Ever since that LGBTQ survey came out, my wife and I (lesbians) have been doing bits about the oppression of Gen Z queers.
“Ugh, I just got microaggressed at Target. I mean, the cashier didn’t say anything, but I could tell he wasn’t validating my demisexuality.”
“God, that’s awful. It reminds me of when all my friends died of AIDS.”
Tasteless jokes aside, the responses to some of the other questions are disturbing. A significant % of Gen Z queers say they avoid stores, restaurants, and the doctor for fear of discrimination. It’s not healthy. For every 20yo queer person who feels empowered by their TikTok diary of oppression, there are a bunch of kids watching who think “Oh my God, the world wants to murder me.”
Solid bits! I mean, I cancel thee, but solid bits!
I agree about the survey; when I read all the questions, I came away with a sense of "God, are these kids going to be okay?" The cumulative effect is a portrait of young people who are dominated by fear and fragility, and those aren't qualities that serve people well in life.
People definitely have the luxury of being more sensitive, which is good and bad; I'd rather not go back to the days of casually throwing around homophobic slurs, but I wonder if young queers aren't being trained to treat anything other than complete acceptance as hostility. On the other hand, judging from the BS coming out of TX and FL, there's some real pushback and threats. the Nazis came for "degenerates" first, after all.
Remember the “It gets better” campaign? It was credited with literally saving lives, but I suspect that today it would be derided as “toxic positivity.” I do feel for these young folk, but, simultaneously kinda want to give them the ole “snap outta it!”
A mile from the house I grew up in, there was a field where I'm told they had Klan rallies in the '50s and '60s. KLAN RALLIES!!! For all of our problems, it is not common to be driving home and think "Oh, hey, look: A Klan rally."
Excellent article. I know a guy in his 40s who just spends all day self-righteously yelling on Twitter about how bad Trump and the GOP is, how awful TERFs are, etc. He also has this borderline-creepy hero worship of the Parkland kids.
It's all very cringe, but behind it all is the fact that materially, he's in awful shape. No car, a dead end job, and little chance of moving up in the world. And that was before the pandemic.
Freddie DeBoer has often said we're living in a crisis of meaninglessness, so people go searching for it in places that they probably shouldn't. I couldn't agree more.
I forgot where, but some *really good author* (Hemingway?) described war as mostly boredom punctuated by terror. Pretty sure the civil rights was similar, but they don't show pictures of people putting together mailing lists and you know *organizing* for social justice. The existential crisis of this century is Catastrophic Climate Disruption, but that doesn't make for a good video game any more than Victory Gardens and collecting tin foil and ration cards makes for a good video game about WWII.
Part of the problem is that the solutions of most of the real problems in the world are out of reach. Can I reform Congress? Take action against climate change? Fix the prison-industrial complex? Even change a damn thing by voting? I don't know what tangible good it did, but joining the BLM protests was the one thing in 2020 that DIDN'T feel like sitting around waiting for death. Eventually, that petered out to meetings and petitions, which may or may not have changed anything, but I remember that moment.
I'm not sure that the survey reporting increased discrimination against young LGBTQ people is entirely a matter of increased sensitivity. Young people have very little control over where they live and who they interact with. An openly gay person is much more likely to hear slurs when they're surrounded by 1000 high schoolers in Alabama than if they're surrounded by a 30-person office in San Francisco.
I mostly agree with your point about hero worship, though I would say that people like Rittenhouse are channeling militia movements and not so much WWII vets or the military. And there is precedent for something similar on the left with antifa- I'm thinking of Wolfe's essay on radical chic - which also combines hero worship and the use of symbolic weapons. But I disagree that the racial justice movement is suffering from the same sense of self-aggrandizement as you call it. I don't think you would argue that white nationalists chanting "Jews will not replace us" or insurrectionists threatening to hang the VP because of a supposedly stolen election are fundamentally the same as Generation Z because both are "exaggerating perceived threats." Even if I accept that premise (more on that in a sec) it seems to me that the former is clearly more dangerous and more of a threat to the public (especially as it enjoys the support of sitting members of Congress and much of right-wing media).
On the topic of that study, I guess I'm surprised by the tone of the comments here that homophobia and racism are relics of the past. These responses come eerily close to arguments like "...but slavery ended 200 years ago! Or "what racism? The Rock was in Jungle Cruise!" I would posit that there is greater evidence that demonstrates rising hate crimes against Asian Americans, an increase in murders against transgender people, and data showing Blacks are punished more in schools or profiled more by the police than any claims that Jews are replacing White America or that Mexicans are flooding through an open border bringing crime and disease.
Ever since that LGBTQ survey came out, my wife and I (lesbians) have been doing bits about the oppression of Gen Z queers.
“Ugh, I just got microaggressed at Target. I mean, the cashier didn’t say anything, but I could tell he wasn’t validating my demisexuality.”
“God, that’s awful. It reminds me of when all my friends died of AIDS.”
Tasteless jokes aside, the responses to some of the other questions are disturbing. A significant % of Gen Z queers say they avoid stores, restaurants, and the doctor for fear of discrimination. It’s not healthy. For every 20yo queer person who feels empowered by their TikTok diary of oppression, there are a bunch of kids watching who think “Oh my God, the world wants to murder me.”
Solid bits! I mean, I cancel thee, but solid bits!
I agree about the survey; when I read all the questions, I came away with a sense of "God, are these kids going to be okay?" The cumulative effect is a portrait of young people who are dominated by fear and fragility, and those aren't qualities that serve people well in life.
Thank you very much! And yes, Carina is my unofficial hype-woman, kind of the Flav R Flav of this operation.
People definitely have the luxury of being more sensitive, which is good and bad; I'd rather not go back to the days of casually throwing around homophobic slurs, but I wonder if young queers aren't being trained to treat anything other than complete acceptance as hostility. On the other hand, judging from the BS coming out of TX and FL, there's some real pushback and threats. the Nazis came for "degenerates" first, after all.
Remember the “It gets better” campaign? It was credited with literally saving lives, but I suspect that today it would be derided as “toxic positivity.” I do feel for these young folk, but, simultaneously kinda want to give them the ole “snap outta it!”
"One of the most annoying ticks of the left is to pretend that present-day America is largely indistinguishable from 1950s Alabama."
I will never understand this sentiment, as long as I live. It is absurd. I was alive in the 60's and 70's. I remember the 60's and 70's.
In the 50's, Bayard Rustin was screamed at, insulted, assaulted, arrested, and served time on a chain gang for his activism.
Fast forward to 2021: "That damn well-meaning but clueless white woman complemented my hairstyle. What a racist."
A mile from the house I grew up in, there was a field where I'm told they had Klan rallies in the '50s and '60s. KLAN RALLIES!!! For all of our problems, it is not common to be driving home and think "Oh, hey, look: A Klan rally."
Excellent article. I know a guy in his 40s who just spends all day self-righteously yelling on Twitter about how bad Trump and the GOP is, how awful TERFs are, etc. He also has this borderline-creepy hero worship of the Parkland kids.
It's all very cringe, but behind it all is the fact that materially, he's in awful shape. No car, a dead end job, and little chance of moving up in the world. And that was before the pandemic.
Freddie DeBoer has often said we're living in a crisis of meaninglessness, so people go searching for it in places that they probably shouldn't. I couldn't agree more.
I forgot where, but some *really good author* (Hemingway?) described war as mostly boredom punctuated by terror. Pretty sure the civil rights was similar, but they don't show pictures of people putting together mailing lists and you know *organizing* for social justice. The existential crisis of this century is Catastrophic Climate Disruption, but that doesn't make for a good video game any more than Victory Gardens and collecting tin foil and ration cards makes for a good video game about WWII.
Part of the problem is that the solutions of most of the real problems in the world are out of reach. Can I reform Congress? Take action against climate change? Fix the prison-industrial complex? Even change a damn thing by voting? I don't know what tangible good it did, but joining the BLM protests was the one thing in 2020 that DIDN'T feel like sitting around waiting for death. Eventually, that petered out to meetings and petitions, which may or may not have changed anything, but I remember that moment.
I'm not sure that the survey reporting increased discrimination against young LGBTQ people is entirely a matter of increased sensitivity. Young people have very little control over where they live and who they interact with. An openly gay person is much more likely to hear slurs when they're surrounded by 1000 high schoolers in Alabama than if they're surrounded by a 30-person office in San Francisco.
I mostly agree with your point about hero worship, though I would say that people like Rittenhouse are channeling militia movements and not so much WWII vets or the military. And there is precedent for something similar on the left with antifa- I'm thinking of Wolfe's essay on radical chic - which also combines hero worship and the use of symbolic weapons. But I disagree that the racial justice movement is suffering from the same sense of self-aggrandizement as you call it. I don't think you would argue that white nationalists chanting "Jews will not replace us" or insurrectionists threatening to hang the VP because of a supposedly stolen election are fundamentally the same as Generation Z because both are "exaggerating perceived threats." Even if I accept that premise (more on that in a sec) it seems to me that the former is clearly more dangerous and more of a threat to the public (especially as it enjoys the support of sitting members of Congress and much of right-wing media).
On the topic of that study, I guess I'm surprised by the tone of the comments here that homophobia and racism are relics of the past. These responses come eerily close to arguments like "...but slavery ended 200 years ago! Or "what racism? The Rock was in Jungle Cruise!" I would posit that there is greater evidence that demonstrates rising hate crimes against Asian Americans, an increase in murders against transgender people, and data showing Blacks are punished more in schools or profiled more by the police than any claims that Jews are replacing White America or that Mexicans are flooding through an open border bringing crime and disease.