follow up topic: relate all you just said to today's society

An answer April's question "What do you think keeps movements apart today? Is it conscious (or unconscious intervention by the patriarchy/How Things Are), or are the members of each movement now primarily responsible for disregarding other movements?"

It's a little bit of both, I'd say. The Powers That Be still keep women apart today through backlash politics. I mean, many young women are afraid still to call themselves feminists, even if their viewpoints fall right in line with women's rights. Feminists are still "femi-nazis," ugly, fat, hairylegged dykes that hate men. Of course this may be true of a handful of feminists, but this characterization came about from constant misinterpretation and whining on the part of white males who felt they were losing their advantage in the workplace or social sphere or whathaveyou. Still, it was and is extremely effective at keeping women apart. Patriarchy also keeps the women's movement apart with religion, holding certain beliefs (whether they be God-sanctified or not, you can make that shit up anyway) over women's heads who might otherwise support a woman's right to choose or a gay's right to marry. Your religion forbids it, they say, so you wouldn't be a "true Christian" to support it. Also with gay rights, I feel sometimes that the media's representation of lesbians vs gays keeps those two groups apart as well, or could easily serve to. Lesbians have to fight against objectification (of all the lesbian kisses on TV nowadays, how many of them are NOT geared toward the erectile fantasies of heterosexual men?) while gay men have to fight just to be recognized (Queer Eye being a distraction from the real cause, falsely leading people to think that a great leap has been made).

On the other hand, movements keep other movements away as well. I know that homophobia is strong in black communities who feel that it's a white "problem." I can't link the statistic, but I remember reading somewhere that the majority of people opposed to gay marriage are black males (please correct/quote/help me out if I'm wrong). You can examine many reasons why this is so, and I think it ties into what bell hooks has to say about sexism in black civil rights movements as well. Years of fighting has made machoism and control key for young black men, and while a gay man can be both macho and in control, this is not the prevalent stereotype of gays or women (which you could say comes from The Way Things Are and thus furthers to keep the two movements apart) and therefore their rights are second to black rights as a whole.

There you go. I've come full circle. The Way Things Are tries hard to keep people from mobilizing through stereotypes, media enforcement, and political change, while some groups prevent others from joining because they feel their cause is less or not a problem they have, which in turn stems from media representations and prevalent stereotypes. I think my head just imploded. I might need to go cry, fetal position, in a corner, for a while until I feel like I can come back out into the Big Bad World which has none of my interests at heart and seeks constantly to drag me down. Goddammit.