The Liberal Purity Test
My Fellow Libs. We need to talk.
Is there room in our movement for forgiveness? Can people who once did things in support of white supremacy atone for it? Can people who did things that are offensive by modern standards be granted a chance to change?
If not, then sadly I will someday be drummed out of the movement too. I have not always been as evolved as I am now. And that isn’t to say I am done. I still have a lot of educating and understanding ahead of me. I am a work in progress and admit as much. But my past is littered with things that I am both embarrassed and ashamed of.
In spite of the fact that one of my closest friends in high school was gay, my friends and I regularly called each other fags, faggots, homos, and said things were “gay”. I can say with certainty that there was no malice in our hearts when we did. Half of us were part of the school’s SGA (straight-gay alliance) which should also indicate how much evolving society as a whole still had to do. Fag wasn’t a word connected to homosexuality for us. It meant something else. In hindsight, it’s so incredibly obvious that it’s hard to understand what we were thinking. Really, when we called someone a fag, it meant they were being a pain in the ass, acting like a sissy, or being something feminine.
I know, I know. Horrible in so many ways. Not only does it continue to perpetuate the stereotype that gay men are effeminate sissies, but it also manages to get some misogyny in there too. Usually, there was the accompanying “gay voice” - lispy and gentle. I was revered for my gay voice. Ask anyone. It was one of the best going. Why? Partially because my natural voice is, frankly, a little lispy and gentle. So I had a headstart in some ways. But also: I spent a lot of time with gay men. And not to say they all speak the same. They don’t. But the ones I knew were very gentle, soft-spoken men.
How does this make any sense? I loved my gay friends. Still do. Then why would I use such hurtful and offensive language? Was I just an asshole?
No. Things were different back then. That isn’t to excuse the behavior. It’s deplorable. But to understand where we are and where we’re going, we have to understand where we’ve been and how we got there. It wasn’t unusual in the ’90s to say things like “fag” and a lot worse. Hell, go watch The Hangover. It’s full of homophobia and misogyny. And that came out barely more than a decade ago.
This isn’t to say it was socially acceptable. I mean, it was, but only through a limited lens. Back in the 90s, there was a lot less resistance to terms like that and to white supremacy in general. It wasn’t there weren’t people speaking out against it, trying to get people to evolve and change their homophobic views. It’s just that nobody listened and nobody gave them a platform to do so. The media (movies, TV, etc.) were still almost exclusively the domain of straight, white men. And if they, as a group, didn’t care about something, then it was not represented in media. There were not a lot of straight white men looking to stop homophobia in 1995. If anything, they were more concerned with being called a “fag” themselves.
To the masses, it seemed as if nobody cared that calling people fags was hurtful and destructive. Anyone who complained about it was a PC cry baby. Sound familiar? (We’ve been having the same debate for decades.) There really wasn’t a voice out there telling impressionable teens (like me) that calling people fags was bad. I mean, we knew it was an insult (it was supposed to be) but I don’t think I really appreciated the stories of people like Matthew Shepard and how our toxic culture enabled violence like that to exist.
For those of you who grew up never knowing a world without high-speed internet, let me clue you in on a few things. For starters, information was A LOT harder to come by. It is easy to look back and think “how could anyone not know or understand this” but trust me. It was so easy to ignorant back in the ‘90s. Cable was an expensive luxury, otherwise, you were stuck with 10 channels if you lived near a city. VHS tapes and eventually DVDs from Blockbuster were the main method for consuming movies. Do you think they had a Gay RIghts section in the store? Nah-uh. Newspapers were a similar situation, although if you lived in a city there were some alternative papers. It was a very insular world, not really interested in growing, expanding, or being more inclusive. White people figured out this whole “society” thing. It was up to everyone else (blacks, gays, whatever) to fit into OUR thing. That was the modus operandi for how we lived our lives. We were cozy in our little white world and patriarchy.
Again, this is not to excuse anything. It was wrong then and it remains wrong today. Our society walled off the opposing views so that all that remained was white patriarchy. And unless you were touched personally by the movement (a gay brother, for instance) it was likely that you would remain ignorant. Expanding one’s mind in such directions was not particularly encouraged. If anything, ignorance was the soup du jour, served up as often as possible. And that’s the world we lived in.
This is the experience of someone who was considered LIBERAL, by the way. I was seen as progressive by my classmates and adults. I would spend time with gay people, share a bed with them, hug and kiss them. Not in a sexual way, per se, but I was never uncomfortable around homosexuals. They were just people. If anything, I was curious little white boy asking questions I had no business knowing the answers to. Remember, I also come from a diverse family, with several ethnicities represented at family parties. In some ways, I was a best-case scenario for someone looking to evolve. All I had to do was identify and shrug off the ignorant parts that society saddled me with.
And yet, I remained homophobic and racist for years. These habits and perceptions are so well ingrained into my psyche that even now I have homophobic and racist thoughts. I’ve covered that. They are stitched into the fabric of our society and my being. I do not anticipate a day where I will ever be free of them. White supremacy and toxic masculinity have made it so I was trained to be this way. My mind was shaped by the hands of the white patriarchy and I don’t think it’ll ever be free of it.
It seems trite to apologize for things now. I am very sorry to the people I hurt, the people who I called names, all so I could feel more comfortable with my place within our toxic society. Nothing I do will ever make up for how emasculated and ashamed I almost certainly made fellow classmates feel so I could prove that I was a man or even just get a cheap laugh from my friends. This isn’t the totality of my sins, only one example. There are plenty of others out there, I’m sure. Maybe someday I will be seen as important enough to cancel.
Our movement cannot survive if we apply modern standards to past behavior. Not that the people who wore blackface shouldn’t be taken to task for it. They absolutely should. Blackface was wrong 100 years ago and it’s wrong today. I ask that we take the totality of a person into consideration before condemning them to exile. Have they learned from this? Have the atoned by helping to lift up underrepresented voices? Have they grown from the experience? Are they willing to hear and listen to critical feedback? I don’t think we should have a one-size-fits-all approach to this. Some people should be canceled and exiled forever. Others, maybe deserve a chance to help fix the mess they made.
There is no perfect person, no person who is above the stains of our society. In many ways, we are all victims of the white patriarchy, even white men. Not to the same degree as minorities, of course. I ain’t here to die on the “not all white men” hill. We guilty. Let me be clear: WE GUILTY. But we are also cogs within the same machine and it will take all of us to change it.
White supremacy and toxic masculinity, two phrases I know conservatives LOVE to hear, have created a system by which choices are limited. Not only in economic and social mobility, but also in what is considered “acceptable” to society. As little white boys grow into white teenagers and then white men, they are constantly reinforced with the notion that they are superior to all and that they must follow strict behavioral standards or risk being kicked out. I’m not saying we should have the same amount of empathy for white kids. But they are victims too.
We are all in this shit stew together. If we apply an impossible purity test to all our allies we will end up very much alone. Instead, I urge my fellow libs to consider being empathetic to everyone. Do you think Jimmy Kimmel likes this image being seen by millions of people?
It’s easy to say that if he didn’t want people to see it, he shouldn’t have done it on a TV show seen by millions of people in the first place. There is a lot of truth in that. He wasn’t ashamed of it back then. So fuck him, right? Well… I don’t know about that. He isn’t the same man he was when he filmed this. He was on a show that basically a living tribute to toxic masculinity and white supremacy. Have you seen The Man Show?? The end credits roll over big breasted women jumping on a trampoline. If you’re going to something called The Man Show for evolved thinking, then I got bad news for you.
This all happened almost two decades ago. A lot can change in that much time. Not only in society but also within a person’s heart and how they understand the world. Is Jimmy Kimmel really the problem with society today? Hasn’t he been a good ally for the last five years? Does that matter at all?
I think it does. I’m not saying you have to watch JKL or like him. I’m not even saying he still deserves to have a late-night show, the whitest white-male place in media. If he really wants to atone he could give his show to Wanda Sykes. High visibility platforms should be reserved for people who use them for good (or simply entertainment). I think he has done some good work and raised his voice in ways that his corporate overlords don’t like. I think that should be considered too.
I don’t know what the answer to all this is. I know that we need to provide a platform for underrepresented voices in media and the arts. I know we need more people of color in movies and on TV shows. I also know that many, many white people have some skeletons in their closets, which is why “Cancel Culture” scares them so much. They don’t consider themselves racist or misogynist. To be confronted by reality is upsetting. Too bad. It’s time we all face our sins.