Thanks for your response, Donald! I appreciate that you took a little bit more time and effort to nuance your ad hominem attack than the other white men who have responded to this piece. It doesn’t feel good to be grouped into a category, huh? I understand this and where you are coming from, and would like to draw your attention to a few things.
Did you know that LGBTQ is an acronym that comprises people of multiple genders and sexualities? We are not all the same, just as white men are not all the same… but what we do share in common is not-being members of dominant gender/sexual identities. It is thus not possible to be an “LGBTQ male,” and using the term in this way shows me that you are doing the very same thing you’re scrutinizing me for doing. I would say that I am a member of the LGBTQ community, but even this is a bit inaccurate because this phrasing again supposes that this community is monolithic when it isn’t. This said, though, it is still useful to speak in terms of patterns of behaviors so we can understand how groups behave in somewhat predictable ways.
I admit that I have been working through feelings of victimization, and appreciate you identifying this (albeit condescendingly). What you should acknowledge, however, is that I (and many other marginalized people) am consistently mistreated by white men in public. I have yet to be abused by a person of color in public; it is usually white men who say and do fucked up things on a regular basis. This is not a coincidence, and I am drawing attention to these patterns of behaviors in this piece. You can call this victimization, but I prefer to call it being abused. I notice, describe, and analyze these kinds of behaviors as part of my survival.
It would behoove you to listen to what marginalized people have to say about being mistreated, because you’ll probably find that it is consistently members of your demographic (i.e., straight and cisgender white men) who mistreat others. It’s also not up to me as an “LGBTQ male” to make white men stop being assholes toward queer people because it is usually straight white men who abuse us in the first place. It would be much more effective for straight white men to hold each other accountable for inappropriate behaviors… but first these behaviors must be identified and understood to be inappropriate. Have you heard of the term victim blaming? It’s the flipside of invalidating what someone has to say because they appear victimized.
This piece is a set of observations about the behaviors of white men in a warehouse that aims to reframe the meaning of the white man’s burden, which is a term that has been around since the early 1900s. If you’re uncomfortable with what I’ve noticed in these men, then perhaps there is something within you that I am also identifying. The things that threaten us say a lot about what we refuse to see in ourselves. I will reflexively admit that I have come a long way toward understanding how white supremacy has affected me; I used to act like these men, and didn’t realize how much it was hurting me until pursuing higher education. How much work have you done toward understand how white supremacy affects you? I think I know the answer.
Lastly, I recommend that you read the book The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould because it outlines the deeply racist (i.e., white supremacist) history behind the concept of intelligence.
