Politics: Why You Might Not Want to Vote
Submission by Robby Diesu, TNG contributor
It’s Election Day and that can only mean one thing: the near end of the ever-so-annoying, rampant increase in attempts to get out the vote– particularly to make sure LGBTQ peoples vote for the Democrats. A soon end to this ever so mythical understanding that if the Democrats remain in power we can get our equality. The LGBTQ movement needs a wake up call if they think the Democrats are going to somehow bring about our liberation by keeping them in office. The answer is simple if you actually look at the history of any civil rights or any political movement. No oppressed group has won its liberation (or partial liberation because, let’s be clear, as long as there is a state there will be oppression) through voting. It is only achieved by challenging the system at its fundamental level, by openly resisting the system at its very core. We queer people do so by breathing, by waking up every morning, and by loving those we want and need to love. Yet we need to take it from this passive resistive state where we are now to one of active resistances from oppression.
If one looks at the system for what it really is– oppression on a grand scale– you start to realize that voting is pointless. Nothing has ever changed by simply voting, and nothing ever will. If the system actually gave two shits about our community don’t you think, we would of made a little bit of progress in the past two years? The Democratic Party is nothing more then a scrub. They have used the openly oppressive nature of the Republicans to give us this bullshit understanding that it’s either you vote for them or vote for no one. What a load of crap. Vote for who you want to vote for, it doesn’t matter anyway. The only thing that has ever changed the system, which has brought about liberation for any oppressed community is active resistances. The Civil Rights Act was not passed because LBJ decided he wanted to end the oppression of “People of Color” in this country, it is because the system was in turmoil. “People of Color” in this country were in open revolt of their oppression. They were in the streets everyday, they were going where they couldn’t go everyday, and they were saying fuck you to the system, and meaning it. The 60s are often seen as the glory day of protesting, but they were not very different then our own times. We can recreate the havoc that brought the system to its knees. “People of Color” in this country did not just leave it to the Democrats to bring about their liberation they knew that it would only come from an active resistances to the system.
Now don’t get me wrong, the oppression of LGBTQ people will never be equal to the oppression that “People of Color” have experienced in this country or the world. But there are similarities that need to be recognized and used as examples for our liberation.
Here is a mental image for all of you who can’t shift throughout the nature of my writing: Imagine the state is a rubber band attached to a nail stuck in ground. The state is both a fluid movable item, but is also stuck to the ground at one end. The goal of all social movements is to pull on this rubber band as much as we can, to stretch it out as far as it will go, getting it the point where it’s about to break. In reality the only way to pull on that rubber band is to actively resist the oppression of the system and the state.
So yes, my fellow hopefully-liberated-soon-homos: go vote, but remember that voting is nothing more then an appeasement to the system. It is nothing more then a means with no real end. When voting is your primary form of resistance, you’re basically doing nothing.
If you want to be truly liberated then we must pull on that rubber band and bring the system to where it can and should be. We need to be in the streets everyday, we need to be challenging the system everyday. We need to rebuild the glory that once was our communities of resistances. We need to rebuild Dupont and the Castro, and not with over priced high-rise condos, but with cultural centers and place were we know we can be safe. Places where we can build our revolution of liberation from the systems that hold us down. Yet it is important to realize that the system will always move back to it’s original shape, unless that resistances continues.
Our active resistances should not only be in the streets but in our everyday actions. We must rethink how much we want to be apart of this system. I think a lot of us will realize we don’t want anything to do with it. Maybe if we are lucky we will break the rubber band with the rebirth of our social movement. Then we will be liberated homos. Who doesn’t want to be liberated?
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I think I might find this more interesting/readable were it free of bad grammar and misspelled words.
But, then, maybe I wouldn’t.
This kind of drivel is just the kind of thing those who would oppress us want us to keep reading. There was another group told to stay home and sit out the election: Latinos. Thankfully, Latino advocates and other civil rights groups rightly criticized that ad and made a farce out of the group that produced it.
I intend to do the same with this post. At least the damage done will be minimal since your post was just published today.
I don’t understand this line of thinking. As a person of color whose grandparents and great-grandparents didn’t enjoy the privilege of hassle-free voting, I find it terribly offensive that you would suggest that voting is a waste of time and accomplishes nothing. The numbers of white middl-class LGBT men and women who read this blog might see some value in this ridiculous post, but hopefully they’re more rational sensibilities prevail.
Voting does matter or else corporations wouldn’t spend millions of dollars trying to buy votes. It matters, or else there wouldn’t be a constitutional amendment protecting it. In the end, I guess all I have to say is: YOU’RE COMPLETELY WRONG AND NOBODY IN THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY SHOULD HEED YOUR ADVICE.
That, and you should learn to spell. Seriously.
not voting will do nothing but make you irrelevant. how was the gay rights movement going under george bush? this piece just betrays a lack of understanding on behalf of the writer of polictics and how the government works. it also shows a juvenile desire to shock. i’m disappointed and ashamed as a longtime reader of this site that TNG chose to publish it on a day when all of us should be out voting and expressing our views, even those of us in DC who don’t really have anything to vote for. yes, voting does not solve everything alone but attempting to convince others that it’s a “means with no real end” is childish and counterproductive.
DCII is correct. publishing crap like this after what the republicans have tried to do this year (and every year, really) to oppress minority votes is tasteless.
While it’s certainly possible to sit out an election it is not possible to sit out its consequences. Even were you privileged enough to have the means to emigrate to Europe you would still live in a world where the crazies run Congress.
I strongly disagree!
First of all, any attempt to stifle the democratic process and actually encourage folks not to vote is horribly distasteful! It works against everything that I, as a political activist and part-time organizer, do when I knock on doors and call voters. It’s also not what I think both my grandfathers fought in World War II to see happen to our great country.
Secondly, the Democratic administration is not so hyper-progressive as we (myself included) sometimes wish them to be. The President has always been on the record as a civil-union supporter. But I still think he’s the man for the job and our movement comes with a tremendous amount of education…including sometimes, the President. But progress has been made and will continue to be made during his term. I suspect we might just see DADT actually repealed before the new congress is seated.
Finally, even a basic principal such as the Matthew Shepard Act wasn’t moved forward AT ALL under the Republican establishment for 12 whole years. And we’re talking about my basic right to not have violence inflicted upon me just for being gay. It’s not even like this issue involved anything remotely resembling full equality. This was simply the idea that it’s unjust to KILL GAY PEOPLE because we’re gay. If the GOP couldn’t even move that basic idea forward, then they sure as hell aren’t going to act on any of the other major breakthrough we need.
To summarize, we DO NOT want the Republicans in control of anything. For example, Bob McDonnell’s first major action as the new governor of Virginia was to remove LGBT provisions from the state’s non-discrimination language. And really the GOP is just one nudge away from hostility against the LGBT community with this new crop of tea-partiers.
You better vote and you better vote democratic. Or things could be much, much worse.
Wow. I’m in such disagreement that I’m laughing. What a cynical and wholly inaccurate view of American civics and history. Alice Paul is turning in her grave! Without woman’s suffrage do you think women’s lib would of ever happened? Without the 1964 landslide of LBJ do you think the Civil Rights Act(s) would have passed? Do you think Vietnam and draft would have ended without passing the 26th Amendment (lowering the voting age to 18)? Have we forgotten already how important each individual vote is after the 2000 Bush-Gore-Florida debacle? Cynicism never granted liberation, but constructively shaping the system in your favor has and will.
And the call to re-ghettoize, has to be a joke. Separation and isolation has NEVER EVER lead to the expansion of rights. Exactly the opposite does that. NY Times had an amazing pieced just a few weeks ago on this very issue and the easing of homophobia:
“[T]he ‘bridging’ model. The idea is that tolerance is largely a question of getting to know people. If, say, your work brings you in touch with gay people or Muslims — and especially if your relationship with them is collaborative — this can brighten your attitude toward the whole tribe they’re part of……A few decades ago, people all over America knew and liked gay people — they just didn’t realize these people were gay. So by the time gays started coming out of the closet, the bridge had already been built.
And once straight Americans followed the bridge’s logic — once they, having already accepted people who turned out to be gay, accepted gayness itself — more gay people felt comfortable coming out. And the more openly gay people there were, the more straight people there were who realized they had gay friends, and so on: a virtuous circle.”
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/islamophobia-and-homophobia/?scp=1&sq=homophobia%20&st=cse
I think the point of this article was that voting at the ballot box isn’t enough. We have to vote with our feet, with our dollars, and with our (at times, sadly) fists. Anyone who things they can sit back and express their opinions once every few Novembers and have the world change for the better has a misunderstanding of the system. Unfortunately, the potentially controversial title of this piece hides the real message.
I was so angry with this post I wrote a hasty response. I decided to simmer down before responding. I’m glad I did.
What every commenter above said is so true. The idea that “just voting” is “just voting” make me cringe. Sure there is much work to be done, but why must that work have anything to do with belittling democracy? Voting makes me well up, still, even when I live in DC and it means almost nothing.
This post conveniently forgets the Matthew Shepard Act, the highest number of openly LGB AND T appointees in history, the actual fact that our President mentions that there are gay Americans, but what it doesn’t mention is that even if there had been no progress under the current administration (which there has) that the alternative is political suicide. The games that Karl Rove played, turning my family into a wedge issue to win his elections, can not be written off with the false equivalency of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi not moving fast enough. Why have a sit-in in her office when she is the most pro-queer speaker in US history? Why not confront McCain or Boehner or the Blue Dogs? Is it easier to eat one’s own than to really speak truth to power?
In the end, while I see progress, even if you don’t, you have to admit that being ignored is better than hunted for sport.
+1
Wow, Robby Diesu has rejected the civic religion of Our Great Democracy, and now is a godless anarchist! Sneering hoity toity liberals are looking down there nose at him, secretly fuming on the inside at this profound betrayal. Be strong my friend, the tut-tutting from your mainstream pals is only just beginning …
DCIII, if you’re going to criticize someone else’s errors, which I’m having trouble identifying, you may want to make sure that your usage and spelling is correct first (middl-class & they’re/their). Now, I understand that, relatively speaking, this is a long post for this blog, but people please read to the end. This is what decent discourse looks like. It gets you fired up and pissed off at the beginning and brings around the real point at the end. He’s not saying don’t vote. He’s saying that voting in-and-of-itself as a form of activism is crap. If you want to effect real change it needs to be through longterm, committed activism, not just taking 20 minutes out of one day to scribble in some bubbles. So gays, chill the fuck out, and take the time to figure out what you’re responding to before getting into such a tizzy. And for the record, this is much more thoughtfully written and edited than the majority of posts on here.
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