Another Reason to Abandon Identity-Based Politics: the Curse of the G/L Consonant Cluster
I work in the US for the queer non-profit IGLHRC. I make fun of the acronym of the US queer organization NOGLSTP. A respected queer foundation is about to fund GLO-P (in South Africa- I see they have just changed their name to OUT) and GAG-L in Paraguay. I don't believe we are a minority if you include all permutations of queerness, but for acronymic consonant cluster reasons alone, I vote for "sexual minorities" to replace "gay and lesbian." Think of it. SM. OrgaSM, SMile, SMash, AweSM. Of course, I always tell people we should rename our organization Up With Sodomy, and have the Up With Sodomy Singers on a perpetual world tour. But they don't let me into the branding and fundraising meetings since I kept suggesting a human rights slave auction.
I have been living both in an identity-based and in a post-identity world now for at least a decade of queer activism, and the acronymicization of "GL" is just gonna kill me some day soon now. Yes, even with all the pretty GLOEs and GLAADs and GLSTNs.
Thursday, August 29, 2002
There's only one peach with a hole in the middle. Maybe.
Mmmm. Peaches. Maybe she hadn't seen Tiny's Organic Donut Peaches yet when Peaches wrote that song.
Well, I thought a cure for my gloomy mood might be to go to Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck) and buy myself a package of those bizarre new donut peaches they are selling for $6/half-dozen. The price of a matinee movie, a luxurious novelty, they are organic- nothing but bug footprints on them. They are small, sweet, easy to eat, very sexy. Then, talking to a friend on the phone, I was musing that today is the 1/2 year mark for the birthday of my 103 year old adopted great-great grandmother, Valentina Mikhailovna, AKA my babushka. We have blogs and e-mail as a daily part of our lives, while she is still getting used to women walking out on the street wearing pants, and now we've entered a whole new state of whacky- we have donut-shaped peaches. Then, I looked them up. They are much older than Valentina Mikhailovna. The Saucer Peach, Chinese Peach, Saturn Peach, Flat Peach. The third day of the third month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar is the Festival of the Flat Peach. The other peach with a hole in the middle. As I've written this I've nibbled down four.
Mmmm. Peaches. Maybe she hadn't seen Tiny's Organic Donut Peaches yet when Peaches wrote that song.
Well, I thought a cure for my gloomy mood might be to go to Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck) and buy myself a package of those bizarre new donut peaches they are selling for $6/half-dozen. The price of a matinee movie, a luxurious novelty, they are organic- nothing but bug footprints on them. They are small, sweet, easy to eat, very sexy. Then, talking to a friend on the phone, I was musing that today is the 1/2 year mark for the birthday of my 103 year old adopted great-great grandmother, Valentina Mikhailovna, AKA my babushka. We have blogs and e-mail as a daily part of our lives, while she is still getting used to women walking out on the street wearing pants, and now we've entered a whole new state of whacky- we have donut-shaped peaches. Then, I looked them up. They are much older than Valentina Mikhailovna. The Saucer Peach, Chinese Peach, Saturn Peach, Flat Peach. The third day of the third month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar is the Festival of the Flat Peach. The other peach with a hole in the middle. As I've written this I've nibbled down four.