Lost Grrrls

Tey Meadow, J.D., Ph.D. (via gaysagainstgaga)

BOOM!

Part of the reason why I can’t get behind campaigns pushing for young folx to assimilate as a way to cope. Yes, that will work for some, but using the “when you get out of high school and go to college”, and “when your on your own and find your community” and things will automatically become a paradise and ~get better~ as a formula is not promoting change. It’s promoting assimilation. It is so not addressing issues that need to be discussed. How about for those that don’t have access to leave present situations? How about those that don’t want to be put in categorical “acceptable” queer identities? As opposed to assuming people need to become a part of a system that will accept them as certain types of queers, lets do some work to address how various non-normative identities should be respected. I don’t give a fuck if people don’t accept me, but you sure as hell are gonna respect me. That should be the goal. Obvi, it won’t be easy, but fuck is it ever necessary.

(via quelola)

Yes! This shouldn’t minimize recognition for the gravity of GSM suicides — it should just prompt us to interrogate the fact that structural violence (the inability to get healthcare, a police/prison system that targets young men of color, not just the bullying that occurs between peers in schools but the way that public schools operate as part of a larger institution that sustains oppressive narratives, etc.) has historically killed GSM people, is currently killing GSM people, will continue to kill GSM people unless if something changes — and that youth suicide is just one part of that larger, horrific, systemic process. We need to move towards activism that is intersectional/cognizant of multiple assemblages of oppression and, like the poster above me writes, doesn’t only offer assimilation as the only way out (a false promise in itself, anyway). 

(via viviopsis)

(Source: The Huffington Post)