A Dyke A Broad #56
On a very nice dinner, and insights from Virginia elections--in which the democrats learned nothing from Trump's election.
Hello from Paris!
We did it. We invited another human into our apartment, smiled, shared wine, shared food, and lived to tell the tale. It was the first time we’d had a dinner guest in almost two years. But we wanted to, even if, despite all the vaccinations (87% of over 12’s), the rate of infection here is beginning to rise again.
The evening was nice. Even if it was also weird. I discovered that I’d lost the few social skills I once had. I forgot, for instance, what exactly you say when a guest arrives, so I just stared at her blankly, then pushed open the door by way of welcome. I also couldn’t remember what you say when guests leave. Or what pace a conversation should have and how quickly food should be served. I was exhausted and found my concentration faltering, listening to a trio of voices when I have become accustomed to only two. One really. Do I listen to myself?
I wonder when the reckoning will come. For all of us. Lurking is the grief which we seem to have collectively tucked away, but also the lingering fear which we so carefully taught ourselves, learning to keep our physical distance, pull on a mask as nonchalantly as you’d put on a hat in the cold. For many of us, even vaxxed, the faintly yellow glow of mostly empty cafés seems as forbidding as the darkest alley in the worse neighborhood in town.
Even Ana and I sometimes look sideways at each other when one has been outside but not the other. What are you bringing back home? The fear of contagion, the difference between us (safe) and them (dangerous), become hardwired, and probably has something to teach us about American politics.
Even before Covid, even before Trump, things were more and more sectarian. We on the Left have tried to train ourselves into goodness. Now the possibility of opening ourselves to different views of what goodness may be is as unthinkable as going maskless on the subway. Since 2000 when Bush won, this takes the form of self-anointed “progressive” Democrats blaming every loss on the moral failures and stupidity of white working class voters who are so dumb they fall for any racist or homo- or trans-phobic dogwhistle, even if it means, they say, “voting against their economic interests,” or in the case of women, against rights like abortion.
Judging by the Facebook posts I’ve been seeing on my feed the Dems were true to form last week after Republican Glenn Youngkin beat Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia gubernatorial race. Apparently the reason Repubs won was because Virginia voters were racist idiots. “White Women are the worst,” says everybody. “You Damn Karens Are Killing America,” they say.
Stupid women, they said.
Though it hardly needs to be said that if Biden’s dems are so pro-woman, nobody would need to tweet the photos of dead Afghan activists we abandoned to their fate.
And was it really just whites that swung the vote? And if not, why?
Nobody in the Dem bell jar acknowledges that people of color are not homogenous Democrat-voting robots. Like so far I haven’t seen one Democrat pal admit, “We could have run a better campaign.” No one has questioned Dem strategy, and its possible effect on voter turnout. Like how Youngkin’s focus on white college-educated voters in the northern suburbs meant he probably wasn’t campaigning much in rural communities, or communities of color.
It’s almost as if the Democrats didn’t learn anything from Trump’s victory, and still believe they don’t need to work to earn votes from people of color, working class folks, or rural people. The only reason so many Democratic mainstays stayed home and didn’t vote is that they’re racist pigs, or perhaps, white-adjacent.
Which brings me to the fact that not everyone who rejects the Democrat’s beloved “anti-racist” credo is a white supremacist. Some of us just dislike the current manifestation because we think it doesn’t work. I, for instance, believe that the way this bastardized, self-help version of Critical Race Theory encourages white people to wallow in white guilt only leads to a bunch of performative hogwash that won’t change anything at all.
In fact, I think it’s repulsive that this CRT for dummies has spawned a gazillion dollar industry in which consultants like Robin DiAngelo take home hefty paychecks for teaching white people to feel and think and talk a certain way about racism, while we underfund or kill programs geared towards making a real and lasting quantifiable material impact. Like plugging income or education gaps between white people and people of color, or improving health outcomes.
Not that anybody cares what I think. I’m just an increasingly neurotic, idiot white racist female born in a Kentucky pigsty which as you probably don’t know was once part of Virginia.
In other news…
Lesbian Visibility in Berlin
A lesbian visibility campaign is being launched this week in Berlin with thousands of xeroxes of six photos of lesbians being wheatpasted all over the city. (The link is German but Google translate works pretty well.)
While I’m always glad to see the word lesbian out there in the world, I sniff a faint whiff of lesbophobia in the campaign’s goal, not just to make lesbians visible, but to prove that there’s “not just one kind of lesbian.” Which is just another way of saying we’re so fucking inclusive, please let us exist.
It’s only 1,800 posters. Couldn’t someone have done this without government money and thus without the groveling?
On pregnancy
A nice piece by Suzanne Moore.
Women in Afghanistan
In case you missed it further up the page.
On Baby Dykes
A young lesbian explores “how the definition of the word lesbian in queer spaces has shifted, and what effect this has on young lesbians.” Spoiler alert—it’s not great for them.
A little abortion comedy, because what could be funnier?
“The segment is as bizarre as it is brilliant—and as wacky as the bit gets, Strong’s performance remains furious throughout. “It’s a rough subject,” her character says, “so we’re gonna do fun clown stuff to make it more palatable. Who wants a balloon animal?”
In the video skip to 5:30
What I saw in the East Village is finally reported on by the NY Times
Yuck.
That’s it for this time.
Disgruntledly yours,