Category: Politics & Activism

I used to report for NPR’s Morning Edition, and I’ve worked for, and raised quite a bit of money for, several large NPR affiliates. Over the years, my opinion of NPR has greatly diminished, and its middle-of-the-road, anybody-could-be-correct style makes me crazy. So here’s a bit of satire.

I want to say a few words from my cis, straight, white, male perspective about Ellen Page coming out and why it matters. After I posted the video of Page’s speech, a friend on Twitter said, in essence, “I don’t see why I’m supposed to care about some celebrity’s sexuality.” My guess is that my straight, white, cis, male friend is not alone. But her actions do matter. And so do my friend’s. And so do mine.

Page’s coming out matters for her. It means she can finally claim her identity publicly. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to deny a core part of who I am. I’ve never had to. Society accepts everything I am. But I can try to put myself in Ellen Page’s shoes and think about what it would be like to lie over and over and over again in every public forum. To hide romantic relationships. To deny who she is to friends, family, coworkers.

Her coming out also matters for people who aren’t wealthy, famous actresses. Every famous person who speaks the truth removes one more brick from the enormous wall that stops LGBTQ folks from feeling like they can be honest about who they are and who they love. Our society isn’t the way it is because God made it that way or because natural selection made us homophobes. It’s the way it is because we made it this way. We make it this way every day by our silence, by our ignorance, by our lack of empathy, but our acceptance of the status quo.

My friend said he finds people’s sexuality to be the least important part of them. In a way, I agree. It doesn’t — or shouldn’t — matter if my friend is gay, bi, transgendered, straight, whatever. But that’s extremely easy for me to say. Again, no one cares about my sexuality because it’s “normal.” For millions of people, their identity is a key factor in the quality of their lives. Either because others know about it and react with their ingrained biases, or because they’re forced to hide who they are. If Ellen Page or Michael Sam or any LGBTQ celebrity can make one person feel safer or better or more worthwhile, then we should all applaud that choice.

I know this is a cliched thought experiment, but just try replacing “gay” with “black” or “a woman” or “in a wheelchair” or any of the hundreds of other qualities based on which we discriminate against other humans. Should it matter that someone is any of these things? Does it? Of course it does. It’s ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

My friend ended by saying he won’t make such comments again. That’s wonderful and I applaud the mature conversation we were able to have this morning. He’s a good person and he responded with real listening and thought.

But silence is not enough.

Our silence makes us complicit in this toxic system. Our silence causes those around us to think again before being true about themselves. Our silence means that friends who might lean on us, might confide in us, might turn to us for support, don’t, because they’re afraid we’ll turn out to be like most people they encounter.

Silence is not enough.

We need to speak out, to stand up, to be vocal and active about creating this better world we all want to live in. And I’m speaking here primarily to my cis, straight friends. What we do makes a difference. We may never be called upon to show the courage Ellen Page showed. But we are called upon every day, again and again, to show the courage and compassion and empathy and morality required to make everyone we encounter feel comfortable in their own bodies and minds.

I can do more. You can do more. Let’s do more.

In high school in the 80s, my friends & I wore anti-apartheid pins. It was the first political cause I knew. Long before I’d been radicalized. The lives and, even more, the heroic statures of people like Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko were my first examples of political courage.

Songs like “Nelson Mandela” (The Specials), “Biko” (Peter Gabriel) and “Sun City” were part of my political awakening. Later, in the early 90s, I saw Hugh Masekela live and started to listen to music from South Africa. Later still, I read the poetry and prose of Dennis Brutus.

The anti-apartheid struggle in SA, embodied in Mandela & Biko, was my entry into the civil rights fight in the US. All of this is simply to say that my own personal path to activism was partly the result of the movement Nelson Mandela inspired.

“Dear everyone: Nelson Mandela was never a pacifist, never a Gandhi, never afraid to assert the absolute right of the oppressed to fight back.” — Mike Prysner

I would add that even Gandhi wasn’t a Gandhi in the way we’ve come think of him. I’m not saying I’m not a fan. I mean that what we now think of as his “pacifism” involved forcing huge amounts of violence on the part of others as a means of demonstrating their moral bankruptcy. Not to mention the external pressures on the British empire at the time of the Indian freedom struggle. Nothing is as simple as the easy stories we tell.

We don’t want to go too far down the road of mythologizing anyone. MLK (whose name was brought up during a Facebook conversation about Mandela) was a homophobe and womanizer. It’s not about our heroes being people without flaws. I find it inspiring that flawed people can do extraordinary things, given that those are the only kind of people who exist.

In a similar way, not talking about the fact that Rosa Parks was a trained organizer who intentionally refused to give up her seat as part of a planned boycott makes it seem like she was magical or a superhero. It takes away everyone else’s ability to do the same thing. I know this isn’t an exact parallel, I just offer it as another example of the myth-making that we’re so prone to. I wrote a poem about this very topic in February of this year:

/ / /

out of nowhere

what she did, she planned to do
from the NAACP to the Highlander Folk School
she had prepared for this moment
it wasn’t even the first time she’d done it
a decade before, that same driver had
thrown her off that same bus
for not entering through the back door

when we ignore the preparation
we turn an activist into an impossible saint
we turn resistance into a miracle
we say that what she did only she could do

NO

we must all refuse to move to the back of the bus
we must all get educated, get organized, get ready
we are all capable of throwing our bodies
onto the gears of a corrupt system
we can all be — must all be — Rosa Parks

/ / /

The lessons I take from Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur are many and varied. For example, we must use the skills and talents and courage we possess, even in the face of danger and overwhelming odds. We have to be strategic and use a host of tactics to achieve our goals. We should take advantage of external forces that are putting pressure on our opponents, and leverage those forces toward our ends where possible. We should engage with as broad a community as possible, but not be so concerned about pleasing everyone that we fail to take necessary action. These are just some examples.

Tonight, I celebrate the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela.