kids

Jargon alert: There are many ways to be masculine and many ways to be feminine, but there is one culturally approved masculinity that characterizes people at the top of the gender hierarchy in the dominant culture of the United States. That masculinity is called hegemonic masculinity. I apologize in advance for the jargon, but there is no clearer way to say it. 

Angie Zapata's murderer, Allen Andrade, was found guilty of all charges, and sentenced under the hate crime statute in Colorado last week. It was a sign of progress. In some places at least, violence against people because of their gender expression is considered a hate crime. We are moving toward greater acceptance of the idea that freedom of gender expression should be protected as a civil right. But we are not there yet. Indeed, while we make strides toward expanding civil rights and freedoms for all, we still have a culture deeply tinted with homophobia, heterosexism, and sexism. Witness the deaths over the past few weeks of two young boys who committed suicide after being teased and taunted at school by bullies using words like 'gay' and 'fag' and 'queer.'

On April 16 Jaheem Herrera, 11, hung himself with a belt and was found by his 10 year old sister. Just a little more than a week earlier, on April 8 Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, also 11, hung himself with an extension cord. Both boys had been the targets of severe and ongoing bullying.

"Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost?

And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob and he's hankerin' to be a Republican senator and try not to wince in sociopolitical pain when you say that -- isn't more than a little numb to the real world, and that bringing 16 hungry mewling attention-deprived kids (and she wants more! Yay!) into this exhausted world zips right by "touching" and races right past "disturbing" and lurches its way, heaving and gasping and sweating from the karmic armpits, straight into "Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with you people?"