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Observations
I needed something for thoughts that are too long for Twitter or Facebook, but don't comprise a full blog post. Fortunately, that's what Tumblr is for.
7/24
On the topic of Sally Ride and terminology
Her sister herself said Sally “didn’t use labels”, which is awesome. But it’s also important, I think, to have some way to have a descriptor that says “she wasn’t (just) heterosexual”, for reasons I mentioned in my earlier post.
LGBT leaves people out, LGBTQ is better, but once you get to LGBTQIA it starts getting alphabet-soup and you’re still excluding a whole host of things that don’t fit in the alphabet.
I’ve taken to using “queer” as an umbrella term, and Wikipedia confirms my usage - “an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary” - but also confirms my fears of it being problematic - “some LGBT people disapprove of using queer as a catch-all because they consider it offensive, derisive or self-deprecating given its continuous use as a form of hate speech”.
Sally’s sister seems to use “gay” roughly as I am using “queer”, and I’m a huge fan of that. I think that’s almost the best option. But “gay” still pretty much has a primary meaning of “homosexual male”. The more expansive “non-hetero” meaning only really comes out when it’s used to describe people who can’t be homosexual males - namely, females. So, that’s problematic.
In addition to being awkward, “non-straight” or “non-hetero” (as has been pointed out to me previously) implies that straight is the default and everything else is an exception/wrong/lesser.
So, “queer” is, I think, the best I’ve got. And saying “why do we need labels at all, just let people be what they are” is well and good, and in an ideal world would be fine. But I think that there are lots of reasons that we need to be able to describe someone as not being heteronormative without sounding clinical.
A significant one is what I posted about Sally ride - kids, notably kids that aren’t white males, need to have people to look up to that are like them. Sally Ride has been a kickass role model for girls for decades, and she formed a company whose express purpose is to encourage girls to pursues their interests in science even if they are outnumbered. Sally’s being a woman astronaut (and physics Ph.D.) is a huge part of that. Kids that aren’t heteronormative need that as much as girls in science do.
And maybe it’s enough to just say “she loved a woman for nearly half her life”, especially when it comes to kids who don’t really care about labels anyway. But that kind of lengthy descriptor doesn’t work in all circumstances.
So, the main motivator for this post: for those of my followers/tumblrfriends/random tag-browsing people - especially those that are somewhere on the QUILTBAG spectrum - thoughts? Do you think that “queer” is an okay label for straight male allies like myself to use? Do you have any better recommendations? Do you think I’m just being silly and should stop worrying so much about labels?
10 months ago
Wait...Steve Jobs is retiring?
Never thought I’d see the day. But! In a win for equality, his successor, Tim Cook, is apparently gay. Being the now-CEO of one of (and at times the) largest companies in the world isn’t exactly small potatoes, and it’s nice to see a non-straight face so prominently in the ranks.
On the more directly Apple-related side of things, it’ll be interesting to see what Apple looks like without Steve Jobs - he was far more of a figurehead for Apple than even Bill Gates was for Microsoft - the stock rose and fell according to his health, and he had a widely held reputation, true or not, as a kind of dictatorial, micromanaging point-person for just about everything. And Steve Ballmer hasn’t exactly been a rockstar for MS. There are a lot of big things happening at Apple right now - it’s wrestling with Android and Windows 7 for the mobile market, coming out with the iPhone 5 and iPad 3, and is ever-expanding its grip on the PC market. Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be in Cook’s shoes.
Apple will grow and change, but I think the essence of the company will always be the same. They’re sensational. They make pretty things and then hype the fuck out of them. That is just what Apple does, what it has done ever since the iPod. Cook would have to be an idiot to change that. But we shall see what happens.
That’s great that Cook is gay though. There definitely needs to be more diversity among the elite of corporate America. And Apple has, in the past, been a public supporter of gay and lesbian rights and it is exciting to know that this will probably continue. (Then again maybe Cook is one of those gays who think that gay and lesbian rights are synonymous to queer assimilation and actually works against them, but I would be surprised to see that.)
For the record though, defining any queer person by how they don’t fit into heteronormative society (e.g., “non-straight”) is not queer affirming language and should probably be avoided.
Apple has been a great supporter of gay rights - it’s not surprising that they are one the first (?) and probably most prominent US company to have a (reasonably openly) gay CEO. As for Apple stuff in general, I don’t see Cook changing that, but Steve Jobs was just so melded with the image of the company, I would be terrified to try to take his place. Cook can’t be Jobs - he has to direct the company largely as Jobs has, but he can’t shave his head and don a turtleneck and wire-rim glasses, so to speak. It’ll be an interesting balance to strike.
As for the terminology, I was trying to figure out how to be excited about such things without being obnoxious, or implying that there’s some reason other than discrimination that it would be surprising for Apple to have a gay CEO. I actually initially had “LGBT” instead of “non-straight”, but then realized it was kind of silly, and also probably dismissive of the greater discrimination and lower visibility of bi- and trans-people, not to mention the QIA. Just putting “gay” didn’t seem fitting, since it’s really “anything but straight” that I’m excited about, hence “non-straight”.
All that to say: thanks for the tip, I’ll be more aware of that going forward. I wasn’t trying to define Cook as being “non-straight”, but rather pointing out that he is gay in an especially straight-dominated field. Much like saying Obama is our first non-white president. Although that has additional reasoning, since he’s half caucasian, which has its own issues because anyone with a drop of anything else isn’t considered white any more, whereas most people probably still consider Obama African-American even though he’s half caucasian. But that’s a whole nother issue.
