From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Who Gets Stomped (was WARNING: Stealth African Marauding soc.motss)
Date: 11 Oct 92 19:15:57 GMT
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison


In article <1992Oct11.000827.22450@wam.umd.edu>
lovegod@wam.umd.edu (Donald Andrew Agarrat) writes:

>I sure wish soc.motss could be a more positive influence in
>my life.

I am trying to take a lot of things into account here,
Donald.  I read what you say and I have some idea of what you
mean, some smaller idea of what you feel, and a smaller yet
idea of what difference any of it makes in this world.

If you're paying attention to the responses made so far to
your posting, you should have seen some indication in them,
I think, that people are paying attention, and indeed have
always paid attention to what you've said.  Those people
have every right to expect that you will in turn pay
attention, for conversation is certainly a two-way street.
And if you don't -- in my impression, there's some reason to
wonder whether you will -- then the entire exercise at once
becomes fruitlessly unproductive.  And it won't be Nelson,
or Jack, or Melinda, or Ry, or Steve, or Shawn, or me who
has dropped the ball; they tried.  It will be you.

Ry and Melinda very neatly answered Nelson on how a person
might "know" the race of the contributors.  In one way, you
can't, but in the ways they mention, obviously you can.
There are, however, black and other nonwhite men and women
participating here, including some as regular writers, not
just as readers.

However *predominantly* white male it is here, it is not
*all* white or *all* male here, and unless you intend to
accuse those nonwhite, nonmale people of being some variety
of Toms, you have to find a way, I think, to relate to that,
to recognize it and not to discount it in fact or by
implication.

>I am SO tired of reading the deluge of bitchy remarks here.

About half of your own contributions here qualify as "bitchy
remarks," if anything does.  How do you square that?

One take on what you're saying here is that you are
consciously or unconsciously manipulating white male liberal
guilt, which in fact adds up to a racist double standard all
too common in the white world, but which in this instance
ensnares you too.

That liberal guilt trip makes it hard, sometimes, for people
to speak right up and call you out for saying or doing
really dumb things.  If you take that calling-out to be
"bitchy remarks" directed at you, I think you'll be making a
big mistake, because if you expect to be listened to, you'd
better be prepared to do some listening too.  And that
doesn't mean all sweetness and warm fuzzies.  Later on you
say you know the "let's all get along" plan is bullshit, yet
your whole line here is "gimme." How do you square that?

>I'm really tired of it.  I guess if that's what some of you
>feed off of, then so be it.

There's also the possibility you've not understood fully
what it's all about, not interpreted all the parts of it
fully nor judged them fairly.

With a wave of your angry hand, anger justified or not, you
sweep away and consign to the minor leagues all the
serious political and social discussion that takes place
here.  You consign to the ash heap all the support for the
newly uncloseted.  You make us the custodians of your
discontent.  This is simply not how life works, no matter
what one's interests are, what one's race is, what one's
politics are.

Out there in Oregon a few days ago, a white gay man and a
black lesbian were murdered.  You latch onto the minor topic
of icons or whatever as though that were the whole substance
around here, as though people in Oregon and Colorado and by
extension all of us weren't afraid for our very lives?

>This newsgroup supposedly promotes a society of people who
>love members of the same sex.

And you think it doesn't?  It obviously does, but perhaps
not in the way that makes the most sense to you, perhaps not
in a way that meets your particular interests or needs in
the most optimum way.

Well, if it doesn't do any of that, what do you really
expect?  You seem to be saying, "Make way for me, for my
interests, quit doing this shit I don't dig at all, make it
my way, or..." Or what?

>I think if it continues the way it's going, it should be
>renamed continuous.catfight.

The way it goes is the way it goes.  You want it to go
differently, you do what anyone would have to do: steer it.
There's more than enough evidence it's entirely steerable,
so what's the beef?

>Just the elitist airs some of us put on is enough to turn
>plenty of Black or other people of color away because they
>just don't want to hear White people squawking over who is
>the best icon and who is more well-known and who should be
>remembered the longest.

You mean you don't want to hear white people "squawking"
over Billie Holiday or Sarah Vaughn or Ella Fitzgerald?
That's wrong somehow?  Nobody stopped you from "squawking"
over Frederick Douglass, Lorraine Hansbury, Malcolm X or
Ibn Baraka, all of whom are important icons not just in
black culture but in my culture, and some of them in world
culture.  Is any of that really elitist, or is that just
one of those phrases you toss out because it makes people
run from their own minds?  It may be elitist in *your*
terms for me to talk about Pushkin, but if you're going
to use that argument, then you're going to have to start
calling it elitist when somebody knows what's the capital
of Ethiopia, because 90% of your fellow Americans don't.

>Things that are all so obviously objective and hopelessly
>immaterial.  Life is too short.

Take that to heart.  Make it live for you.  I would hope
doing so would lift some of the burden you bear.

>I personally don't want to wade through all the hissy fits
>just to find a positive, uplifting and productive post that
>may contain information relevant to a Black man.

If you invent the "read my mind" filter and get it to run
under Unix, I guarantee you you won't be the only person it
makes happier.  But things are what they are, and it
certainly isn't the worst of what you have to wade through,
so get over it.

>I propose that if soc.motss is, in the eternal words of
>James Brown (almost), A White Man's World, another newsgroup
>should exist that recognizes ALL gay people - NOT just the
>more intellectual, NOT just the (supposedly) more
>articulate, and definitely NOT just focusing on the desires
>of ONE race of people.

In the immortal words of Capt. Picard, make it so.

>A newsgroup that allows people to say something stupid once
>in a while without being relentlessly clobbered into never
>posting anything ever again.

Not one person here -- and I'm real sure about this -- has
passed up the opportunity to say something stupid once in a
while.  And if (as I suppose) you think you're getting
relentlessly clobbered -- you're getting affection and
concern, look at it that way -- then maybe you *did* say
something stupid.  But as with anyone else, it's the other
things you say, and the things you say over the longer haul,
that make a difference.  You will notice, as I mentioned at
the outset, that people have an excellent recall of most
things you've said here.

>Now, don't mistake this post for me saying "Can't we all
>just get along?" because I feel that that's bullshit.  I
>don't want to get along with you if you, as a White person,
>think that you're better than me and think that you are
>doing something for me by "gettin' along" with me.

Freedom is for everybody.  Everybody.  Nobody wants to be
patronized.  Nobody.

>And that goes double for you all because most of you are
>Gay.  

No it doesn't.  It goes just as much, neither more nor less.

>I go to a historically White college and I see the kids
>who will be you in 8-10 years.  They are ignorant, but when
>approached with the proper information, they become
>"tolerant" because they feel like it's the fashionable thing
>to do.

Tell us something we *don't* know.

>Meanwhile, their views don't change; my views just become
>"tolerable" to them.  Then they think that they're doing the
>world a big favor by "tolerating" me.  I'm never really
>accepted, but their "tolerance" deceives you into thinking
>that I am.

Look Donald, I don't know what you think, but I don't think
you can get away with much of that around here.  We covered
a lot of this ground here just a few months ago.  The society
is racist from top to bottom, inside and out.  Most of the
people here don't think they *personally* are racists, but
I for one didn't buy that.  I have too much racism left over
inside myself, despite a half century of trying to void it,
to think that I will ever not have racism within me.  Be
that as it may, I suspect -- suspect strongly -- that quite
a few people in soc.motss -- and here I mean white people --
are fully prepared to go *way* beyond that fake tolerance
you mention, to accept you as you are, whatever you are.

Racism has not gone away in my entire lifetime.  As you are
yet young, I wish I could think it possible for it to be
gone in your lifetime.  As it is structural in virtually all
societies on the planet, though clearly less so and more so
elsewhere than in the United States, I don't think it will
go away until centuries after you're dead.  Yet you are
alive now.  You're only gonna get one shot.  You can make it
better, others can help make it better, but there's too far
to go to make racism and reacting to it the only thing in
life.  Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people have a rather
parallel equation to balance, and each of us does what we
can, as we can.  All this covers quite a wide spectrum,
depending on the individual people involved, but racism
or no, sexism and homophobia or no, you gotta live, too.

>Over the last couple of months, my hatred for the average
>White person has been quite difficult to handle.  My rage
>continues to grow astronomically, because I know that race
>relations in this country are either going nowhere or
>getting worse.

Get help.  Please get professional help.  Don't let
it ruin you, as indeed ..

>Last night, I beat up a white boy with a baseball bat
>because he said to me, "Hey Black Boy, suck my dick!" I
>swore to God, I was going to kill him, because I didn't let
>the bat stop.  I keep swinging trying to swing it all the
>way through him.

... it very well could do.  I think most of us who've been
called lezzies and faggots from passing cars and
fraternity-house front porches in college towns, most of
who've been spat upon or shoved at demos and marches, most
of us who've walked to our parked cars in fear on the way
out of bars at night in bad neighborhoods, most of us have a
pretty good idea of the rage you feel.  It isn't the same
rage, by any means, but it's a mighty big rage, a fully
justified rage, and few indeed would be those of us,
especially the males among us, who haven't had fantasies of
gross violence in response to that rage.

But carrying out that violence in actual fact, that's just
plain old ruination.  My nephew is a fundamentalist
Christian and a racist to boot, but if you or anyone else
bashed him with a ballbat, *my own* safety requires me to
want you locked up.

>I may be end up getting kicked out because of it, but I'm
>not worried.  I warned the RA that this would happen, but he
>chose not to do anything.  He shouldn't have left it up to
>me ...

I repeat (Steve said it too): if you're really out of
control, for chrissake get some help before it's too late.
If you don't it's gonna be you gets stomped, and that is not
a good thing.  Be mad as hell, if you want, but don't be a
fool!

-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson
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Newsgroups: soc.motss