An Humble Response to Frankie Gaffney's Identity Politics Article About Straight White Males

Earlier this month Frankie Gaffney wrote an article about the harrowing difficulties of being a straight, white male. Granted, he doesn't live in America where we're still dealing with the repercussions of being a society founded on the backs of slavery and racism. Nor is he a gay man in Chechnya. Nor is a woman in the Middle East. However, he still felt compelled to write on the social injustice he faces as a cis-gendered white male. The original article is here:



http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/identity-politics-is-utterly-ineffective-at-anything-other-than-dividing-people-1.3087639


He originally titled the article "Equating Straight White Men with Privilege is Idiocy."


It looks like he has since changed his prickish title to a milder, longer -


"Identity Politics is Utterly Ineffective at Anything Other Than Dividing People."


A friend of mine posted this on Facebook and here's my response.


Okay, I finally have time to re-read and compose a semi-articulate response to this article.


First of all let me qualify myself here by saying I am a queer, white girl that grew up in a trailer park on food stamps after being removed from my zealous Southern Baptist abusive parents. However, I can still recognize I’m privileged.


Saying your experience as a white person, straight person, male or a combination of all three isn’t saying you’re automatically a 1% living a life of wealth and happiness. It’s saying that if you have one of these traits and especially a combination of the three you’re not going to face in general the social prejudice and snares that a person that is not straight, white, male or a combination (lawd) of all three.


I am queer. I am white. But I can acknowledge that I have privilege as a white person and a straight passing person. Surely, you know that people who are not white, not straight and not male face prejudice and harassment all of their lives. Surely you can acknowledge that.


I take issue with the article right away and I’ll start with the title.


“Equating straight white men with privilege is idiocy.”


Oh, idiocy is it? Only a person of privilege so convinced in the superiority of their opinion would instantly call anyone who takes issue with his feeble opinion “an idiot.” Which the author does straight out the gate so pardon me but --- fuck him.


Then we’re instantly hit with this garbage -


“But people who talk a lot about “choice” and “freedom” chose for me, and decided that’s what my identity should be reduced to.”


I’m sorry. Mother fucker you did not. Choice? No. Look at the work LGBTQ activist are doing within their community. Look at what gay men are dying for in Chechnya. This asshole clearly hasn’t been paying attention. We’ve been advocating that being LGBTQ isn’t a choice. It’s something you’re born with and therefore you shouldn’t be penalized within society. But up to a few years ago LGBTQ couldn’t even marry members of the same sex and it’s still legally acceptable in many cases in America to discriminate against them and not hire them.


Was redlining not a thing? Is gentrification not a thing? Are there laws allowing people to not hire people if they’re not straight? Last I checked that wasn’t a thing. Gay people are dying all over the world but let’s carry on with this dude’s hurt feeling acting like he’s been victimized by actual oppressed peoples of the world that are --- did I mention --- dying.


The author claims -


“The further irony is the most patronising people I’ve ever encountered are the people who explain to me why it’s fine to use words and phrases such as “mansplain….”


Okay? This isn’t fact. This is a blatantly bias experience. Further undermined when he says -


“If the CIA or MI5 wanted to encourage a style of “activism” that could consume an infinite amount of energy, yet was utterly ineffective at anything other than dividing people, it would be the prominence of this very type of politics.”


On what planet is that not self-superior and and patronizing as fuck? This guy is tone DEAF. Tone deaf I yell in a vain hope this dude will ever recognize his own blatant hypocrisy. He doesn’t want people to stop talking identity politics. This entire article is participating in the discourse. He just wants the discourse to happen on his terms. HMM - why oh why could it be that people have started to pinpoint cis-gendered white male fragility as we begin to pursue social justice for the minorities in our society? HMM. Ironic indeed.


“These people don’t want to separate church and state, they want to institute a new religion, just with themselves at the helm.”


Oh the laughable fucking hypocrisy. Nope. that’s not what feminist or black people or gay people want. NOPE. They just want to not face discrimination and have equal opportunities in a world where the majority of leaders taking away our food, clean water, reproductive rights and creating privatised prisons are white males.


“Later on that same day my mate Eric from Tallaght shared a video on Facebook of a woman assaulting a white fellow because he had dreadlocks. This woman has many defenders, who will explain at great length the evils of “cultural appropriation”. “F***in’ eejit” was Eric’s view of her, and I’m inclined to agree.”


Dude has totally mistaken the discussion on cultural appropriation for whatever this bullshit point about cisgendered white males is. He’s so far off the mark. He finishes by wondering ---


“I wonder if the people who spend their “activism” on these issues ever went hungry, ever worried where they were going to live or had their electricity cut off.”


The answer is yes. And you just solidified the problem with you and your ilk. You continue your superiority within society by acting victimized again and again and again and then conjecturing the idiocy and privilege of others you disagree with. THE VERY THING YOU'RE CLAIMING TO DESPISE. When people in Flint (whose population is mostly black) don’t have clean water. When gays in Chechnya are dying. When women in the Middle East are being stoned to death. This guy is grotesque. You wonder if people have had their electricity cut off? I wonder something. I wonder if the author is as fucking stupid, ignorant and self absorbed as he sounds.


As I said in the beginning. I’m smart enough to realize that having privilege as a white person doesn’t mean I’m licking from a silver spoon. If this guy wants to do good in a realm he claims irks him he needs to recognize his privilege triple times over and then grow a pair and get his hands dirty. As it stands this jerk is vile.

Accepting Love is Hard Sometimes

Growing up we're all like - ohemgee being loved is the greatest! Especially little girls like me spoon-fed Disney Princess fairy tales in the 90's and 80's rom-coms and 60's Rodgers and Hammerstein's musicals. Being in love looked like it was the shit. It didn't help that in most of these fantasies being in love usually accompanied a swift marriage and an inherited fortune. Being in love was the bomb. It was like winning the life lottery, the emotions lottery AND the lottery lottery. Love was lit.


Now I'm turning thirty one in a week or two and I have some thoughts. Love is pretty cool but it can also be damaging as hell. Loving the wrong person at the wrong time can get you into some serious shit. Sometimes it can work out but it takes a lot of (well) work, introspection and time to untangle the knots of whatever it is that composes the wrongness of said relationship. Sometimes it takes just as much effort to realize that things aren't going to sort themselves out and it's time to move onto the next life lesson.


Then there are the people that come into your life and they break you. They take your very existence and snap it over their knee like a kindling twig. CRACK! And forever after that love is weirdly synonymous with Disney animal talking companions, heart-rending affection and massive, massive amounts of emotional pain. Your brain gets jumbled. The path to love has a big ole firewall on it and you can't remember the password to access what it feels like anymore. I mean what love really feels like --- that unabashed, vulnerable, fearless kind of affection you can only have before someone tosses your heart in the blender and turns that shit to eleven.


When this kind of thing happens (and it happens to almost all of us in some form or fashion) it becomes far easier to accept the fact that people will hurt, use and lie to us than to accept that they will love us in a healthy way. We start to doubt our own judgement and decision making abilities. Even when someone is affectionate (be it partner, auntie or bestie) we tentatively accept their gentleness with a tentative side-eye and a shaky, uncertain smile. What does this person want? What are they going to DO to us?


The most nefarious phase of the "accepting love degradation process" is when it effects are self-love, worth, confidence bits. I know in my own head the inner dialogue often goes something like ---


"Well, you dated that one guy for five years despite him being completely abusive so how do you really know if this person is safe for (friendship, romance, collaboration, etc)?"


"Look can you just trust me on this one? I've thought about this A LOT and I'm pretty sure..."


"Yeah, well you were pretty sure about abusive five year guy too weren'tcha?"

"Okay, Me. Well, when you put it that way ..."


The damage others do to us becomes truly nightmarish when they exit our lives and we pick up where they left off --- doing the damage they'd still be doing to us on their behalf. It becomes easier to accept varying executions of the same destructive behaviors from whoever we meet. We hurt ourselves, let others hurt us and then wonder in bafflement, "Why ME?" Unable to step outside the cycle and realize that we're the ones proliferating the harm by forgetting our worth or never rebuilding it. When we get rid of someone only to carry on their destructive habits in their stead it diminishes the impact getting rid of them has on our lives.


The product of love can be a beautiful boost in confidence, security, camaraderie and happiness but the product of love can also be a tumorous life lesson that can destroy us if not located and extracted. But we don't see that side of it in Disney films. The best our childhoods can do is imbue us with an wavering sense of self-worth and empathy to prepare us for these sorts of encounters before we're unleashed as adults unto the world.


I want you to take away a few things from this article and I'll tell you what they are.


--- We need to find a real world way to prepare children for the hazards of romance instead of depicting a one sided version of the pursuit of marriage
--- Sometimes we have to take accountability for hurting ourselves because we haven't recovered from damage taken upon the battlefield of life
--- It's okay to consciously, in the present, open your hands to accept love and sometimes as an adult that is very rare and difficult thing to do


Love is not always an instant, youthful, freeing experience that comes rushing through the flood gates and into the dawn of our adult lives, teeming into our souls to rid us of sadness FOREVER. Okay, I'm gonna be honest it's never that way. More often, it takes work to build those gates and cautiously open them and that's okay --- just don't let them stay closed for too long. Regardless, there will still be times you are less than happy. Love is not the antidote to melancholy and poverty as depicted in aforementioned fables. (But I'm guessing you already know that.)


Self love and care is not always easy to generate or access even though the media will depict it as bubble bath and shopping sessions. It's not always easy to craft love for yourself without packaging it in hesitant disdain or fear. Sometimes people have to deconstruct an entire scaffolding of uncertainty and stonewalls bricked in fear to access their own self-worth. That's okay.


Happiness is fickle and sadness is fleeting but love is sustainable. I hope that today and every day we can take down those barricades of fear block by block and use all of those materials that life has given us to build a place for love to incubate. I hope that for you and I hope that for me.


Now go kickass.


-Rue