeless board game players

pi hasidic bagels indescribable beastie boys

the system the map turns moves

a parka pockets a blunt indoors parental regulation

the boondocks burd boonyoo rivalries mrs gano will jernigan

that year sex addiction ricky lowie vans

so no screw ups in richmond twenty a gram sometimes more

gay tips huey shawn my first transgender brunnette

jazz brandt

sitting the furniture the adult the professional

nfl ncaa nba jay adams hmm what to do

gross ny ‘jews’ i said it

ethnics annandale korean barbeque

germany aryan blonde male christian grieb madeline lil

blackburg

metal driver

so squatting will schwore paper planes mia

kaitlyn’s mom tech deck’s carl sandburg middle school

rory parrish jesse torbert kymco scooter

coding

my cousins

um marshalls survey receipt

the red door restaurant

everything tight

stomach enzymes

the black bus boy i gave a christmas gift ralph lauren rugby to

he saved me before obama

the other workers

my sketches

the word of mouth common knowledge education suggestion

brian jones

brand new

lindsay rosenfeld

the commonwealth club

cody wright fruit boot roller blade

alex miller rofl

that guy at subway

so the verazzano bridge

over here

the fairfax near nutley townhouse

hamburger help me kendal dorsey murray peeing off a building

beer colleen

a beach bowl indie movies harrington hotel landmark e street cinema

gutenberg days

wurzburg

dinosaur jr

birth canal

marley kimmel

pierce kreutzer chris farley but dodging avoiding

genitilia

quintin

duke street skatepark

spetzle

strasse

pure volume

invites

columbia

yeah so corey’s dad and mom me being in some ways bad

but good jacking off to his mom and not as often sister

polite pink striped polo skylar galayda

the disney one the despicable

so making a pass

ronnie wood

marty

darrin plauger

birthright indians

summit bansal om bansal 8a status

worth it walmart

nathan’s

melting pot

robbie tenet

father figures boy meets world

puzzles

reinforcement

asian household certificates

movies chinese pizza journey to the center of the world

that’s a chop of that

chris brennan spokes etc

lara davidson butt hollister beneficiaries

jealousy professionalism sacrifice

brats

mike larrick the fall of reach drummers

ernest recker kesterson plumbing

scholarship

scholastic

liberals

voting

um jacking off to classmates

a butt cheek

the pro

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la-knight · 6 years

Note

Hey it’s the twilight chessboard anon again and I don’t mean to be a bother but from what I’ve read on here you’ve been writing new stuff and I’m excited for that but my hearts still cries for the tc books I’m just wondering how they are going and if you could possibly share a little more about this new book it sounds interesting Thank you,

I am still working on restoring The Twilight Chessboard, don’t worry! And you’re not a bother. Not at all! I like hearing from cool peeps. The only bothersome peeps are the people who send me nasty anon messages. That can get tiresome and those people need to go kiss a skunk’s butt. But YOU are certainly not a bother.

I *am* working on another project right now as my main project, but not because I don’t care about TC. Unfortunately because I self-pubbed it, I probably wouldn’t be able to get an agent for the revamped version, so restoring it will have to be a side project while I work on a book that can hopefully score me an agent and a book deal. But I *am* still working on it. I’m also struggling a little with Alyssa’s PTSD because I’ve been trying to work on mine and that’s been hard. But I’m not giving up! :)

My current project is called A Palace of Ink and Stardust, which sounds like an epic fantasy but it’s actually a contemporary fantasy. It’s a wlw romance between an autistic girl and a changeling girl who are in the same high school book club.

I wrote it as a response to a book I’m struggling to get to the end of called Autoboyagraphy, which is about gay Mormons, by a pair of authors who set out to write a book whose message explicitly states you can’t be queer and Mormon and if you try your loved ones will abandon you and all Mormons in good standing with Church authorities are actually terrible people. I wanted to write a book for queer Mormons like myself that offered a somewhat more hopeful message and also showed what lgbtq+ Mormon teens deserve by way of support from friends and family, while also giving a more nuanced and multi-faceted look at how queerness is treated by Mormons and Mormonism.

So basic rundown: autistic Mormon girl meets this changeling girl (this is a world where magic is normal and industrialized, you can buy call-back charms for your iPhone, potion-lattes at Starbucks, and your neighbor might be an eldritch horror whose 3-year-old abomination has gymnastics with your little sister). And when she meets the changeling they become friends and bond over books and nerd-girl things like anime and whatnot (mostly books though) and then Mormon girl realizes she’s in love with the changeling and has to decide what she’s going to do about that and how she wants to handle her family if/when they find out she’s bisexual.

Basically it’s a rom-com with faeries and Mormons. And it’s called A Palace of Ink and Stardust because it’s predicated on the concept of “building palaces out of paragraphs” to woo someone you like, and stardust is a fae thing as often as not. It switches between mostly prose and some poetry and checklists and playlists and other things.

What do you think?

#ask LA Knight #A Palace of Ink and Stardust #Twilight Chessboard #writing #PTSD #queerstake #Mormons #autoboyography

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aroacepositivityplace · 7 years

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Hey, do you have any LGBT books/movies/music to recommend? Thank you!

Hi! I do have some things that I can recommend that I’ve enjoyed. I’ll provide a brief synopses and content warnings (although it’s been a while since I’ve read/seen a lot of this so please don’t consider my lists of content warnings to be complete).

Books

-Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. I love this book a lot. It takes place in the 80′s if I’m remember correctly and is about two high school aged boys who navigate cultural identity, family mystery, and their own mental health and relationships. I’m not a YA fan for the most part, but I make an exception for this book. Content warnings for mentions of homophobic violence, mentions of transphobic violence.

-Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. This was required reading for me, but it’s an interesting and partly autobiographical story. I think it takes place in the seventies or so and is about an adopted girl navigating her extremely religious upbringing as she comes to terms with being a lesbian. Content warnings for homophobia.

-No. 6. This is a manga (and anime) about a boy (Shion) who grows up in what is considered to be the perfect city. Then one night, an injured boy (Rat) shows up at his door, a fugitive from the city. When it is discovered that Shion harbored a fugitive, all of his special privileges in the city are stripped away. Years later, people begin to mysteriously die and when the deaths are pinned on Shion. Rat rescues him and smuggles him out of the city, whereupon Shion begins to learn just what the city he grew up in is really like and what they’re planning. The manga makes a lot more sense than the anime to me, but they both the one dystopian story that I’ve continued to enjoy. The main characters are both mlm and another character isn’t cis. Content warnings for violence, attempted sexual assault.

-The Captive Prince Series. So tumblr really loves to drag the living hell out of these books, but I love them to death. They do deal with some really sensitive subjects, although not in a way that ever minimizes or ignores the issues. In Damen’s kingdom, there’s a coup and he’s sent to a rival kingdom as a slave under an assumed name. More specifically, he’s sent to Prince Laurent, whose brother he killed years earlier. Damen quickly realizes that if he ever wants to return to his home, he’ll have to join forces with Laurent, who is locked in a power struggle with his uncle, the regent. There are next to no straight characters in this series. Content warnings for mentions of sexual assault, mentions of pedophilia, attempted sexual assault, violence.

-Maurice. This is probably one of my favorite books. It takes place in the early 1900′s where Maurice realizes that he isn’t straight and falls in love. Content warnings for internalized homophobia, homophobia.

-The Jughead Comics (Zkarsky). This is a modern Jughead centric Archie comic. They’re just the wacky adventures of a hungry highschool kid with a big imagination. The main character is aro ace and another prominant character is gay. No major content warnings.

-The Picture of Dorian Gray. This is a classic that I love. I’d recommend reading the original first and then reading the uncensored if you like it because the uncensored cuts out one of the original plotlines. Dorian Gray is a beautiful young man in the late 19th century. After realizing that all other people tend to value in him is his beauty, he desires for an elaborate portrait that was painted of him to age instead of him. His wish comes true, except that along with aging, his portrait also shows every vile act that he commits. All the main men in this story are mlm. Content warnings for suicide mentions, violence.

-Angels in America. This one is a play that has a pretty awesome HBO adaptation. It takes place in the 80′s and deals heavily with the AIDS crisis as different characters navigate their interconnecting lives. One of the main characters has AIDS and has an angel sent to him to tell him that he’s a new prophet, his boyfriend can’t manage taking care of him and leaves, another character is a closeted Mormon who begins to have his first same sex relationship, his significant other is failing to manage her mental illness, Roy Cohn, a real person, is a character. Content warnings for homophobia, internalized homophobia, serophobia, drug abuse.

-A Court of Thorns and Roses series. These books do a fascinating bait and switch with everything that you think might be happening. If I have to point to a feminist romance series, it’s this one. One of the main characters in this book is bi, but it isn’t explicitly talked about until the third and final book. The plot is about a fantasy setting where fae and humans are at an uneasy truce after a long and bloody conflict. After a young woman kills a fae wolf, it is demanded that she give up her life in exchange for her crime. She goes to live in the fae realm, where she begins to learn about the unrest in the fae realm that can easily destroy both the fae and humans. Content warnings for violence, abuse, sexual assault mentions.

-Star Wars: Aftermath series. If you like star wars but want a more diverse case, this is the book series for you. It takes place after episode 6 but before the force awakens and follows almost entirely new characters, one of which is gay. There are also a lot of casual mentions of queer people, including a nonbinary pirate. Plotwise, it’s about how a rebel pilot, an imperial defector, a bounty hunter, the pilot’s son, a reprogrammed battle droid, and an elite soldier form a crack team that hunts down imperial war criminals, one of which is trying to reform the empire. Content warnings for violence.

Movies

-Maurice. This is based on the book mentioned above and has the same plot and content warnings.

-The Birdcage. The title relates to the drag club that the two main characters own and operate. So a Robin William’s character’s son wants to introduce his girlfriend and her parents to his dad. She’s fine with everything, but the issue is that her parents are straight laced repub/////licans. Williams ends up asking his boyfriend to sit out the dinner that they’re having with the girlfriend’s parents. The issue is, he ends up showing up in drag so he can be there. Content warnings for homophobia.

-The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Both the original and the Laverne Cox versions are wonderful, but the Cox version cuts out a lot of the issues with the original that a lot of people today are uncomfortable with. This is a spoof of every horror movie ever and the music is awesome. Janet and Brad are a newly engaged couple. They’re driving to meet with their old high school teacher when their car breaks down. Searching for help, they come across a castle, where inside Dr. Frankenfurter is working on their creation, the perfect man. Content warnings for some outdated language relating to trans people, dubious consent in the original, violence.

-Carol. I saw a highly edited version of this on a plane and it was still lovely. The main character works in a department store in the 50′s. A wealthy woman leaves her gloves in the store and the main character returns them to her, whereupon they begin to grow close and fall in love. Content warnings for homophobia.

-I Love You, Phillip Morris. This is actually based on a true story. Jim Carrey’s character that after accepting that he’s gay becomes a con man to fund an opulent lifestyle. He is arrested and in prison meets Morris. They fall in love and after the two of them are both released from prison, Carry goes back to his deceptions. Despite my description, it’s a pretty lighthearted movie. Content warnings for homophobic language, violence.

-Brokeback Mountain. This one is a classic, although not a happy story. Enis and Jack are assigned to tend sheep together one summer and grow close. One night, after drinking, the two have sex and afterwords are unable to deny what’s between them. The two meet up when they can as they start to life lives that grow further apart with each passing year. Content warnings for homophobia, homophobic violence.

-Pride. This was a good enough movie and based on a true story. A local lgbt group realizes that if they want to make serious change, their best chance is by allying with striking miners. Content warnings for homophobia, homophobic violence.

Music

Unfortunately, I can’t name any lgbtqiap+ music. :(

#ask #anonymous ask

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a2lezread · 5 years

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April LezRead: Poetry, Real Queer America, and Life's A Bitch, 4/27, 4-6pm

It's National Poetry Month and we have a little something for everyone. As always, whether you read some, all, or none, you're welcome to join us for this month's discussion. Check out what's on the agenda below. #Lezreadandshare #treasuredpoems #goodreads --- Share A Treasured Poem --- We know that many lezreaders love poetry. In recognition of National Poetry Month, we invite each attendee to bring a treasured poem to share. The poem can be one you've written, or one that you treasure by an LGBTQIA writer. --- Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States, by Samatha Allen --- Ten years ago, Samantha Allen was a suit-and-tie-wearing Mormon missionary. Now she's a senior Daily Beast reporter happily married to another woman. A lot in her life has changed, but what hasn't changed is her deep love of Red State America, and of queer people who stay in so-called "flyover country" rather than moving to the liberal coasts. In Real Queer America, Allen takes us on a cross-country road-trip stretching all the way from Provo, Utah to the Rio Grande Valley to the Bible Belt to the Deep South. Her motto for the trip: "Something gay every day." Making pit stops at drag shows, political rallies, and hubs of queer life across the heartland, she introduces us to scores of extraordinary LGBT people working for change, from the first openly transgender mayor in Texas history to the manager of the only queer night club in Bloomington, Indiana, and many more. Capturing profound cultural shifts underway in unexpected places and revealing a national network of chosen family fighting for a better world, Real Queer America is a treasure trove of uplifting stories and a much-needed source of hope and inspiration in these divided times. Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40274696-real-queer-america --- Life's a Bitch: The Complete Bitchy Bitch Stories, by Roberta Gregory --- Naughty Bits, the longest-running solo comic by a female alternative cartoonist, came to an end in 2004 after a 14-year, 40-issue run. Beloved for the expressive scrawl of Gregory's line and her take-no-prisoners satirical approach, it was particularly notable for introducing the world to Bitchy Bitch—a woman who is eternally, magnificently, and for the most part, quite justifiably pissed off at the world around her! This extra-thick volume collects the entire first half of the Bitchy Bitch saga, and it ranges widely in her eventful life. There are stories about Bitchy's travails as a little girl (when she was just "Bitsy Bitch"), including that greatest horror of all, the holidays; a long sequence about her hippie free-love days in the '70s (and the harrowing abortion that followed); tales of her miserable days as an office drone surrounded by dunces, lechers, and the occasional ultra-Christian maniac; and the hilarious full-length graphic novel "Bitchy Takes a Vacation," where a tropical getaway turns into a fiasco (romanic and otherwise) of epic proportions. The book will also feature a brand new full-length story that chronicles the (never before shown) death of Bitchy's tempestuous father (well, she had to get that temper from somewhere), as Gregory once again finds the humor in even the grimmest situation. If anger is an energy, as Johnny Rotten once said, then Life's a Bitch is a 240-page slab of caffeinated fury... but laugh-out-loud funny! Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/598276.Life_s_a_Bitch --- About LezRead: LezRead is Ann Arbor’s premier book club for queer women. We meet on the fourth Saturday of the month from 4-6PM at the Jim Toy Community Center (319 Braun Court, Ann Arbor, MI). * Sometimes we chat for an hour at JTCC; sometimes we chat for 2. Sometimes we have snacks at the Aut Bar for the second hour; sometimes we relax in the courtyard. * Don’t forget that we take up a small collection for use of the Community Center. If you can, please bring a small cash donation. * New members welcome! Email [email protected] to join the private Facebook group.

#lezread treasuredpoems goodreads

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argotmagazine-blog · 6 years

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No Gods, No Spirits, No Angels: The Religious Experience of Witnessing "Angels in America" as a Queer, Jewish Millennial

In Honor of World AIDS Day

“I watched my friends die,” the pep talk began. “I saw the inside of a paddy wagon more than once. I chained myself to the pews of a church.” This was coming from a theater professor, the day after the 2016 election. I had come into his office minutes earlier, shaken and despondent, telling him I no longer felt I wanted to continue pursuing playwriting.

“No. No. No,” he replied. “Now is when you must throw yourself into your art, full-speed. You cannot back down now. Feel upset today, fine. Take a break, whatever. But you have to get out there and fight tomorrow. I swore years ago I would never have to wear my ACT UP shirt again. But I dug it up this morning, and I’ll be wearing it out there at every protest and demonstration. I sure as hell better see you there, too.”

In my desperate need to understand what he went through, I blurted out, “I’d love to interview you about your experience.” The conversation came to a halt. The pep talk ended there. I had breached the fine line between a curious outsider and an intrusive one.

I encountered this before. When you’re a storyteller, you want to be interested in everybody. You’re taught to ask questions and gather the stories that will inform your work. You can’t write about the human condition if you’re not bearing witness to its many facets. We all want the juicy gossip, the ghost stories, the too-gruesome-to-be-real tales of people overcoming extraordinary strife. Yet that can be dangerous. Growing up Jewish, we’re taught that to remember the Holocaust is to prevent its recurrence, but we’re also taught never to ask about a survivor’s experience unless it is offered. This is the paradox of knowing survivors of tragedy: so many of them want to educate, to prevent history repeating, but their own trauma is often too painful to re-live.

Time and again, I have found the AIDS Crisis, like the Holocaust, to be the great rift between generations. For Jewish descendants of survivors, like some of my friends growing up, the Holocaust was the elephant in the room; something that made family dinners and religious celebrations a point of anxiety. Even if they lived in the most Jew-friendly town in America, survivors are forever looking over their shoulder. Their descendants are taught to as well, even when they’re not sure why. There were days my Jewish friends would tell me about the Holocaust being used as a point of guilt, a way to say, “Stop behaving so selfishly, don’t you remember what your grandfather lived through?” Survivors of the AIDS Crisis will sometimes—maybe inadvertently—scorn queer Millennials for not understanding the agony they encountered. As many of us came of age in the new millennium, perhaps moved away from home or began frequenting gay clubs and bars, we’d each have our own stories of encountering elder days with one too many drinks in their system, ranting furiously about our privilege, our “never having seen true hardship now that AIDS is gone.”

Of course, HIV and AIDS are not gone, and my generation isn’t blameless for our ignorance. I can’t begin to count how many gay people my age have told me they had never heard of ACT UP or the AIDS Quilt or even the efforts of artists like Keith Haring and David Wojnarowicz. However, many of us want to learn. We want to understand what it must have felt like back then so that we can build stronger bonds with our queer elders. More of us want to educate, because we know the deadly price of ignorance; of thinking that knowledge of our history doesn’t affect us as individuals. After the Pulse shooting, I dived in. I read books on the Crisis, and binged documentaries. Yes, my fury over the Reagan administration’s inaction increased ten-fold. I made it my mission to educate fellow members of the community. But I don’t think I could fully grasp, on a deeply emotional level, what the turmoil must have felt like, until this year.

In March, I returned to my alma mater to see a production of Angels in America, Part I: Millennium Approaches. This is the first in a two-part, seven-hour magnum opus drama written by Tony Kushner. Millennium follows a cavalcade of characters: Prior, the former drag queen diagnosed with AIDS; Louis, the pencil-pushing boyfriend who leaves him; Joe, the closeted Mormon law clerk; Harper, Joe’s equally Mormon, agoraphobic wife who sees less of her husband since he started cruising for sex in Central Park; and Roy Cohn, the evil lackey to Joseph McCarthy, dying of AIDS and denying every word of it. It is a tale of how the AIDS Crisis affected vastly different people, evoked through a “Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” Angels’ eponymous subtitle complete with spirits and giants and fiery biblical set pieces.

I thought I knew what I was in for as I found my seat in the theater, having read the script two years earlier. I figured I would probably cry when Prior screams at Louis, “I’m dying! You stupid fuck! Do you know what that is!” Yet, I was nowhere near prepared. By the end of the 3.5-hour show I was a red-faced, blubbering mess. Something happened to me in that small college theater. Something that made my heart feel altogether light and heavy; something that made my eyes see more clearly. By the time I returned to Chicago, I had had two nights of deep sleep accompanied by vivid dreams of the production. In one dream, I was an actor, and I had to get on stage and deliver a monologue. All the cast and the audience were waiting for me, and I couldn’t remember my lines for the life of me. So I fled to a parking lot and cried. In the other dream, I was an audience member who wandered on stage during a pivotal moment. I couldn’t seem to find my way off stage, and Prior scolded me for not paying attention, for not listening. Coming back to my Midwest studio apartment, I only had one overwhelming conclusion circling my head: I had just had a religious experience.

Western religion and theatre go hand-in-hand. They both involve rituals of an audience congregating for a set time to look at costumed people on a stage and try to glean a message. Theorists like Jill Dolan have asserted that a theater event creates temporary communities out of total strangers experiencing a shared moment. That is what it sometimes feels like to be queer: a community of strangers, desperate to make our pieces fit, coming together through some shared sense of otherness with the world. Seeing Angels for the first time, with Millennial actors, did for me what religion is supposed to do: connect us to our ancestors. I watched my community suffering on stage, and it felt real. It felt more authentic than any other play I had ever seen. The painted-on lesions, the heavy New York accents, even the moment Prior shits his pants and raises his hand to reveal blood (evoking an audible gasp from the audience). For the first time in my life, I felt I could empathize with at least a fraction of what those who survived the Crisis experienced.

Some people laughed when I mentioned how Angels felt like an out-of-body experience, and I was beginning to feel a little silly. Then I talked to Jeffrey James Fox, who played Prior in the University of Michigan production. “I guess, in a way,” he said, “I had a religious awakening.” He started to get choked up as he continued.

“When you’re Jewish, you learn about Jewish heroes and the Holocaust and tangible things that happened. You learn a little about the history of your people. Gay people don’t have heroes for a lot of their life, especially when you’re in the closet for twenty years or more… Like reading about ACT UP, my God! Their own research, their own doctors. They made everything happen on their own, because nobody else would!”

Most profoundly, he said, being in Angels as an openly gay man changed his thinking on how he wants his career to take shape. “I want to devote a good chunk of my career now to giving a voice to people who don’t have them. If I had seen a movie with a gay character when I was younger, imagine how much more comfortable I would’ve been with myself so much sooner! This whole thing…” He trailed off for a moment before concluding, “Yeah. I guess it is religious.”

We are a generation that feels more alienated and disconnected from religion than ever before. Millennials are distancing themselves from the religious practices with which they were brought up, choosing instead to forge bonds through pagan rituals or astrology. For some of us, theater offers a new religion, or at least a supplemental religious experience. It can connect us to the past, distract us from the present, and give us a glimpse into potential futures. For young people like Jeffrey, the history of ACT UP is the history of queer people’s resilience; of being backed into a corner, on the brink of extinction, and responding by rolling up our sleeves and solving the problem ourselves. Millennials, remarkably in tune with the complexity and fluidity of identity, increasingly no longer see themselves in religious stories and traditions. So we seek out other ways to connect to our past. We become the researchers of queer history, we find the forgotten stories, and we gather on stage or on Netflix or in movie theaters, and dammit, we tell the stories ourselves. We make our friends and family listen, so they will learn and fight alongside us for a better future. Out of pure necessity, we become the preachers of our own queer religion.

In October, a man entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and opened fire. I awoke to texts from friends offering sympathy, and read article after article of the “rise” of anti-Semitism in America (it’s always been there, it’s just emboldened now). I felt that creeping sense of guilt I know so well, for not having the “correct” amount of empathetic pain. I struggled to place why I was suddenly so void of feeling over the shooting. Of course I was upset to hear of the murder of fellow Jews, yet I wasn’t surprised. There wasn’t an aching loss and I felt overwhelmingly guilty for that. Why did the Pulse shooting break my heart, keep me in bed for two days, and force me to pen a new play? Why did the Tree of Life (whose alternative name, Simcha, is the same as my Hebrew name) come as no surprise?

Talking about this absence of pain with a friend of mine, I found myself referencing the Judaic aspects of Angels in America, which I had always ignored for the larger queer themes. Yet, I suddenly realized that the shooting didn’t shock me precisely because I was raised Jewish. The emphasis on always being aware—and always being prepared—that the world has tried to wipe us out for thousands of years has been ingrained in me. In a twisted way, Jews are always anticipating the next attempted genocide. There are two large groups that I can call “my people”: Jews and the LGBTQ community. I was shocked by Pulse because I had not yet had the history lessons of “my (queer) people” like the lessons afforded to me by Hebrew school, because queer studies are still “niche.” The culture that encouraged survivors to speak out about their time in the concentration camps had never existed for survivors of the AIDS Crisis or the Upstairs Lounge or Stonewall.

All of a sudden, I understood the religious aspects of Angels in America like never before. The depiction of Heaven as a place equally unfathomable and in disarray, in which Prior delivers a scathing speech that he’d rather live with AIDS than be healthy in Heaven, enforces the Jewish teaching of striving to do good on Earth for the sake of being good and helping others, rather for the sake of—to steal from The Good Place—an afterlife “moral dessert.” Then there’s Prior’s assertion that God must be dead. It is the play’s most direct reference to what many survivors of the Holocaust felt after they were freed from the camps: God is not coming back.

“And even if He did,” Prior says. “If He ever did come back, if He ever dared to show His face, or his Glyph or whatever in the Garden again. If after all this destruction, if after all the terrible days of this terrible century He returned to see … how much suffering His abandonment had created, if all He has to offer is death …

“You should sue the bastard. That’s my only contribution to all this Theology. Sue the bastard for walking out. How dare He. He oughta pay.”

The monologues that precede both Millennium Approaches, and its successor Perestroika, are intentionally (sometimes literally) preachy. One is spoken by a Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz, presiding over a funeral, and the other by Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov, “The World’s Oldest Living Bolshevik.” Rabbi Chemelwitz waxes poetic on how the deceased immigrant laying before him reminds him of, “how we struggled, and how we fought, for the family, for the Jewish home, so that you would not grow up here, in this strange place, in the melting pot where nothing melted.” He lambasts the descendants for giving their children “goyische names,” and assimilating to a kind of America that makes you forget your roots. In Part II, Aleksii’s monologue similarly curses us, for we could not possibly know the struggle he and his comrades overcame for a mere ideological future. That is what Jews and queers and the children of mass terror alike have always heard. The last survivors beg us to listen and to empathize and to never take for granted how fragile our freedoms really are. They make movies, write plays, and do whatever it takes to keep history alive and relevant, and to maintain the spark of hope that maybe we’ll be the generation that finally ends the madness.

My encounter with Angels at Michigan haunted me for days, and I needed a way to get back to that feeling. So, I made a pilgrimage. I found a way to see the show—all seven hours—on Broadway. By happenstance, I chose the day Tony Kushner was in the audience to celebrate the 25th anniversary of opening night. That’s how I knew I was exactly where I was meant to be; like at the end of Sister Act when the Pope shows up to listen to Whoopi’s whipped-into-shape choir. In this long journey to New York and back again, I realized something important: if theater is a religion, you don’t need to see a Broadway production to be transformed by religious text. Yes, Prior Walter’s monologue in Perestroika hit me like an oncoming train when uttered by Andrew Garfield, but that doesn’t mean the same feeling might not be achieved by a queer Millennial performing in a small theater anywhere else in the world. Like anything religious, it is all up to interpretation. As my life experience changes, so too does my understanding of Angels in America.

It’s not that Millennials don’t feel we need organized religion as much anymore. It’s that we’re learning there is an inherent religiousness to simply being human and wanting to fight for a better life for ourselves and for those who come next. Our forebears—professors, mentors, the older queers we meet in bars—may never have the words to express their stories of the AIDS Crisis, or the Holocaust, or the Next Terrible Thing. It is our duty to make ourselves understand. But it seems as though proactivity only comes from awakenings. I hope my fellow Millennials have the kind of religious experience I did. Let it change you. Let it fill your heart. Let it bring us closer to the generations before us, so that we may finally bridge this unnecessarily bitter gap. May you all find something that gives you the courage to scream and shout and demand—as one singular being—the right to a better life.

Eric Grant is a playwright, essayist, and theater-maker based in Chicago. He was an artist-in-residence at The MITTEN Lab in Bear Lake, Michigan, and his work has been presented at the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice and most recently at Second City's De Maat Theater. You can find him on Instagram and at www.eric-grant.net

#theater #queer #activism #AIDS #Eric Grant

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