I really do appreciate what Rachel has said in the above post. I
think that these last few words of hers have proven a point that I
have been trying to make now for the last few weeks. Anger points
us into a chaotic flurry of revenge or justice or whatever else may
be floating up there in our psyche. Anger does not solve problems;
being that this topic of this message is War (and coincidentally
the Peace Talks are taking place 15 mins from my house here
in Dayton, OH) tell me when the war actually ends. Does it end
when the body count is high enough? or when all the major cities
are flattened and a wasteland? or does it end when people have
seen that fighting led them to blood shed, but talking led them to
SOME semblance of a solution.
I don't want to take away the severity and weight of what Rachel
went through. But I also don't want to take away from all of the mothers
who've held their dying children: victims of gang war. I don't want to
take away from all the families that lost their sons in this war or that
war. I don't want to take away from the fathers crying in the rain over
their dead daughter who shot a little too much into her arm in her
rebuttal against the war on drugs. I don't want all the death and crime
and disease being done to each and every man and woman, black
and white and red and all, gay or straight.. I don't want this one terrible
story of an attack on a female lead anyone to forget that WE as a
SOCIETY are suffering, not JUST Rachel.. not JUST women.. not
JUST blacks.. not JUST anyone.. ALL of us are suffering. The pain
you feel inside is the same pain that I feel when people sit back and
take pot-shots at my queer brothers.
I've been bisexual all my life. A few years ago when I was living in
Memphis, I used to date a guy named Chris. As it happened, one
night we went over to a friends of his that I wasn't acquainted with.
He had been beaten badly by a gang of queer bashers. I had to
sit there and look at the man that was beaten to a pulp for the same
"social crime" that I to have commited. It was decided that larger
members in the house that evening would hunt down the men and
avenge Tony (if I'm remembering his name correctly). I couldn't
belive that I was listening to this. They were willing to go out and
reduce themselves to the levels of their attackers. What did they
consider their attackers? Low lifes, assholes, on and on.. and
that's what they were making of themselves.
I've said before that people deserve what they gave, and so
being that Tony was attacked, his attackers deserve no less.
But what happens when people take justice into their own hands,
led only by revenge? What happens when the straight community
then reacts to the queers reactions, and then the gays re-react to
the straights reactions.. and on and on and on..
What happens when men start reacting to the womens actions,
and on and on and on..
Yes.. there is pain in our world, but don't delude yourselves in
thinking that you're the poor woman hated by the world, because
for every abused woman on the earth, there's a gay man beaten
to death by the straights, there's a black man shot to death in a
gang dispute, there's a white man murdered in the back ally of
some city somewhere, there's a child starving somewhere in the
world.. the list is endless.
If you start putting yourselves above these other people and their
pain, you're no better than the attacker than considered him or
herself above you.
Once again, supporting everyone's individuality: Critter