Friday, November 4, 2011

Not So Friendly-Fire

I wrote a post about glitter-bombing a while back (which can be found HERE). It appears that this phenomenon has made something of a return, but in a somewhat worse manner. In recent days, Dan Savage (one of the men behind the "It Gets Better" campaign, a syndicated sex columnist, and the guy who caused Rick Santorum's Google problem) was glitter-bombed during a public appearance for his alleged transphobia. Before this, the primary targets of glitter-bombers were people like Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty, people who are decidedly against equality for the entire LGBT community. This latest incident was against no such person.

I'm not here to debate whether or not Savage is, in fact, transphobic. What I'm here to say is that the people who perpetrated this incident went about expressing their anger in an extremely wrong and inappropriate manner. If you are going to accuse someone of being transphobic, show the proof and make the case. Show the video evidence. Give us some audio. Show us some quotes. SOMETHING!!! The main reason I don't know if he is actually transphobic or not is that no one has made the case. All I know is he was accused and (sort of) assaulted. What they attempted to do was show Savage to be discriminatory against transgendered people. What they actually did was make Savage a victim with whom people would sympathize. Counter-productive.

In addition to this, there is the fact that the LGBT community needs to stick together to reach our common goal of equality. When we fight amongst ourselves like this (i.e. in a very childish looking manner throwing things about), all we get is the laughter of the people who would hold us down as, at best, second class citizens. Presenting a united front will help us far more in our quest of equal treatment under the law.

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