Possum Gargoyle & Panti Bliss

So there I was, minding my own business, expecting to get my hair done, and she says to me, ‘Would you want a cat?’  A big ole neutered tom, age in double digits who still had the collar mark in his fur from being turfed out, probably because his old fella died and the family too mean to keep him.  She has another cat, also a stray and not adjusting to the tom, so last in, first out.

He seemed nice enough when we met him, and we reckoned a cat that age would sleep all day.  He turned into Son of Satan when we got him home. 

All attempts to re-home him through official channels, even via cat rescue and the vet were met with the suggestion to put him down.  Life as we knew it ended, but since, among all his other health problems, he has a brain tumour, we keep telling ourselves we’ve only got 18 more months of this.

I should mention that the tumour is on whatever affects growth, so he looks like a gargoyle with possum hair.  Not this kind of possum,

But this.

There’s not even the cute factor to make us like him, but in an odd sort of way, we do.  He’s well treated and adores (has taken ownership of) the Butler, even shows respect for the other cats’ personal space.  A modicum of respect.

So what does that have to do with Panti Bliss?  Well, when we tell folk that gargoyle death is the only option for getting our life back, people are all, ah . . . the poor thing.  Even cat rescue said to put him to sleep?  Ah . . . and this is a cat.  Not even the same species. 

Now let’s look at the LGBT community.  Fellow humans, for those who are unsure.  Humans whom we publicly debate about – whether they should get married, play sports, have children, work with children, be around children as if being LGBT were an infectious disease.  We publicly debate this, in print, on the internet, the telly, in groups.  We spread the word that whole nations kill LGBT people and praise or boycott Coca-cola for including a gay couple in its Super Bowl ad.  Just in case there’s any LGBT folk out there who haven’t copped onto themselves that they really aren’t the same as the rest of the civilised world.

Then Panti Bliss got into a bit of bother over an interview on RTE. 

Panti Bliss talk on homophobia

This speech about homophobia says many wonderful things, but what impacted me the most is Panti’s description of what it feels like to live in an environment that relentlessly signifies being LGBT.  A trans woman once said if she’d committed murder, her family would visit her in prison, but this . . . they wished she’d died rather than come out to them.

So you haven’t lived until you’ve been ostracised at least once and if you’re old enough to read this blog, I assume you have been.  And by ostracised, I mean there you are, doing nothing beyond simply being, living, breathing in air and for that, you’re criticised.  For breathing in air. 

There she is, breathing in air, the right bitch. 

And then when you don’t stop yourself from breathing in air, people start looking at you funny and when you speak to them, they get a little smirk or pretend they didn’t hear you.  Before you know it, all the standard little things stop happening or take on great importance such as being able to stand in a queue outside a club or picking up milk during daylight hours or living in a house that doesn’t have graffiti sprayed on it or being spoken to civilly by your colleagues.  If you’re stupid enough to ask someone in authority to help, somehow it’s your fault.  You breathed, now, didn’t you?

This really blows my mind.  Gargoyle possum draws all this sympathy and yet . . .

Any country that is part of the EU has agreed there are laws which say the debate is over, yet RTE paid silence money to a shower of bigots.  Trying to cure any form of LGBT-ism, opposing marriage equality, firing teachers for being gay, pummelling LGBT citizens with negative stereotypes, beating, raping, killing LGBT people, those are all hate crimes. 

To all those people who haven’t yet made up their minds, the debate has finished.  Get over it.  Start acting like an evolved life form.

Currency of Hate

In a Galway pub on 11 September, 2001 , the punters in the seats near the telly got up to let the Americans sit down.  I’d been excused from work after the attacks and so it was from a high stool that I watched the world change.  As George Bush waxed imbecilic and Tony Blair gave a well enunciated battle cry, I made what I knew was a useless prayer.

Dear God, don’t let us go to war.  Dear God, please tell these assholes that killing’s not the answer.  Dear God, don’t let them blast out the ghetto to get the drug dealer.  Whether or not God listened isn’t the issue.  What I hoped wouldn’t happen, had already started.

I’m not going to debate the pros and cons of war.  I see both sides and am a proponent for accepting reality.  As long as there are people who will take what isn’t theirs or will toss kittens into walls for sport, we need a military.  What I’m thinking of is how we haven’t progressed much from the days of the coliseum.  A certain proportion of our population still enjoys watching others get ripped to bits.  Those of us who don’t, are told to take the moral high ground lest we be ridiculed as wooses.

The MEP for Northwest England criticises a gay couple for wanting the same rights as straights, then purportedly suggests that activists ‘confront Muslims instead of picking on meek & forgiving Christians.’  And he still has his job.  Two university students in Dublin sustain a savage knife attack for stopping a woman from getting her head stomped into the pavement and are advised by the gardaí not to press charges because their attackers will retaliate on the victim’s families.  After eighteen months of harassment by his ex-wife, a man quits his job of 12 years, moves across the country and is still forced by the court to pay expenses the ex unilaterally racks up in the name of his children.  A woman is murdered by her ex-husband and the court awards custody of her children to his parents who keep them away from their dead mother’s relatives.

We have religion and we have legislation but both are ineffectual in changing the gladiator mentality.  And so we respond in a currency of hate because no one thinks that giving members of the Westboro Baptist Church a hug is going to change things.  We raise voices and sometimes fists in outcry against MPs using taxpayers’ money to build duck houses and ride in chauffeured cars.  We hack into Twitter accounts, carry placards, hurl epithets, teach our children the standard exchange rate for bigotry, racism, sectarianism.

Hate begets hate.  A newly qualified teacher recently told me she was taught, when faced with a rowdy class, not to go for the ring leaders, but to seek out the weakest member of the pack, get them under control and work her way up the status chain until she got big dog.  While that’s probably an effective way to get things under control, that straggler in the pack is learning that the way to survive is to align with the strongest bully in the environment, rather than being taught that anti-social behaviour sucks.

A blog by Amanda Palmer is making the Facebook rounds and causing a blogging sensation.  (Go read it and her follow-up ‘plot thickening’ blog entries!)

 http://t.co/YPc03TLZ

She asked victims of internet bullying to tell her their stories and she’d write a subsequent entry with practical solutions to help them survive.  That’s a helluva commitment from a complete stranger to the universe at large and I’m not sure how many of us could sustain that.

BUT . . .

One hand reached out is more effective and more REAL than all the legislation, riot gear and fists in the air can be.  Do something practical.  Do it for one person outside your normal sphere.  The stressed parents down the street.  That dough-faced kid who doesn’t make eye contact.  The woman wearing sun glasses who keeps walking into doors.  Commit to only what you can sustain.  Do it for real, not for show.  Do it for the long haul.

I’m a realist.  We need legislation, military strength, bad ass teachers and maybe even churches.  Yet every time you ask how someone is but don’t listen to the answer; every time someone inconveniently seeks your help and you say you don’t want to be involved; every time you hear about injustice and all you do is raise your voice but not lift a hand, you’re complicit.  I’m complicit.  Nothing changes.

Do it.  Do it now.