Grading Bigoted
Facebook Comments :)
I’ve got a show coming up in a couple weeks. Love Games Live! February 15th at the Goldenrod Inn. We’ll be playing a couple classic gameshows live. I’m super excited about it, but not everyone is. We got some colorful early reviews in the facebook comments for our ad (*/ω＼*)
These morons feel entitled to judge me, Flaminia, so I’ll judge right back! I’ll be rating these braindead bumpkins on originality, prose, and thesis. Most of these ideas aren’t that original. They’re old hateful tropes that I wanted an opportunity to talk about anyways. I wasn’t surprised when I read any of these, but my straight sister (bless her heart) sure was!
I don’t think I can change the minds of bigots like this, they are too far removed from regular society. My goal is to show just how extreme these intolerant beliefs are for good people like my sister who don’t see this garbage on a regular basis.
If you’re not in the right headspace to read bigoted comments right now, you can click here to return to this issue!
I totally get it, no hard feelings <3
You know, I appreciate a homophobe that’s stupid enough to not beat around the bush. You could have taken the “Love the sinner, hate the sin” approach that’s more popular in the 21st century, but you own your homophobia. Work, diva.
This of course makes this comment super easy to report and hopefully get Joe banned from Facebook, but that makes it more original too. As far as prose goes it’s nice and punchy, there’s a fun alliteration to it. The thesis is what could use some work. You hate fags, that’s it? Ok… and?
“Go fuck yourself faggots!”
c+
Maybe Joe can think of something more poignant while he’s eating a TV dinner alone because none of his family speaks to him anymore. C+
This one was actually funny and brings up some interesting food for thought, great work Paul!
I had to google Dee Snider before I understood this (points off for spelling his name wrong btw). I appreciated this joke once I got it, and it was fun to learn more about this guy! I’ll offer some additional context for my readers that aren’t middle aged:
“Is that a picture of Dee Snyder from Twisted Sister?”
A-
Snider is a glam rock musician that was in the band Twisted Sister. He’s best known for the song “We’re Not Gonna Take It”. In the 80’s and 90’s he adopted a drag aesthetic with some pretty heavy makeup, which is presumably where Paul’s comparison comes from. In recent years Snider has been vocally supportive of the drag community. Even without makeup I can see some physical resemblance between us. We don’t look identical (I definitely have softer makeup), but he could pass for a distant relative. I’m more of a eurochic chanteuse than a rockstar though ;)
There’s definitely overlap between modern drag and 80’s glam rock. They’re both creative movements that play with gender expression and rebelled against the status quo. Both faced undeserved scrutiny and a moral panic. It’s not a perfect comparison, but it proves a point that drag did not evolve in a vacuum. If thinking about people like Dee Snider, David Bowie, or Gene Simmons helps you understand people like me, Flaminia, a little better then by all means go for it! A-
Based on the comment alone I couldn’t tell if George is a teenager or senile, but since his profile pic is from The Jetsons I’ll guess it’s the latter. There were a few poop themed comments (the phrase “rump ranger” was used in one of them). George made two, so he’s definitely losing points for originality there.
“🖕🌈👎🏾🌈💩🌈😡”
D-
It’s sad and weird how homophobes reduce our lives and identities to our sex. Yes, some of us have anal sex. Many straight people also do this.
You know what else gay people do? We wash our hands. Out of drag, I am a man. I use men’s bathrooms. I have lost count of the number of times I was washing my hands in a public restroom and some guy walked out of a stall and just left. Gay men know how to clean themselves. George is lucky when people don’t catch E.coli from being in the same room as him, filthy wretch.
The fact that homophobes immediately bring up shit every time they see a queer person in any context says so much more about them than it does about us. I guarantee that nurses, parents of infants, and pet owners deal with poop more often than an average gay person does. Maybe George could try harassing them instead.
Unhinged freak comment. D-
This is easily the most disgusting comment, and unfortunately a false claim that has been made about queer people for generations. The idea that gays are inherently predatory, and corrupting youth has been used since at least the rise of the Nazis in Germany. This was an especially popular tactic of anti-gay bigot and pie model Anita Bryant.
There are parallels to other bigoted stereotypes. Like anti-semitic blood libel, a ridiculous 1000-year-old accusation that Jews kill and eating Christian children. Or the racist idea that black people are predators. Baseless accusations of heinous crimes on marginalized communities are a pattern. This is the kind of false rhetoric that society’s use to justify horrific violence.
“Pedo perverts come to town”
F-
It’s easy to point out the hypocrisy here. The right is full of predators with credible allegations that are ignored.
There’s an entire Wikipedia page about the 26+ women that have accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct. He’s been recorded bragging about barging into dressing rooms and groping women. There are two active conservative supreme court justices that have been accused of rape (Clarence Thomas was a profile pic of one of the homophobic commenters). There is substantial evidence that representative Matt Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl.
It is reprehensible when conservatives use victims of sexual misconduct as pawns to push their hateful ideology. It is blatantly obvious that these people could not care less about victims or reality. According to RAINN and other organizations dedicated to victim advocacy the majority of assaults are carried out by someone the victim knows in real life. This should go without saying to people whose brains haven’t been rotted by hate, but there is no link between someone’s sexual orientation and their likelihood of being a perpetrator.
I want to believe that people are able to learn, grow, and be better. However, when someone gets to a point where they believe entire populations are inherently violent perverts, they’re basically hopeless…
well maybe not totally hopeless. Anita Bryant actually made a remarkable transformation recently. She finally did something that made the world a better place.
She dropped dead. F-
There were more than those, and there’s more that I could say, but I don’t want to focus too much on hate. There were plenty of supportive comments too. One commenter said not to feed the trolls and give them the attention they crave, and I agree with that. Feel free to report and block some of these people, but please don’t engage with them directly. It isn’t worth it.
My impulse with bigots is to dream about vengeance. It’s fun to fantasize about living in a society that held monsters like Joe, George, and Vokell accountable (Paul’s not a monster, he seems chill). Occasionally, it does happen. Alex Jones got sued for like a billion dollars after claiming Sandy Hook victims were crisis actors. I think for most of these people, they do face consequences. They will live shorter worse lives and alienate themselves from normal people.
We get to live with joy, whimsy, and love. No matter what happens these next four years, they cannot take that away from us. I can’t think of a better place to celebrate that than at…
This show was supposed to happen February, got snowed out and postponed to March. It went great though!
Read all about it here