Hello and welcome to This Week in Social Justice.
I’m Daisy Cousens, and I’ll be discussing all the biggest and baddest social justice
fails of the past seven days.
This week we have actress Ellen Page and her lack of contrition for her Jussie Smollett
comments, why LGBT activists hate Donald Trump so much that they’ve opposed his anti-anti-gay
campaign, and depending on how long I feel like talking about the first two topics, we
may even have time for a bonus topic.
So!
Let’s get started.
Actress, activist, and self-proclaimed good-guy Ellen Page has finally come out with a public
statement regarding her condemnation of Vice President Mike Pence and the Trump administration
over Jussie Smollett’s apparently fake hate crime, in the form of an article published
in The Hollywood Reporter.
An interview published on February 1st on YouTube between Ellen and talk show host Stephen
Colbert quickly went viral, when she lumped the blame for the hoax attack squarely on
the shoulders of
Pence
Of course, this interview was met with much adulation…that is, until Jussie’s story
started to unravel.
Much like many other high-profile supporters of Jussie, who had unquestioningly bought
the story and were revelling in their outpouring of Trump and MAGA hate, Ellen made not a peep
after the house of cards came crashing down.
So, needless to say, Trump supporters who had been following the story were dying to
know one thing…would she or wouldn’t she apologize?
Would she swallow her pride and her Trump Derangement Syndrome meds and take the high
road by saying sorry?
Well, the answer is Of course Ellen Page didn’t apologise for
vilifying Pence, or jumping to conclusions about the attack, or for using it as a political
tool to fan more flames of hatred against Trump supporters.
The article took exactly the tone I expected it to take which was simply but hate crimes
happen anyway so we should all just ignore this.
The only mention she made of Jussie was to say
“The conversation around Jussie Smollett has led us all to examine hate violence and
its implications and aftermath.
I had no reason to doubt Jussie.
My work on Gaycation — the docuseries I produced to chronicle LGBTQ+ stories from
around the world — introduced me to many survivors of hate violence.”
And that, right there, is the angle that I and everyone else knew that many of the regressive
left would take.
That even though Jussie lied, it had opened up a conversation, so we should all still
have a collective whinge about how Trump is a horrible racist homophobic authoritarian
dictator.
Also; contrary to what Ellen asserts, she actually had every reason to doubt Jussie.
There was no CCTV footage, in an area full of cameras.
There was no suspect, there were no witnesses, and the nature of the crime itself was so
farfetched that Ellen Page, who, with all of her activism and knowledge of hate crimes,
should have immediately suspected something didn’t add up.
The nature of hate crimes is that generally victims don’t get off with a scratch a rope
draped theatrically around them.
If Jussie had actually been a victim of a hate crime, he would be either seriously injured,
or not around to tell the tale.
What this proves, and colour me not surprised, is that Ellen Page, like all the rest of them,
is so locked in her Hollywood liberal bubble, that she actually believes that’s what Trump
supporters are like.
That they’re all angry white racist men running around sniffing out opportunities
to beat up on racial minorities, gay people, and women.
That’s also most likely why Jussie Smollett thought he would get away with it.
He’s constantly surrounded by people fiercely perpetuating that view of Trump supporters
with little to no dissent, in an environment where proclaiming you’re a victim gives
you opinion points.
Of course he thought nobody would question him, and of course Ellen Page, despite glaring
discrepancies in the story, thought she had no reason to doubt him.
The narrative was just too juicy and too convenient.
So, enormous social justice fail from Ellen Page on this one.
Speaking of LGBT activism, it has been announced that the Trump administration is going to
launch a global campaign to combat the criminalization of homosexuality in countries where it is
illegal.
After a 31 year old man was hanged in January in Iran for being gay, the American ambassador
to Germany Richard Grennell, who is the most prominent openly gay diplomat in the Trump
administration, plans to lead what his embassy has termed a new and “specific push” to
decriminalize homosexuality worldwide.
According to a State Department Spokesperson: “The United States continues to work to
protect and defend human rights for all.
Governments have an obligation to ensure that all people can freely enjoy the universal
human rights and fundamental freedoms to which they are entitled,” a State Department spokesperson
told Fox News this week.
“Working to advance longstanding U.S. policy around human rights is the kind of work our
Ambassadors do all around the world every day.”
Now, you’d think, from the perspective of the social justice left, this would be a good
thing.
After all, being gay is illegal in 71 countries round the world, and punishable by death in
some cases, so any initiative from the USA to combat that would seem to be sorely welcome,
right?
B ROLL WRONG MONTAGE The reaction from the left wing press has
ranged from flat out pretending it isn’t happening, to being openly hostile towards
the initiative.
Extraordinarily enough, leading LGBT publication Out Magazine insisted that the push to decriminalize
homosexuality in non Western countries was an old racist tactic, and part of an old colonialist
handbook.
They also dismissed the notion that the Trump administration could in any way be interested
in helping LGBT people as tokenism “Rather than actually being about helping
queer people around the world, the campaign looks more like another instance of the right
using queer people as a pawn to amass power and enact its own agenda.”
Teen Vogue put the decision down to it likely being a smoke screen for a nuclear power grab
in Iran.
The Washington Post dismissed it as an example of “homonationalism”
“Grenell links support of the initiative to decriminalize homosexuality with his frequent
criticism of Islam and of Angela Merkel’s migrant and refugee policies.
That approach exemplifies what scholars call “homonationalism,” a term originally coined
by political scientist Jasbir Puar.
Homonationalism, she argues, uses “progressive” claims on gay rights to justify exclusionary
forms of national identity.
Western societies are portrayed as better than other, “backward” societies to justify
anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant politics.”
“Some well-known politicians who take this approach include the Netherlands’ Geert
Wilders, France’s Marine Le Pen, and Germany’s Alice Weidel and Jens Spahn.
For example, Weidel, the co-parliamentary leader of the German anti-immigrant Alternative
für Deutschland (AFD), said that among her motivations for leading a party that addresses
the “problem” of Muslim migration is that she’s gay.”
Look, what we can glean from this issue is that the regressive left hates Trump himself
more than it hates his policies.
I can understand some hostility from some LBGT people over a couple of the decisions
regarding, say, religious freedom the Trump administration has made, but to refuse to
take this initiative at face value simply because you don’t like Trump would seem
to fly in the face of what being an LGBT activist is all about.
If instigated properly, this push by Richard Grennell could save an awful lot of lives,
and do an awful lot of good for the acceptance and dignity of LGBT people around the world.
Certainly, if it was Obama pushing this, LGBT activists would be screaming his praises.
It’s not entirely irrational to assume that if Trump single-handedly cured cancer, the
regressive left would criticise him for taking away jobs in cancer treatment and research.
Big fat social justice fail on this one.
Bonus topic!
We have a bonus topic this week.
Twenty-six-year-old sex coach Demetra Nyx has taken to posting photos and videos of
herself on her Instagram account with her period smeared all over her face.
This is somewhat of a monthly ritual for Nyx, who wants to empower women to feel like their
period is powerful and beautiful, and not something to be ashamed of.
Look, I can understand women who take it upon themselves to make women less ashamed of their
periods, and to try and normalise it as somehow empowering, and to make out like you can live
life as normal, and feel perfectly fine while you have it.
But the reality for all but the luckiest of women is that that’s simply not true.
Periods are awful.
They are the furthest thing from empowering.
They are messy and painful and expensive and annoying and they make you feel like absolute
crap, and the worst bit about it is knowing it’s going to happen 12 times a year for
upwards of 40 years.
So when I see people like Demetra Nyx, or ads for menstrual products featuring women
happy and carefree and running around exercising, I call bullcrap.
The most empowering thing a woman can do, I think, when it comes her period is to admit
to herself that it’s gonna be awful, and be okay with that.
Stop trying to make the best of something that is objectively irritating.
It is okay not to feel like a beautiful womanly butterfly while you have your period.
Accept the bloating, accept the mood swings, accept all of it, because you can’t do much
about it except grab block of chocolate and a hot waterbottle and watch re runs of Gossip
Girl until the monthly mini hell passes.
So while I don’t think this is the worst kind of social justice fail, because I do
think Demetra means well…it’s just unrealistic for most women.