Why Macklemore's Approval Isn't Enough

A few years ago, I remember that Macklemore released a song called "Same Love." To this day, I have never listened to that piece of music, at least not of my own accord. Supposedly, this song was a landmark in the queer rights movement. To think, that a movement composed of millions of people from all across the world of many different sexual orientations and genders and with many opinions that they have been literally screaming at the world for the past 50+ years would need the voice of a heterosexual cisgender man to legitimize their thoughts, feelings, and the meanings of their lives. As unlikely as it seems, this was apparently true. The debut of this song triggered a surge of positive feelings towards queer people, seemingly marking an enormous social victory for the queer community. 

As a queer person, as odd as it sounds, I don't like that this phenomenon occurred. Many people are confused by this; they say, "Shouldn't you be happy that people are becoming more accepting of you?" The answer is no. To help you understand, please imagine that you are straight, as you probably are. Now, here's the difficult part: please imagine that everyone else in the world is queer. It is completely normal for two people of the same sex or gender to be together. There is a significant portion of the population that is transgender. There are also lots of people that are identified as non-binary (neither male nor female), regardless of sex. You are often seen as odd because you identify as the gender associated with the sex that you were designated at birth, and because your sexual orientation causes you to be attracted to people of the opposite sex. When you are with your friends, you are continually excluded from conversations about their queer relationships. In media such as books, television, and movies, an extremely high percentage of the people and relationships portrayed are queer, with only a few side characters rarely being identified as straight. Even then, they exist only as the brunt of jokes: they say stereotypically "straight" things, everyone has a good laugh, and then they move on with the real point of the show. You and other straight people feel marginalized because of this, to say the least, and you seek to draw attention to the idea of being straight and try to make it normal in society through social activism. From queers, you are met with quiet, mostly uncaring approval at best and outright hatred and disgust at worst. 

Now, imagine, that after years and years of trying to rectify this situation and being constantly marginalized, excluded, and degraded, that a queer rapper named Macklemore writes a song about being straight. Millions of queer people across the world are touched, and acceptance grows. But you are still marginalized and isolated and alone, because you still have no voice, because Macklemore is speaking over you and you still cannot be heard. Meanwhile, he makes millions of dollars off of stealing your voice and saying what you have been trying to say for years. 

The queer community doesn't need Macklemore to speak for us. What we need is to be listened to. What we need is actual, legitimate representation in the media and in other places. One of these places, and the place that I feel is the most important, is in the Health classes that take place in public schools. In Health classes, at least in my experience (and I am growing up in the heart of Blue Liberal America, in a state that has legalized gay marriage) are significantly lacking in teaching about diverse sexualities. At least in the Health 1 class that I took at Brien McMahon High School in my freshman year, we discussed heterosexual sex extensively, but the only time that we discussed homosexual sex--or any variety of queerness--was to promote the acceptance of queer people into society. And that's wonderful. I think that the school should continue to have that as a part of its curriculum. However, that's not enough. The school may have rules and regulations to protect queer students from harassment, but that doesn't fix the core of the issue: that we are still seen as fundamentally 'other,' permanently excluded from the heteronormative society of America no matter how much legislation is passed in favor of us and in our protection. 

The first step to take to rectify this, at least in terms of public schools, is comprehensive sexual education. Students need to be educated about all the different kinds of sexualities (heterosexuality, homsexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality, asexuality, etc) as well as all the different genders (cisgender, transgender, and variants upon being non-binary). This is an important step in getting the heterosexual population of Brien McMahon High School and other Norwalk public schools to accept queer people--and not just superficially. Queer students can no longer be marginalized. They can no longer sit silently in Health class, thinking that there is something fundamentally wrong with them regardless of all of the rules that the school has laid out in the name of their protection. They don't deserve a special day in Health to tell people not to discriminate against them, they need for the system to act as if they don't deserve to be discriminated against. The only way to do this is to include them in the curriculum, as if they were just like everybody else. Because they are. We are. Queer people are just like anybody else, and all that we want is for the rest of the world to listen to us and understand who we are. 

The Egyptian Revolutions - Seminar Preparation

Within the past three years, Egypt has undergone two revolutions. Although one of them is sometimes considered to be a coup d'etat because the government was technically ousted by the military, the people of Egypt and most other people consider it to be a revolution of the people because the military was implementing the people's desires. 

The first revolution began on Tuesday, January 25, 2011. People gathered on the streets of numerous cities in Egypt to protest because they were suffering from poverty and rampant unemployment and felt that this was happening to them because of the perceived corruption of the autocratic leader, President Hosni Murabak. Murabak made several attempts to quell the people's anger without relinquishing his power, including promising government reforms, saying that he would finish his term but not run for re-election, and stating that he would give his power to his vice-President before the end of his term before he finally resigned as president and left Cairo on February 11, 2011. His government took some actions during this time that angered many Egyptian people and the West, including shutting down the Internet in Egypt between January 27 and February 2 and detaining foreign journalists in the country.

The second revolution began in protest of Mohammad Morsi, the first officially elected president after the 2011 revolution, for several reasons. One of them was that women, minorities (including religious minorities like Christians), and intellectuals felt oppressed by the new constitution, which allowed for freedom of speech and expression so long as they conformed to Sharia (a term meaning "legislation" but which in context means Islamic law),  and another was the fact that Morsi had unilaterally granted himself more power. These protests began in December and gained traction and frequency between February and March. On July 3, the military removed Morsi from office after issuing an ultimatum. 

The biggest challenge that Egypt currently faces is the growing animosity between Islamists and the military. Many Islamists are angry at the military because they supported Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, and because when the military took over they replaced the parliament at the time (which was almost completely composed of Islamists) with non-Islamists. This issue has been demonstrating itself in the form of protests and attacks on government officials. 

The United States should be involved only as much as it can be without taking control of the situation. During the protests in 2013, many protestors who wanted to oust Morsi's regime felt angry that the United States was not becoming more involved in opposing the Muslim Brotherhood. However, if the United State becomes too involved, then the situation will become all about creating a democracy in the image of the American government and it will no longer be about the Egyptian people creating the democratic government that they want. 

Western media, at least in the resources that I used for research, makes the assumption that all Egyptian people are united in their two ways of thinking in both cases, thus completely oversimplifying the issue. For both revolutions, the media portrayed all of the people as being either completely supportive of the insurgence or in support of either Murabak or Morsi/The Muslim Brotherhood, respectively. They did not take into consideration or write about any other viewpoints, and in this way I think that the full scope of the issue was under-represented in Western (especially American) media. 

Where I'm From

Wilton, Connecticut

Where I’m from, loose Catholicism is in.

There are churches, of course,

and if you ask around

most will probably say they’re Roman Catholics

of course

but no one really goes to them.

Besides, why go to church

when you’ve got a lacrosse game to make?

Where I’m from, nearly everyone is the same.

You’ve got to wade through crowds of people

who dress, walk, talk, and act the same way

and who all choose to wear the same masks

before you can find one person

who dares to be different.

Or--here’s the scary part--even wants to be.

Where I’m from, it’s beautiful.

Quiet, serene trees

only making noise when they rustle

soothingly in the wind

surround nearly every home

even the apartment buildings.

Daffodils and cherry blossoms bloom

in the spring

and in the fall, nearly everywhere you look

is golden or orange or red.

The roads are peaceful,

and few motorcyclists

disturb the quiet of the residential streets

(and might face a lawsuit if they dared to).

Where I’m from, nearly everyone’s father

has a big, important job in New York City.

All the people’s egos are inflated

with a sense of false self-importance

because of our supposed closeness

to one of the most famous cities in the world.

Where I’m from, people are quietly ignorant.

They speak of their Blue-Ribbon schools

and their expensive curriculums

with a sense of superiority

that doesn’t even stop to consider those

who aren’t so fortunate as to attend such programs.

They say things like, “Stops and frisks shouldn’t be a problem

if you have nothing to hide.”

Parents are frequently heard complaining about Affirmative Action

because their kids would have much less difficulty getting into college

without all of those annoying laws

that promote “equality of education for all.”

What an idiotic concept--right?

They speak of drug and alcohol abuse

as if it’s a far-away issue, an inner-city issue,

something that their own children would never

even come close to.

Everyone looks the other way

when the entire rowing team is caught with marijuana in their systems

and a heroin needle is found in the high school

and they conveniently forget that it’s the suburban towns

like us

“the safest place to raise your kids”

not the bigger cities

that have the highest rates of alcohol-related adolescent deaths.

Where I’m from, I’m Charlotte,

who used to be just like us, but then turned a little

how I shall say it

queer?

And not that there’s anything wrong with that

I’m just saying, that’s all.  

Really.

Where I’m from, the birds sing at 5 a.m.

and the sunlight filters through the leaves

creating a soft array of colors

that steal your breath away

and bring you to the verge of tears

What does it mean to both love

and hate?