this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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Hi we can fight about other things too? like I'm also fucking super concerned about how religious institutions are infiltrating our government and other positions of power and how there are still so many mass shootings, and the opioid crisis, and mental health is still abysmal, and dental insurance is a joke even though bad teeth hurt your health.. oh and earth is basically fucking melting and people STILL deny global warming. Look see a person can be aware and care about a lot and consider all the things important! You're making the same type of argument that would come up with ANY progressive outcry of injustice, same fucking arguments happened with police brutality against people of color. Lawmakers don't have to focus on just ONE FUCKING THING and progress doesn't have to either.
And fuck this shit people still die from being LGBTQA. Fuck off with "you're too small to matter enough to protect" bullshit. I get it if you feel like it has too much media attention it's mostly because it became profitable to talk about it. That's capitalism at work but don't lessen and downplay a legitimate fight for equality because of that.
It's not a fight for equality. Nobody wants equality because equal for us sucks every ass. It's a fight to be at the front of the line for the money fountain, and every feel good story about an eleventy thousand dollar hormone treatment that got approved could have been a fucking well in a reservation that would have given clean water to hundreds of native people. I'm glad Suzy doesn't have to be Kevin any more, but Kevin still would have had food, water, and a place to sleep. Some of us don't even have that. So yeah, until all of us have the basic shit covered, I'm going to mad about the overexposure of a niche group who cry about their wants instead of recognizing all the need around them.
You're complaining about someone getting to go to a buffet when you are starving while someone just flew halfway across a country on a private jet to eat a steak down the block from you.
If you want to complain about money not going to get everyone basic needs met, then team together with the people who more often than not are also struggling to get by and target who actually has the money and hoards it for power instead of using it to eliminate hunger from the world.
And how is this the fault of the LGBT community? Are the LGBT community specifically responsible for native americans not getting enough attention? You have yet to make an argument why the LGBT community itself deserves your ire. Have they somehow -tricked- people into getting more attention? I really struggle to understand why you've picked on this group in particular. Are black people being given too much attention too? Women? Elderly people with dementia?
Let's look at all those groups as a percentage of the population and you tell me who should recieve the attention. Women? Half the population? Black people? Maybe 20-30% of the population around me? Elderly people with dementia? Now we have a very tiny group, except literally anyone could become a part of this group eventually. Now the LGBTQIA+. Not even 1 in 10, and that's in our VERY accepting society with legally protected status. You don't even get rounded up in concentration camps. Not here anyways. But could rupaul spare a shout out for my people on the rez? Nah. Better talk about lizzo some more. She needs the exposure.
Ho boy where do I start? You are aware LGBT individuals are everywhere, right? Including on your reservation? In every country in the world, in every social class, race, religion, etc? We are children, siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, colleagues, friends, etc etc. HOW are you surprised the LGBT community gets this kind of representation? The vast majority of people know or know of someone who is LGBT in their social circle. Can the same be said for native americans? Don't assume I don't feel for your people, but conflating LGBT representation as somehow a specific injustice to native americans is incredibly flimsy logic.
Using Rupaul as an example is a supremely poor choice given drag race has specifically given representation to native performers in the US and Canada, and created a platform for those performers to highlight issues their communities have faced:
https://dragsociety.com/blogs/the-tea/native-american-queens-who-rocked-rupauls-drag-race
And again why is it his or any other LGBT individual's responsibility to fight for your cause anymore than it should be anyone else's responsibility?
And you want to talk numbers, ok let's talk numbers. I'll use my country as an example. We're 32 million people, over 60% of that population lives in poverty. Not the deluxe American level of poverty, third world country levels of poverty. That's nearly 20 million people. Nearly half of those 32 million don't have access to clean water, that's over 16 million. Only one in five have access to adequate sanitation, that's 28 million people without adequate sanitation. How many native americans are there in the US? Around 7 million? That's a lot more people in a lot worse living conditions where I'm from than your entire population combined. Should I start complaining that you have more representation in famous movies than my people do? Should I concern troll about there being more native American millionaires than there are in my country? Should I expect native americans to fight for my people's cause too, to give us a shout-out? Using your logic I should go around dismissing any calls for justice for native american peoples simply by citing the fact that more than the equivalent of triple your entire population are living in abject poverty in my country.
Oh and another thing - this whole time you've been shitting in the LGBT community you've neglected the fact that the new pride flag was redesigned not only to give a specific shout out to trans individuals, but also people of colour AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, represented by the black and brown stripes:
https://dmh.lacounty.gov/blog/2022/06/a-brief-history-of-our-lgbtqia2-s-pride-flag/
But sure, it's the gays that are at fault for your community not getting enough airtime. Unbelievable.
Bud. If you think reservations are some kind of deluxe poverty, you don't understand what you're talking about. Black and brown stripes, because that's what my people and culture boils down to. Clean water isn't just some necessity we'd like to have, but it's literally sacred to us. Our rivers and lakes, poisoned as they are, are still holy to us. We are put on the least arable land possible by hundred year old treaties that are disrespected constantly. Our 7 million are what's left after 300 years of constant, targeted genocide. Best estimates put the pre colonial population at around 112 million. That's almost a 95% kill rate. And after all that, we still can't farm the land we are left with and cannot make our own water clean. I cannot get over "deluxe American poverty" like it even remotely applies to reservations. Has your little shithole ever had concentration camps?
Moving goalposts again. You complained the LGBT community and a specific prominent figure haven't given your cause any attention. You've conveniently ignored that part of my reply.
Are people on reservations today dying of starvation, rampant AIDs, dysentery, cholera, some warlord or child soldier gunning down their home? Seriously, I can keep that list going. And let's talk objective figures. You know what the life expectancy for native americans is? Just over 70. In my country it's just over 60. Listen, what your people went through and are going through is and was unjust, no one can deny it - but if you're going to argue that the level of injustice should dictate who gets more attention, well there's plenty of other populations way worse off than yours who are getting even less attention. If I were to follow your own argument - my people are suffering way worse, so your people are currently getting way more attention than they deserve. Do you not see how this is absurd?
Again your figure of 112 million is disingenuous as I stated in my above comment. Yes, my little shithole had concentration camps, many African countries did. You really need to pick up a few history books and do some reading. Some examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrafal_concentration_camp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_concentration_camps_during_the_Mau_Mau_Uprising
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_concentration_camps_in_Libya#/media/File:Karte_Libyen_italienische_Konzentrationslager.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War_concentration_camps
https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/german-concentration-camps-what-namibia-today-were-predecessors-nazis-extermination-camps
And you don't hold the monopoly on colonial genocide either. Some select examples:
https://www.genocidewatchblog.com/post/colonialism-and-genocide-in-portuguese-africa
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/imperialism-conquest-mass-murder
https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/gabinetpostal/lestat-lliure-del-congo-un-genocidi-a-lombra/?lang=en
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide
https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20150705-hollande-acknowledges-colonial-era-cameroon-massacres-critics-want-apology
You also conveniently forget millions of Africans were rounded up and sold like cattle to slavery. Only reason they kept any of us alive was to be used as slave labour and kept as property. Is it unfair that some groups get more attention than others? Sure. But it's not any given oppressed group's fault and blaming them for it is useless at best, and malicious at worst.