Have you heard that Dan Savage may be coming to HBO? Yes, Dan, “I’m done pretending that the handful of racist gay white men out there…are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color,” Savage.
As an African American woman who spends a considerable amount of time studying sexual health policy and reading and writing about sexuality, I haven’t been able to pick up Savage’s column since he made that statement. It seems like it was just yesterday that I was a sophomore in college fawning over the City Paper newspaper stand waiting until it arrived so I could imminently flip to the back page for Savage Love. I even blew my shrinking discretionary income on The Commitment and can still recite passages from it by memory. But I can no longer deny the parts of me he spoke against to indulge the parts of me he speaks to.
I truthfully can’t say when or if I’ll ever be able to patronize any of his stuff ever again. While he’s among many who have denied the contemporary reality of racism and made callous race, sexuality comparisons, (I abandoned my support for The Advocate after that “Gay is the New Black” cover, too) his cut deep. This is because now more than ever it’s apparent to me that sex and sexuality education work suffers in the absence of multiple analysis, race, class and gender for starters.
Despite Dan’s witticisms, he is sorely lacking on bringing a lens that isn’t just white and male to his gay marriage crusade and by extension his sexuality advocacy and education. While HBO is still in the “consideration” stage of bringing him on, it’s also worth noting that they have yet to materialize a series that truly speaks to the experiences of women of color — be it same-gender-loving or straight — in America. HBO is actually operating on a deficit considering their typecasting of the sexuality of women of color in series like “Hookers at the Point.” And I, for one, am still recovering from “The Wire’s” 5-season-long attack on Black women, particularly Black single mothers. The prospects of programming that emphasizes race, class, gender and sexuality get dimmer and dimmer, now that a bigot like Dan Savage may be doing their sex-ed leg work.
In terms of gender, class and/or race-conscious suggestions for your own reference, Violet Blue is getting a lot of read-time from me these days. While I haven’t read enough of her stuff to vouch for her on the racial and class front, she does grapple with gender. For some really great intersectional work on sexuality, of course I gotta big up Feministing’s Samhita, Cathy Cohen and Patricia Hill Collins. In a course I took by Cathy Cohen this summer, these names were also referred to me: Vicki Mayes, Tricia Rose, Gail Wyatt and Orlando Patterson. Do you know any of these scholars? Can you offer more names of folk that are doing sexual health advocacy, advice, media criticism or academic research that brings a combination of multiple lenses to bear on their work?
Of course there are millions of unnamed lenses. But I simply have started with the lenses that have been salient for me in my work.
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You raise several excellent points. I've never liked Savage because he often writes with a hateful, smarmy, caustic style that screams bitchy queen. Tough love is one thing, but childish put-downs are quite another thing altogether.
The wonderful, horrible thing about the internet is that there are so many worthy voices online these days and I don't have time enough to give them all the attention they justly deserve.
Ahh, the ole bitchy queen stereotype. Queer folks are supposed to kiss straight peoples' asses, I forgot. Part of being an accessory rather than a minority group and all that.
I think that the bitchy queen stereotype was uncalled for, but Dan is often hateful to a variety of people--not just African-Americans, but bisexual people, asexual people, and fat people. He's also said or written things that can be construed as ablist and misogynist.
Being a member of a stigmatized minority group does not give someone a special right to be a small-minded jerk to everybody else.
His tone matches that of his paper. That would be cold, cyncical, bitchy and pretentious.
I wouldn't single him out because he's syndicated. He's still got to write for his paper first.
He's biphobic too. I honestly can't stand biphobic gays as they should know better.
Racist, biphobic, ableist, and fatphobic. Sorry Dan, I'm done!
I'm NOT willing to overlook these things just because he's gay and sex positive. Fuck that.
I'd add misogynist too--the way he talks about vaginas and oral sex as if they're terribly gross.
Not to downplay the problem of his racism here, but Savage really embodies the truism that, in general, rights movement groups have historically perpetuated all inequalities except the one they're focused on.
it’s also worth noting that they have yet to materialize a series that truly speaks to the experiences of women of color — be it same-gender-loving or straight — in America.
That is a little American-centric and a unmasterful dodging of the fact that they have The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.
HBO also has some prominent black characters in True Blood and they deal with various forms of intolerance in that series... is that dealing to much with the issue of people of color in America and not women of color?
There is a lot of flexibility in your use of the term truley. Do you want a whole series that focuses tightly on the experiences of WOC, or is it OK if WOC experiences are just one of the many aspects of American society that the series addresses?
Much as I love True Blood, I wouldn't say that its African-American supporting characters are a sign of HBO's enlightenment: following recent tradition, they're the most screwed-up characters on the show--into drugs in unhealthy ways and portrayed as dealing with problems that are of their own creation --the typical Crazy Colored stereotype that you can find anywhere from Desperate Housewives to CSI.
Additionally, when Tara does bring up inequalities, she's portrayed as overly bitter, as if noticing and protesting it is a quirk of her anti-social streak and not justified.
I've only seen the first season of TrueBlood as I don't have HBO and watch it on DVDs from Netflix. Tara annoys me as she tries to find racism in things that are not. Like when Sam mentions she grunts like a tennis player during sex, she says "Like Serena Williams, you racist!"
That happens though... as a black woman in (what appears to be) a mostly white town she may be sensitive to what she sees as racial statements.
Heck, my future sister-in-law is black and sees things through a different lens than I do.
I had a what I thought was a 70s style backroom on my mypsace profile, (It the Retro page theme with a wood background and with ribbons of color across the screen) through it and she asked me why I had a 'black person's background.
When my hair is short needs to be beaten into submission so so I use a short-hair bristle brush.... she asks me why I use a 'black persons' brush.
She constantly sees thing through a racial lens and is on guard for racism... in that respect she is alot like Tara.
As a Black person in America, you have to be constantly on guard for racism when you're around White people, or in White controlled institutions, because you never know when you'll be blindsided by White racism out of the clear blue sky.
I know this personally - from having a brick heaved through my window when I was a little kid because we were "the first" to move into a previously all White neighborhood to being laid off from jobs while White coworkers less competent than me kept theirs to having White "friends" come out of nowhere with incredibly racist comments, I've had to be on guard around White people all of my life, in ways that it would be hard for you to understand, since you never lived it.
Me personally, no.
But I do personally know some white guys that where beaten down because they were white.
The motivation for one of them was unknown... he just knows they were calling him honkey and cracker when he passed out. They picked him because he was white and alone.
I have gone out to eat with my brother and his fiancee and seen some black guys eyeballing him (and me) because he is going out with a black woman who I can only assume they see as 'theirs.' I get a some of the shit when she and I hang out or do some shopping.
Maybe if I was not such a big dude it would be worse of a problem.
But yeah, it is a different degree of frequency and intensity.
But I have also seen it go the other way. I knew a black dude that swore the cops were being racist when they pulled him over. While he was driving drunk... down a one way street. After they pulled him over they also discovered he was underage and didn't have a license in the first place.
He said they kept him there for a couple of hours and let him go, and that was racist. I asked him how it was racist and he could not tell me how, it just was.
Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing that I'm talking about. Instead of pointing out that Jason only seems interested in having sex with white women or similar subtle types of discrimination, the only times racism appears to be addressed are when Tara overreacts to something that's not really relevant. It's not a fair portrait.
I thought that Layfatte walked up to a couple of the bar patrons to publicly spit in their food becuase they were being racist and homophobic...
I don't have the first season on DVD, or On demand, so I can't verify that.
I think that's the scene where he smashes the "Hamburger with AIDS" into the face of the guy who dubbed it such--it struck me as addressing homophobia, not racism, but maybe I was incorrect.
The thing is, every character in that serious has some sort of flaw or baggage that they have to carry.
Otherwise what is the point of the series?
Jason Stackhouse is dumb as a brick and lead by his dick, competitive against men but putty in a woman hands.
Sookie is naive and incredibly isolated because of her ability (moreso in the first season) and was molested as a child.
Bill is haunted by immoral acts as a young vampire and a burden to make the world a better place.
(the list goes on).
So Tara and Lafayette also have some baggage and flaws. Something has to make then fully developed characters, give you some reason to like or dislike them.
Lafayette is probably the most interesting characters in the whole series because of is unabashed capitalistic drive.... and he is even more interesting because of his intense loyalty to his family and unwillingness to take shit from anybody.
Yes, all the characters on all the shows I mentioned have problems, but in general, I find that African- American characters are consistently portrayed as the creators of their own problems and by far the most extreme of the bunch. (Compare the white dumb jock to the black drug-selling prostitute.) (I'm not saying that sex work is degrading, but that it's a stigmatized behavior understood in popular culture to be problematic.)
If you look at the other characters--especially Bill, you find that their problems have outside origins--whether it's Jason with his dead parents, Sookie with her molesting Uncle, or Bill with his crazy maker (that might come out in season 2, sorry.) In contrast, Tara's mom is shown as responsible for her own problems, and the bitterness and anger attributed to Tara are not portrayed as justified responses to discrimination so much as a deep personality problem.
I would say Jason creates all of his problems. He was weak willed so he was easily brainwashed by the Fellowship of the Sun and the attention that Sarah and Steve lavished on him.
He was also weak willed and followed everywhere his girlfriend Amy lead him, even attacking draining a innocent vampire of his blood, and quickly got over Amy ruthlessly killing the vampire.
When it comes down to it, I would rather be the drug dealing male prostitute short order chef and road crew worker than the dumb jock v-addict road crew worker cultist.
I think I am missing something... you stated the white characters problems seem to come from outside sources, and then state that Tara's problems also come from an outside source... her mother.
And she is rightfully angry at her mother for the drinking and blaming it on demons. And when Tara showed some trust with the woman that did the whole casting demons out thing she found out that she was just tripping bawls on LSD.
Tara has trust issues. Most anyone would in her situation and with her past. Hell, Jason should have trust issues but he is too stupid.
Some of our disagreements seem to stem from where we are in the series. (Right now, Jason's being portrayed as a pretty cool almost-heroic guy and Tara's being portrayed as an object-of-pity in situations that she very clearly insisted on creating.)
Maybe it's a perception thing, but I found the scenes where Tara is being harassed by her African-American drunk mother, swindled by the African-American hoodoo fake, or embarrassed by another ill-suited race comment by her African-American self to be more extreme problems than Sookie fighting with Bill or Jason sleeping with half the town. For the most part, it seems the majority of stupid things done by the white people in the show are just stupid, while the stupid things done by the black people in the show are illegal.
Jason was, and maybe still is, a cultist... And he is going to get himself in trouble exactly the same way as Tara did.
Tara is fighting for the one person that she has truly felt loved by. Love makes people do stupid things.
(I think we are at the same point, all caught up)
When does Sookie not create her own problems with Bill? I'm fairly confident that she makes these problems when she assumes he does nothing to help her EVERY SINGLE TIME.
I'm fairly confident, since I've seen about half of both seasons now, all of the characters make their own problems their either their own arrogance or their own stupidity or both.
He kind of reminds me of Germaine Greer: says something profound, or just says something well, every once in a while, but about as often as he does something right he does something very, very wrong.
I'd watch it.
Dan Savage has failings. He tends to say whatever is on his mind, which means that when he fucks up everyone knows about it. But still, he's a very good writer and he gives very good advice. He has a healthy attitude about sex that many people would do well to adopt.
He's said some inflammatory things. He's apologized for some of them. I don't expect to agree with everyone on everything, and I think giving Dan Savage a TV show would do far more good than harm.
(For one thing, HBO will probably filter him a little, which he sometimes needs.)
However his apologies were very insincere. As I mentioned the biphobic thing, we he was called out on it, he responded showing the e-mails he recieved that supported his biphobia. He wrote the same thing after each one. "Your bigotry and intolerance is showing. I agree with everything you just said." (Not a direct quote but that's the idea) Yet at the very beginning he was trying to make up with the people who were angry at him. He just spouted more biphobia to make up for it.
I'd watch it too. Dan Savage may not be the best voice, but I've always thought he gave practical sex advice. Also, reading Savage Love helped me to leave behind some of my own personal baggage regarding sex.
I'd watch it too.
Dan Savage isn't perfect, but no one is. Overall he gives alot of good advice and tells people what they need to hear. Alot of these advice givers just sugar coat everything and dance around the real issues, while he actually says what needs saying alot of the time. I respect that about him.
WTF?
I think that Savage was a little out of line to make the "I'm done pretending..." comment, but I can't say that I disagree that, in my experience, as a lesbian of color, I have experienced MUCH more homophobia from other people of color than I ever have racism from the glbt community.
Savage's comment was quite rude, but was it false? Who is the bigger political impediment to whom: racist gays to Black Americans or black homophobes to gays?
How many gays preach racist malice in front of crowds on a weekly basis to match the frequently homophobic Black church pulpit? In my state of Maryland, it's Black Democrats who have the most political power to kill same-sex marriage in our blue state, from Senator/Pastor Emmett Burns on down. If the state were overwhelmingly white and largely secular like most of New England, we'd already be there, most likely. Instead, homophobic paleoconservatives like Delegate Don Dwyer (R-Wingnuttia) make common cause in effect with Black theocratic social conservatives who otherwise vote like liberal Democrats in our very Blue state - gay Marylanders be damned. Meanwhile gay neighborhoods like Mount Vernon get terrorized by hate crimes committed overwhelmingly not by blue collar whites from East Baltimore or the county, but by African-American hate crime assailants; racist gay mobs don't go roll into Cherry Hill and Upton in Baltimore to terrorize Black folks. So whose foot is really on whose neck?
In my state, Black voters represent almost 1/3 of the state and half of the dominant Democratic Party. There's nothing wrong with facing the fact that Black Americans are not a wholly-owned subidiary of Benevolent Liberaldom, and that sometimes Black politics and Black religious culture will be a challenge that liberals shall have to overcome, rather than as allies.