"The Death of Queer Privacy" Transcript

Video transcript is on the left. Plagiarized text is highlighted, as is misinformation. For more info, see how to read this site

This video is brought to you by Atlas VPN.

I've been noticing something over the last few months... years, that's been bothering me, but I haven't spoken that much about it. I wonder if you, my dear viewers, have noticed the same thing. That being the complete and utter neglect for the privacy of queer people.

First let's talk about celebrities. While many people feel like celebrities give up their right to privacy when they become an actor or singer or public figure in general, that's not actually how the world works. You don't give up your right to privacy when you become a teacher or a lawyer.

Of course, the most prominent recent example of this is Kit Connor, who was forced out of the closet this past year when an internet mob essentially accused him of "queerbaiting" (real people can't queerbait, by the way) by playing a queer character in multiple pieces of media while not actively being out as queer himself. It got even worse for him when, horror of horrors, he was spotted holding a girl's hand. So to Tamp down on the rising tide of the internet boundary pushing, he came out as bisexual. Some have since accused him of being a fake bisexual, and refused to believe him until he has a boyfriend. To them I say: stop.

But he's far from the only celebrity to be pushed out of the closet. In 1996, Nathan Lane appeared on Oprah to promote The Birdcage. Prior to the taping, he specifically said he didn't want to talk about his sexuality. But when they went live, Oprah began pushing for answers anyway.

Lance Bass was forced to make a public statement about his sexuality in 2006, after Perez Hilton nicknamed him "Princess Frosty Locks" and wouldn't stop posting blog entries about how obviously gay he was. Perez Hilton also instigated a similar campaign against Neil Patrick Harris the same year. And it's only gotten worse since social media became a factor. Rumors swirled around online about actresses such as Rebel Wilson and Kristen Stewart, eventually leading to them coming out under threats from tabloid sites.

It's not like the old days when gay rumors would start up in a Hollywood studio or a record label would have a star paired up with a similarly famous celebrity to hide their sexuality. Though many fans still think this does happen with people like Taylor Swift and Harry Styles. Studios and labels have much less control over stars now, though they do continue to influence many people to stay in the closet. I personally know of at least three Hollywood actors who have been in major box office successes who are out to their friends and family but not to the public. Which some say is as bad as them lying to their fans. But why do fans have a right to know who's dating who? I blame Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez for this. They helped reignite the celebrity couple industry back in the 90s, and it hasn't died down since.

The parasocial environment of Twitter and Instagram has allowed the walls to fall down between fans and celebrities. Where once fans only read what stars publicists wanted them to read, now they can keep up with their faves on an almost minute-by-minute basis. So of course, they want to know everything about them. Because they feel more like long-distance friends now than Hollywood stars. Which is bad enough when it comes to straight people, but it's doubly bad for queer people because our privacy can, in far too many cases, be the only barrier keeping us safe from violent bigots. The walls we put up can be very important and create a safe zone in a world where our safety is apparently up for debate.

I've been thinking about all of this for quite some time, but it all started to crystallize in my mind when I read the book The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul G Tremblay, since a film adaptation of it entitled Knock At The Cabin was being readied for release. And in the pages of this book, I saw how queer privacy can be so easily neglected.

But before we get into that I want to talk to you about how you can protect your own privacy with this video's sponsor: AtlasVPN, [...] As someone who was doxed only within the last few months, I know how important it is for your location to be as opaque as possible online. [...]

Because this is less about Knock at the Cabin and more about [gesturing broadly] Knock at the Cabin, there will be spoilers. Skip ahead to Part Two: Policy Reminder, if you want to see the movie and go in fresh. If you don't want to see the movie, we're not going to hinge everything on knowing what happens in the plot, so you're not going to be kept out of the loop.

I'm basing these ideas entirely on the book, though, titled Cabin at the End of the World, because, you know, the movie wasn't out when I wrote this. Judging from the trailers, it seems like the movie is following the plot pretty closely though. However given how the book ends, I could foresee a studio maybe wanting to change that ending. Some things you can get away with in books that audiences simply will not tolerate if they see it on screen.

Anyway, Knock at the Cabin's general premise is that a pair of gay fathers take their adopted daughter to a secluded cabin getaway. A group of hooligans show up and barges in and takes the family hostage with the intent of causing violence. Before you say "been there, done that", the twist is that the group is a doomsday cult that's trying to prevent the end of the world. According to them, unless the gay family picks one family member and chooses to kill them, the world will come to an end.

[Monty Python waiting music plays over a cartoony yellow sign]: Light Spoiler

The group demonstrates that they are not full of shit. It's a long story, but the audience can be confident that these cultists really can prophesy the end of the world, and they're not just whack job religious nuts looking for a... gay bashing. Which is kind of scarier.

[Monty Python waiting music plays over a cartoony red sign]: Heavy Spoiler

The daughter gets killed. Which is why I said they may want to change the ending of this movie, because that's a little dark for the big screen. But M. Night Shyamalan has gone to pretty dark places before, even with kids so... [shrugs] maybe!

[Monty Python waiting music plays over a cartoony red sign]: Heavy Spoiler

But because it's the cultists who accidentally kill the girl, and not the other two members of the gay family, the apocalypse prevention plan is void. And the reader (and presumably the movie going audience) is led to believe, though remains unsure, that the apocalypse is still DTF. If anything, they may swap out the daughter for one of the husbands, to make it a little bit more palatable in the movie? But the ambiguous supernatural world-ending has some serious Shyamalan Vibes, so I can assume that this is where the movie is headed.

The point remains however: the continuation of the world hinges on the destruction of a queer family. Which... I didn't really even think of that when I first read the book. Someone pointed it out to me on a stream, and then... you can't really unthink what has been thought.

But, here we go: because that idea opens the story up to a myriad of different readings. When something isn't just about showing representation for representation's sake, that means it's about something. Which means... there's a lot to unpack here.

The book was written by Paul G Tremblay. Though you wouldn't know that from the movie's marketing, leading me to believe that the daughter... might actually get killed and M Night doesn't want anyone reading the book and spoiling the ending. There isn't as much biographical information about Tremblay as say... other horror authors like Stephen King. But in the context of queerness? Everything I could find about him indicates that he is straight. And while I continue to hold my position that you should not need to be of a certain identity to create characters of that identity, there are some life experiences that are a little bit sensitive to that particular community.

In the queer community, for instance, violence against us is one of them. Violenced^{[sic: Violence]} against our families is something that our art has only really begun to explore. For instance, 2017's American Horror Story Cult explored this, and that was the first time it popped up on my radar. However when it comes to Knock at the Cabin, the book (and presumably the movie) one of the strange selling points is that the queerness of the dads is more or less... irrelevant to the plot.

In the book, one of the fathers has a flashback to a queer bashing, but aside from that it's entirely not a topic of discussion, really. In fact, the cultists go out of their way to say that they're super duper not homophobic! But given that this is a creator who is explicitly making a decision to write outside his lived experiences, why did he write it like this? Because the story would have been exactly the same... if it was swapped out for a straight couple, one of whom had been attacked in the past. What statements may Tremblay be making? What readings could we take from this story?

There are, of course, positive messages. An argument for queer sympathy would implore the reader to acknowledge the threat the queer people and their budding families are put under in this new age of... tepid queer acceptance. It may be that the real tragedy is that this queer family went through all the trouble and rigmaro^{[sic: rigmarol]} of eking out adoption only for the child to be ripped away anyway. Especially with the condition of the American Supreme Court, it's altogether not out of the question that children could be taken away from their queer mothers and fathers. Just look at what's happening to trans children and their supportive biological parents in the southern states right now.

However, if that's the intended reading, it's kind of weak. Because while adoption is a very long methodical expensive struggle, so are fertility treatments for women. The threat of violence against a child you worked exceptionally hard to produce is not a fear that is exclusive to queer families. And quite frankly neither is adoption. The most optimistic, dare I say, queer-positive reading of the story is that Tremblay is speaking to the family bond within queer families being just as strong as they would be among straight ones. The entire story is built on the premise that both queer fathers are unwilling and incapable of sacrificing another of the trio. A death only occurs by accident. Whereas queer detractors may assume that one or both of the fathers would just be willing to throw the family away to save their own skin.

And honestly...? Come a bit closer. [Camera digitally zooms in to James's face]

[Whispering] I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: I think that may be the intended reading. [Puts finger to lips]: Ssh! Okay? Just between us.

[Cut back to normal shot]

However, even though that's a possible takeaway, the story is still built around fantasizing trauma, tragedy, and violence upon a queer family. And that still makes me a little bit uncomfortable. Just taking a look at the optics of the story. Because in spite of these readings, there remains some very... very homophobic ones.

First off, the continuation of the world is predicated on a queer family's destruction. This could be interpreted as queer families being a threat to societal cohesion, or such vagaries that are pushed by right-wing pundits. Another reading would claim that queer rights as a whole need to be "put away" to focus on more apocalyptic features of our current world. Things like climate change, economic collapse, plagues, and this never-ending string of conflicts that we've been embroiled in since 9/11. (The latter of which I'm partially convinced future historians(?) are actually going to refer to as World War III.)

This could hold a certain "Make America Great Again" kind of nostalgia that sort of remaps history to insert that "society he really started to take a nosedive when """the gays""" began insisting that they needed to start families". And that "if we're gonna stop the world from burning down, it's a small price to pay to put the boot down on some home-making queens".

The interesting nuance behind this story, though, is that the cultists cannot be the ones to murder one of the family members. It must be the family itself that breaks up from within. Translated into a real world suggestion that the onus is on queer families to break up on their own volition in order to maintain social order. Because if the government or bigots do these actions against queer families, then the social outcry will dissolve social cohesion regardless. Instead, if queerness quietly goes back into the closet... all will be right with the world.

An even more negative reading of the story could contain a nasty message of queer people, saying "provided how much violence has been used against you and your community historically, is it not irresponsible for you to start families and invite children into that kind of threat of violence?" Which... would be wrong. Because we don't blame victims for their circumstances. Even if the objective is to be normal, the condition of queer rights is predicated on the ability to choose how you want to fit into the heterohegemony — or not — without persecution.

Now granted, these very negative readings of the story are all... far more nuanced than bigots and right wingers (or... quite frankly, centrists) are usually capable of demonstrating. And I want to be clear, I am not saying that Paul G. Tremblay or M. Night Shyamalan are queerphobic.

And, quite frankly, he may very well be bisexual, pansexual, or asexual; you don't need to only marry dudes to be a queer man. His identity is only really important for questioning why it was so important for this story to be focused on a queer family. It would help us understand... what the intended takeaway could be. However, within the story there is a lack of guiding framing devices to really suggest what the takeaway should be. The presence of homophobic readings is not necessarily a problem with the story, but a problem with the fact that these are... real issues and real discussions that are imposed on the queer community from the outside. The fact that these readings are possible is concerning. But only because these reflect the bigotry we actually experience in day-to-day life.

In a world without homophobia, this story would not be remarkable for the sake of gay dads, but rather the weird apocalyptic cult and vague paranormal overtones. Make no mistake, violence against us is a threat to our immediate safety. But these ideological discussions around our identity are pivotal to the ongoing progress to facilitate our long-term security. The fight for our rights needs to be both reactionary and methodical. We need an ideal objective to know how we should navigate immediate threats in order to strategically move towards our long-term goals. And even the reactionary solutions are not usually efficient, they are necessary until we can progress our rights to a point where we do not need those kind of solutions.

For instance, at least in America, where the story takes place, leaning on the Supreme Court for what rights have been won for us may not have been the best plan. If only retrospectively, now that the Supreme Court has decided [exhasperated] the former rulings no longer matter.

If the immediate goal was marriage, getting that goal by any means necessary may have compromised the long-term progress to... [furrows brow, turns to camera] Was there even a plan of what to do after the marriage fight was won?

Regardless of whether the creators involved in this project are gay or straight, I feel like such a hot-button discussion ought to have warranted a greater sensitivity for diminishing the presence of these readings. If homophobic readings are present, then there are ways to make it more difficult for the audience to come away with that reading.

For instance, yes, there is a straight reading of... Yuri on Ice, because the confirmation was never verbalized. However, the mental gymnastics you have to do in order to justify their straightness is, in itself, worthy of a gold medal. Many of you may insist that this is just a story and that nobody's going to take these homophobic messages away from it. But keep in mind that Ted Cruz took away a reading of Star Wars that singled out Luke Skywalker... as a randian objectivist. When are we supposed to take messaging for face value, like in Star Wars, and how are we supposed to distinguish that from media where the intended takeaway is buried in subtext?

Like my go-to example of Fight Club, where the condemning takeaway is actually more clear in the book. The answer usually lies in the resolution, and unfortunately when it comes to Knock at the Cabin, the ending is a bit too ambiguous to be definitive. And in spite of the fact that these cultists are explicitly described as not gay bashing wackos, the setting is indicative of these aforementioned queer anxieties. Especially when a straight couple would have accomplished the exact same story without nearly as much baggage.

Cynically, I may add that, perhaps, the couple was made to be gay... for no other reason than to distinguish them from... a range of other "murderous stranger shows up at a family's rural residence" stories. Which, again, is more likely than deliberate homophobia. The fact of the matter is that this kind of narrative is popping up in a period of time... when queer people are coming under a new wave of threats. Where many of us are being attacked and forced out of spaces we believed... could be safe.

See, we don't really have to be worried about bigotry knocking at our door anymore as much as we... worry about bigotry showing up in our DMs...

The internet was a revolutionary tool for the organization of queer rights. Our leaders had depended on phone calls and then spreading information through newsletters and bulletins. In the new millennium, online communities could grow up at a chat rooms, blogs, and early social media platforms like Myspace. If information passes easier, then we can organize easier. Queer communities gravitated to digital spaces because unlike other marginalized communities, we did not have generational districts which we were born into. A lesbian was just as likely to be born into a family in rural South Dakota as one in Brooklyn. Whereas a homogeneously white community in Maine was not likely to suddenly have a large group of Lebanese children born into the maternity ward.

Ethnic communities in cities where immigrant families typically pooled were not only tightly knit, but were densely packed into a few city blocks, like Little Italy, or various Chinatowns, or black neighborhoods. Word of mouth was much more effective at passing through these areas because most people in the communities were... in these areas. While there may be a gay district of a city, the queer population may be concentrated here, but most queer people may live throughout the city, and commute between their residents and these bars, clubs, and wherever else that the community has organized. For this reason, internet organizations have been revolutionary for the disabled, the deaf and hard of hearing, or any other communities that are mostly ignored through... [air quotes] "random sampling".

Which is why Elon Musk's Twitter meltdowns would be hilarious... if it wasn't for the fact that the platform is essential for a lot of people's advocacy organizing in the modern world. If anything else, the gays are savvy.

I may have recently come under criticism for claiming that the AIDS epidemic took a grand majority of our brilliant creative minds, leaving out exceptions like Andy Warhol (who... by some accounts was asexual) or Elton John (who by all accounts was not). Naturally, not all interesting gay people were horny, and not all of them who were horny were taken from us. This is based on what could have been in the 1980s and 90s, based on the prominence of queer creators in the 70s and 60s. And just... how many queer people died of AIDS related complications in general.

In spite of that, this shouldn't suggest we lost our brilliant industrious minds. Queer newsletters and publications took a swift turn to online spaces as our fights around the world began to turn to marriage equality in Europe and America, and basic rights and protections in many other places. This information mobility helped spread awareness, demonstrate the power of the community, and soften the general public's opinion of us. And overall helped us organize at a much swifter rate than otherwise.

It's no surprise that as home computers became standard in every household, queer rights started to actually make tangible progress for the first time. However, while our leaders were tech savvy, our bigoted detractors did eventually catch up. The internet made it much easier for them to harass us, it seems. Before they needed to either live in LA, San Francisco, New York, or any of the other significant urban areas to harass us en mass. (Or actually pay for postage to send a hateful letter.) But it came to be that they could just fire off some emails or invade message boards.

Almost every queer person I know has gotten some kind of hate email or DM. Hate mail for queer people, especially creators and people with a platform, range from structured sermons with Biblical references to... just unhinged ranting tirades which amount to nothing more than a collection of red flag buzzwords accusing us of sexually perverse actions and... promising any range of violent retributions. So basically running the gamut of Republican politicians!

Ask anyone with a halfway prominent platform: anonymity and privacy are illusions. For those who know how, with a little patience, dedication, and untreated mental illness, it can be a relatively simple process to find someone's personal information or even an address. Doxing is a very real threat for people who are already the target of discrimination. Coupled with the fact that law enforcement have historically under-investigated crimes and violence against queer victims. Doxing someone is among the greatest flexes of privilege. Because it acknowledges that the target does not have a viable recourse for violence against them.

(And no, you cannot get doxed if you live in a historic Scottish Manner and have already made the purchase of said property very public.) Though, admittedly, given that doxing can often be a dog whistle for a death threat, I can understand the anxiety.

It plays off of the classic "I know where you live" Trope in horror movies. Where the possible victim is reminded that they are not safe in a place that they had assumed they would be. Sure, someone throwing homophobic slurs in public is one thing, but once the slurs and threats are coming from inside the house? Things get very real, very fast.

Doxing and threats are becoming one of the most common ways to silence queer voices. Even as our detractors claim queer people do it to them. I'm sure they do, but there are significantly less of us than there are of them, and their platforms are traditionally much larger. To the point where old Joanne tweeting at a prominent trans figurehead could be adjacent to putting out a social media hit. At best, we can hope the hit stays within the twitterverse.

The frustrating part is that... as these dog whistling bigots blanket us all as barbarians for actions they too engage in, queer people stare down lists of threats and criticism... for simply existing.

There's always been pressure for queer people to "cover" in public. Covering, as Annamari Vitikainen describes it, refers to queer people toning down their sexuality in order to fit better or easier into mainstream society. The expectation that queer people cover is acknowledged as establishing a system of oppression that coerces queer people to act in specific ways. With substantial threats of punishment for not doing so when it is expected of them. No holding hands in public, for instance. And certainly no kissing in public.

Almost every gay teenager has the fantasy of being just as affectionate with their real (or in most cases, imaginary) boyfriend or girlfriend as their straight friends are. But, there is an immediate fear when those thoughts enter your mind. Of the repercussions of doing so. There did seem to be some movement on this front in the last couple of decades. It used to be that you had to go to the gay hotspots of Castro Street, Chelsea, or Church Street to feel comfortable and safe expressing your queerness. Unless there was a Pride Parade going on.

But when I was in my late teens, I saw a marked shift to where a queer person could be comfortable being themselves. The map seemed to open up to include most major cities and even small towns. Gays were making out on every street corner in America, according to conservatives. This was never really the case. But it's the image that was sent out by the mainstream media. That homophobia had, for the most part, been dealt with. Especially after gay marriage started going mainstream. If we could get married, we must have won the war.

But fights over people refusing to issue marriage licenses, and refusing to bake wedding cakes... painted a very different picture. We hadn't won the war. We'd merely back the enemy into a corner... and now they felt threatened enough to retaliate in any way they saw fit.

Los Angeles, a city most would consider pretty queer-friendly, saw a 21 percent increase in gay hate crimes in 2021 alone, marking the highest rate of such hate crimes in 18 years. Gay men with a target of 85 percent of these crimes. Meanwhile, 93 percent of anti-trans hate crimes that were reported were violent in nature.

This percentage of violence was greater than any other stigmatized group that was recorded by the 2021 Hate Crimes Report. Law enforcement expect that these figures only represent a small portion of the actual total number of instances that were motivated by hatred, since many would go unreported due to people not being out of the closet, feeling ashamed, or a lingering animosity toward police from the queer community.

In fact, hate crimes targeting LGBT individuals have climbed for the past four straight years, according to data published by the FBI.

All of this coincided with a rise in right-wing thinking across North America and Europe. One unnamed Republican staffer said to the Atlantic,

"Conservatives who came before us were insufferably naive. They thought liberals and conservatives both want what's best for America, disagreeing only on how to get there. But that's not true. Woke elites — increasingly the mainstream left of this country — do not want what we want.

What they want is to destroy us."

The rise in right-wing radicalism, seen in the likes of the MAGA movement, the increasing hate toward trans people, and the surprising rise of actual fascists like France's Marine Le Pen, lines up directly with the rise of LGBTQ hate crimes. Trans people had been the main target of these groups, with trans bathroom access drawing the ire of so-called [air quotes] "feminists", who thought that dangerous men would actually put in the effort to dress as a woman to gain access to women's bathrooms. Th-they don't do that.

This gave gay men a sense of safety, I think, believing that the target had shifted. And so we gays could relax. But the people who hate the LGBTQ community... don't really give a damn which letter you associate with, since attacks on gay men have been on the rise recently, with the growing fervor over the... [air quotes, disgusted tone] "groomer" anti-queer propaganda.

According to the Center On Extremism, this misleading and deceptive story has been weaponized in order to characterize members of the queer community as groomers. In their effort to discredit those who identify as queer, these anti-queer fanatics have misused a valid phrase that is tied to sexual assault.

RAINN (Rape Abuse And Incest National Network), the largest anti-sexual violence organization in the United States, defines grooming as —

"Manipulative behaviors used by sexual abusers to gain access to a potential victim, coerce them into agreeing to be abused, and reduce the risk of being caught."

Words like "grooming" and "groomer" are not used in a proper context by anti-queer people. Instead they argue that talking about sexual orientation and gender identity in public in general makes queer individuals pedophiles who prey on children.

[Over footage of "Toddlers and Tiaras"]

They say that queer people are trying to sexualize children and recruit them, by introducing them to these subjects at an early age, in the hopes that they would begin to question their own gender and sexual identities.

The result of this widespread hateful rhetoric has been a spike in harassment, threats, and violence, especially toward gay men and trans people. Across the U.S, extremists and mainstream conservatives alike employ this rhetoric to harass the queer community, painting us as child predators and criminals. Which not only increases the likelihood of hate crimes being committed against us, but also of us (as previously mentioned) "covering".

...The right wing knows that queer people aren't going anywhere. That we exist and will continue to exist, but they see this as the perfect opportunity to drive us back into our closets. If they could just make us go into hiding again, so that they don't have to see us, so they don't have to acknowledge our existence. These attacks, both physical and verbal, are meant to do that. they're meant to make being queer so dangerous that no one in their right mind would do it in public.

And it's not just crazies on the internet or whack job Congress people driving at this either. Actual members of the United States Supreme Court have floated the idea of repealing gay rights laws in America. Clarence Thomas, in particular, has been vocal about his intentions to roll back gay rights, bluntly stating that Lawrence V Texas, the 2003 ruling that decriminalized gay sex in the U.S, and the 2015 ruling in Oberger Fell Vs Hodges, which said that there is a right to same-sex marriage, should be overturned as they were (quote) "Demonstrably Erroneous Decisions". [clasps hands irritatedly]

Now... Thomas's call for a re-examination of these rulings carries no weight in law, and cannot compel his Supreme Court colleagues to follow his lead. The implication, though, is that conservative state legislatures should draft laws that conflict with Supreme Court precedent, in the hopes that the Court would overturn its previous decisions. Which... with the Roe v Wade decision of 2022... wouldn't be out of the question.

So these wars that we had ostensibly won, which had at worse developed into cultural cold wars... seem to be heating back up. The U.S Congress did pass the Right to Marriage Act in 2022, signed by President Biden, but it's mostly toothless. It wouldn't require states to license same-sex marriages, but it would require states to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Attorney Paul Smith said,

"It's designed not to mandate a given state to marry anyone they don't want to marry. Instead, if you found some place to get married, everyone has to treat you as married.

That's less of an intrusion on the sovereignty of states."

In other words, [air quotes] the "sovereignty of states" is more important than the dignity of the people who live in them.

So this all leads to a very uncomfortable question: does our visibility only make us more vulnerable? Especially when the government is only willing to pass halfway measures of protection.

I think that maybe we've given the impression along the way that we won't fight back against threats to us. It used to be that when the government refused to protect us, or when it was even the government that was doing harm to us, we would mobilize and demonstrate. Our community took to the streets to protest harmful legislation or violence against us. We demonstrated the strength of our numbers. We demonstrated that our humanity was not rooted in our ability to passively endure in complacent silence.

The fight for our rights was fruitless when fought from offices and boardrooms. By gay lawyers who wore suits. It wasn't until we started shouting at the public that, like anybody else, we have a point where enough is enough.

It's been said that Pride was a riot. But that's only half true. Before it was a parade and platform for overpriced corporate sponsorships, PRIDE was an organization that stood for —

Personal
Rights
In
Defense and
Education

PRIDE was first formed in LA in 1966. From the very beginning, they were considerably more radical than the gay rights groups that existed prior to them in the 1960s and 50s. Before then, gay rights groups were more deferential to the ideas of straight people. As opposed to the more conservative strategy that was followed by PRIDE's predecessors, the primary objective of PRIDE was to engage in political action and protests that were as boisterous and as loud as possible, in order to confront the opposition. To stand up and make a point. It was this kind of action that would write the how-to manual for future groups like ACT UP to force government action.

When compared to other organizations, PRIDE had a greater degree of success in rallying huge numbers of people to stage demonstrations against any group or individual who denied members of the queer community their equal rights or dignity.

But, in 1968, the year before the famous Stonewall Riots, PRIDE was dissolved due to ever increasing pressure from The Straights, and even a number of gays in the community, to sit down, shut up, and be polite.

This "be nice to our oppressors" strategy led to exponentially more arrests and attacks against queer people. However, one night in New York City, a group of gay men, lesbians, and trans women had had enough and fought back, lighting the flame of the Stonewall Riots and the modern LGBTQ Rights Movement.

But today? We as a community seem much more timid, much more willing to take a backhand to the face, literally or metaphorically, as long as it doesn't make us look bad. It only makes the bigots look bad, right? That's why there's so few of them now! And they have like zero political power. Can't get anyone elected to save their lives. And certainly don't tout bigoted rhetoric in public! And never confront anyone over their gender identity in a public bathroom. (That's sarcasm by the way.)

Not to be alarmist, but it does seem like these people are only gaining political power. There are right-wingers who label themselves [air quotes] "activists" because they've convinced themselves that they, often white if not wealthy, are being... persecuted. People like that Republican staffer I mentioned earlier (whose name is Rachel Bovard, by the way), claim that this political party (which is really an ideology, not an identity) is under threat of destruction. And whether or not they're delusional enough to actually believe it, their supporters sure do. They are gaining more and more power within the Republican party.

We used to think the Tea Party caucus was crazy. Now they've disbanded because they weren't crazy enough for these new ones! And these are the people we're supposed to negotiate with?! To be kind and empathetic with? To compromise with? And put on our best behavior for? Because we must be polite to our oppressors? Because even as they decry us, denounce us, insult us, confront us, question us, harm us, and silence us, it all becomes a discussion of their feelings, doesn't it?

[Empathetic music in background slowly fading up, marking the end of the video approaching.]

How dare we silence them for trying to suppress us and oppress us. We're so afraid of these people turning around and calling us bullies that we become toothless. What are we gonna do? Start a hashtag on Twitter? March on Washington or state capital for a weekend, and then go home? We're certainly not going to fight for our rights and security in any way that will remind the population at large that bigotry is never in season. We used to do that. But we haven't in a long long time.

We thought our safety was secured. The doors and windows to the house in which our rights seemed so safe were locked up tight. And so we could sleep soundly and move on with our lives. But we seemingly forgot that windows... [glances at windows in background behind him] ...are only made of glass. Glass through which the bigots could see us. And then smash through when they got sick of seeing us, and take away our safety.

Does that mean we should draw the curtains and hide in the closets? No. Hell no! We used to have queer guard dogs that would fight, but most of them died in the 80s and 90s. And others were put down because... some of us thought they were too much to handle. The neighbors might be offended by how loudly they barked. But with the repeal of abortion rights and voting rights in America, our neighbors houses have now been broken into. And our windows have been smashed.

So I think it's time we get some new guard dogs. Loud, vicious, unstoppable forces of protection, that will scare the shit out of these bigots and send them running home. Put a big rainbow colored sign on the front fence: "Beware the Queers. They bite back."

[Somber music finishes on the cut to black.]