Welcome to Dear Marsha, a weekly column where writer Jayson Flores rounds up the new stories that matter to the queer community and examines them through the original, intersectional, radical, inclusive lenses with which the queer rights movement was founded. For more on Dear Marsha (like why it's called that) check out more posts in the series!
Let's talk about this past week...
Removing Confederate Monuments Doesn't 'Erase' History. It Fact-Checks It (via TIME)
Gender and sexuality do not exist separately from race, so issues of race matter (or rather, they should matter) to the queer community.
Since the events in Charlottesville have transpired, arguments and commentary have erupted on every media platform. You’d think people would be most concerned about the Nazi pins and symbols and a car literally driving through people at a protest, killing anti-fascist protester Heather Heyer. But the focus of the protest, which countered the fascism that suggested white men are somehow NOT being heard and represented in America (despite our government being made up almost entirely of old white men), has instead been about how taking down Confederate statues "erases history."
History, which was not important to people five minutes ago, is now the center of everything. These Confederate statues serve as a fake moral high ground from which disgruntled, angry, alt-right folks can villainize protesters and defend Neo-Nazis without directly saying that they’d rather support violent white supremacist mobs than support genuine equality.
Needless to say, history can be remembered without statues—particularly, statues that were made not in remembrance of history, but rather (if people actually paid attention to history) a delusional time where Southerners hoped to paint out their leaders as more than slave-owning losers.
Yes, Anti-Fascists Are Violent...and Necessary (via The Root)
The Root's Michael Harriot summed up how Antifa stands up against fascism…
"...maybe the only way to fight bullies is to stand up to them. Remember all the groups we talked about earlier? Nazis, the Klan, neo-Confederates, skinheads and white nationalists all have one thing in common: a desire to "make America great again" by slowly ridding the county of ethnic diversity. Whether it is anti-immigration laws, lynching, marginalization or radical Caucasian terrorism, they all advocate some version of ethnic cleansing that is, at its base, violent.
It is impossible to stop this kind of violence with signs, freedom songs and nonviolent resistance. Anti-fascists know that tactic has never worked in the history of the world."
The Best from Twitter...
What other important LGBT stories were on your radar this past week? Let us know in the comments and on Twitter!
