The Puriteens Need to Chill
Same shit, different generation | #TC98
Welcome to Third Cultured – a foreign policy and LGBTQIA+ politics newsletter – published by yours truly, Kyle Borland. My goal is to highlight the unique role Queer people play in the politics of the United States and the world-at-large.
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This edition:
Opinion Essay
Notable Quotes
#FreePalestine Update
Stories to Watch
Opinion Essay
If you pay any attention to Queer Twitter, then you probably saw Millennials and Zoomers going back and forth about what is/is not allowed at Pride over the weekend.
The youth are confused. They subscribe to some half-baked ideology that they are the “good queers” to the “bad gays.” Specifically, the “bad, white gays” that want to “flaunt our sexuality in front of children.”
It would be funny if it wasn’t so insidious and tired.
They are under some deluded conception that if they act “respectable” then the straights will accept Queer people more widely. That we won’t be seen as “freaks” or “perverts.” If they separate themselves from the dirty fags, then they’ll be seen as “normal.” If the leather daddies and the pup boys go back in the closet and are out of sight, then the cishets wouldn’t be trying to pass 250+ anti-LGBTQIA+ laws in 2021!
Hell, they already succeeded at enacting 23 of them. (And, that’s just the US.)
In Iran, people are beheading gay family members.
In Israel, queer Palestinians live under constant apartheid.
In Ghana, 21 people were arrested for attending an LGBT rights meeting. (Help get the effort to get them out of prison and to provide with basic needs like food, water, personal hygiene items, and toiletries – Donate Here!)
There are some who want to pull a hood over their eyes and pretend the younger generation isn’t sliding on sexual liberation as a whole. Just look at TikTok. It’s littered with anti-LGBTQIA+ content that explicitly encourages violence against LGBTQ+ people and celebrates homophobic speech or actions.
What’s saddest about Gen Z and its view of Queerness is that it believes “normal” is possible when it is the antithesis of being Queer. There is no amount of distance they can put between themselves and “hypersexual white gays” that will stop cops from treating them how they’ve always treated us. Did they miss how NYPD and SFPD treated Queers during a Stonewall commemoration and Pride 2019, respectively?
Tenderqueers, Baby Gays – I say this with love – we will never be normal.
There is no shape you can contort yourselves into that will please the homophobic and transphobic presences in your lives. Don’t let their beliefs get in so deep that you try to control other Queer people looking to celebrate in the few spaces we’ve fought and won the right to do so. You know not what you ask or the damage you’re recycling.
There will always be kink and sex at Pride.
Queer liberation will always reject the police.
Pride started with a riot against the police and it is insulting anyone would expect Queer people to make space for pigs. Only outdone in absurdity by this effort from LGBTQIA+ youth to institutionalize puritanical moral codes in Queer spaces. As a Millennial Queer person, I know a huge part of the problem is that LGBTQIA+ history isn’t taught in schools. Young people learn about these things from the media, church, Tumblr, TikTok, and everywhere except directly from Queer people. They are taught that we are dirty before they’re ever told that we are so beautiful we celebrate it every year; that there is a “good” way to be Queer and a “bad” way rather than that the infinite multitudes within us are our magic.
These are tropes as old as time: “I’m not one of those…” “Keep the freaks away from the children…” “We’d be normal if it wasn’t for the fags, they give us good gays a bad name…”
What’s coming out of Gen Z’s mouth is insidious in nature. It’s laced with the “progressive” rhetoric of consent and power dynamics that sounds crafted right out of an evangelical focus group. Rather than seeing older Queer people as cultural forebears and the holders of our history, the Puriteens have ingested every old smear against our community even when they’ve grown up with countless examples of LGBTQ+ people and victories in every walk of life.
As mad as I am, I know we have to focus on educating them because the forces we’re up against are never going away. Not here or anywhere else on Earth. We will have to fight for every generation without giving an inch. Liberation is worth the struggle.
But, damn…fuck these kids.
Stay safe and get vaccinated, beautiful people. Thanks for reading.
Roll Tide,
Kyle (@kgborland)
PS – Here are some great reads worth your time.
Cuba Ministry of Public Health displays Pride flag in support of LGBTQ community (LA Blade)
Donate: Help arrested LGBTQI activists in Ghana (GoFundMe)
How Biden Is Repeating Obama's Yemen Errors in Gaza (Eunomia)
Because the U.S. has armed and supported these different governments, our government is complicit in what they do to their neighbors and to the people under their control. Just as the Obama administration could not credibly claim that the U.S. was not a party to the war on Yemen, the Biden administration cannot pretend that it is uninvolved in the bombardment of civilian areas in Gaza. The U.S. is implicated in everything that our clients do with the weapons our government provides them, and our government has an obligation to rein them in when they use these weapons to terrorize and kill innocent people. That means cutting off all pending and future arms sales until further notice, and that is just the start.
Ice cream parlor raises minimum wage to $15/hr, flooded with job apps (MSNBC)
In The Fight For LGBTQ Rights, Lessons From The 1990s Culture Wars (NPR)
Jeremy Pope Is Ready To Break Free And Claim What's His (Out)
Judge a Book Not By its Gender (Longreads)
Lavender Book App Maps Safe Spaces for LGBTQ POC (Gay City News)
Limits of Bidenism (Long Paw of Reason)
One of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre — 107 years old — wants justice (Washington Post)
Reflections on LGBTQ Icons Harvey Milk and Frank Kameny (LA Blade)
SF to mark nation's first LGBTQ API Week (Bay Area Reporter)
The graying of great-power politics (Washington Post)
Who Is Fighting the Economic Oppression of LGBTQI+ People? (Advocate)
Notable Quotes
“Without Harvey Milk and barrier-breakers like him, I would not be walking the halls of Congress today. Harvey showed America that openly LGBTQ+ people like me belong in positions of power and laid a blueprint for us to claim that power. More than 40 years after his tragic murder, Harvey’s legacy lives on as we continue working to affirm true justice for all LGBTQ+ people. I look forward to expanding upon his important legacy.”
– U.S. Representative Mondaire Jones, the Freshman Representative to Leadership in the 117th Congress, one of four members of the latest generation of LGBTQ+ politicians asked about the impact Harvey Milk had on their lives as well as the political environment today. Harvey Milk Day is May 22, and he would’ve been 91.
#FreePalestine Updates
11 days, 8 calls and a ceasefire: Inside Biden's response to the Gaza crisis (Axios)
The bottom line: Just 24 hours elapsed between Biden's urging of Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire and Israel's vote to do so.
Critics of Biden's approach — including many fellow Democrats— argue that he should have applied greater pressure earlier into a conflict in which at least 248 Palestinians were killed.
U.S. officials, meanwhile, argue that Biden used his political capital and reputation as a friend of Israel to both avoid a public confrontation with Netanyahu and help deliver a ceasefire relatively quickly.
Question: Who do you agree with? The critics or team Biden?
An interview with Emily Wilder, recent Stanford grad fired from AP job over criticisms of Israel (SFGATE)
Gaza and the Palestinian Struggle, with Sandra Tamari and Darin Hussein (FX)
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a resolution to stop the $735m arms sale to Israel in hopes of blocking the sale of Joint Direct Attack Munitions and Small Diameter Bombs. Unfortunately, Sanders backed off the pressure on Sunday’s Face the Nation when he said it was time to “tone down” the apartheid rhetoric against Israel. Very disappointing from him.
.@BernieSanders is undermining the Palestinian cause. He cannot be a gatekeeper policing how Palestinians can talk about reality. Israel is an apartheid state. To deny that is to side with it. https://t.co/TyRrhZYujKSome progressive lawmakers, including AOC, use the term "apartheid" to describe Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Bernie Sanders' former Jewish outreach director says the charged language can fuel anti-Semitic incidents. "I think we should tone down the rhetoric," Sanders says. https://t.co/lIsXnHhVTB
Face The Nation @FaceTheNation
Stories to Watch
35: The number of House Republicans that voted with Democrats (252-175) to pass legislation creating an independent commission to look into the Jan 6 Insurrection.
$34 billion: Kansas City Southern railway is combining with Canadian National Railway in a $33.6 billion buyout bid, which will create the first freight-rail network linking the U.S., Mexico, and Canada by connecting ports in the three countries.
Digital Currency: The Federal Reserve will release a report this summer on its plans to create its own central bank digital currency, which China did earlier this year. Unsurprisingly, Beijing banned all other cryptocurrencies so they can track every single transaction within China and on Chinese platforms worldwide.
Greater Idaho: The red counties of Oregon and the northernmost part of California are abandoning their dreams for “the state of Jefferson” and are instead trying to leave their current states to join Idaho.
Northern Triangle: Biden wants to invest $4 billion over four years in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras in an effort to stem the flow of migrants to the border. The plan calls for corruption reforms whereas the governments can get stringless money from Beijing, but DC might not hate having some help investing in Central America.
