The Problem with Pete

The New Republic axed this piece, but like all things Internetty, it's been saved for posterity. I have a Mayor Pete problem, too, but it has little to do with Mr. Buttigieg

I feel as though people really don't know how to treat his candidacy. Some have detached Buttigieg's homosexuality from the rest of his identity, so they can dismiss him as "another white guy." That's true only in the sense the Barack Obama was just another cis dude and Hillary Clinton was just another white person. It's easy to brush someone off if you deduct the parts you find situationally inconvenient, and it's something I've witnessed far too often. It's near-sighted, absurdly reductionist, and wrong.

If we treat intersectionality as a system that enables us to rank people according to their experience with oppression, then I think we doing ourselves, and others, a disservice. In my view, intersectionality is not about sorting people but understanding them, and when you are ignoring parts of people, you are not understanding them.

Back to The New Republic. I read Dale Peck's piece, and I'm not much impressed. This is the standard assilimilationist-vs.-radical tussle that's been happening for decades, and will rage on long after I am gone. I have very little interest in this debate, by the way, because I think we need not make a choice. Like any minority, LGBT people have advanced their cause through both evolution and revolution, through bricks thrown at Stonewall** and through United States vs. Windsor. Just as we shouldn't detach part of an identity, neither should we dismiss the value of both assimilation and radical action in the march towards equality.

So, no, Mayor Pete is not exactly breaking every barrier, but...does he have to? Wasn't Barack Obama the first black president even though he didn't do everything imaginable to push forward the cause of equality? Can't we still remember Hillary Clinton as the first female Democratic nominee even though we know that she was hardly a feminist fantasy? I say yes and yes, and I also say that even if the campaign of Pete Buttigieg isn't taken directly from the guide book of ACT UP, it's something to celebrate.

**Nothing I have read indicates that any brick was ever thrown at the Stonewall Riot, not by Marsha P. Johnson or by anyone else. I'm making an easily understood but almost certainly apocryphal reference.

It's OK to doubt

This opinion piece in the Washington Post has spurred me to (finally) write something that's been on my mind a long time.

You should read for yourself, but if you want to save time, Nana Efua Mumford of the Post is agonizing over the fact that she found certain details of Jussie Smollett's account of his alleged attack hard to swallow. Does doubting Smollett, she asks herself, mean doubting that racism and homophobia exist? Is Mumford bainwashed? Is she victim-blaming?

Let me state for the record that I have no idea what happened to Smollett the night of the alleged attack. Certain details seem curious, but then again curious and unlikely things do occasionally happen. (President Donald Trump, I am looking in your direction.) Police are investigating, and I am content to wait for the results of that investigation before I take a position. If Smollett were my friend, I'd believe him; since he's not, I'm reserving judgment until the facts are known.

And that's fine. We don't have to believe anything we find dubious, no matter how sympathetic the alleged victim, or how real the implicated social problem. Liberal dogma insists that we must believe women, but clearly some women lie. Some men do, too. Another leftist insistence is that we unquestioningly accept the way people self-identify, but, well. we know that doesn't always pan out, either. I think we liberals are poorly served by these articles of faith, because, well, everyone lies, sometimes. They lie for good reasons, for bad reasons, or for no reason at all. Recognition of this fact doesn't nullify #MeToo, and it doesn't mean we should assume that all accusations of anything are phony. It means we should maintain a healthy skepticism of things that don't sound credible, and remain open to the possibility that our initial inclinations or deeply felt instincts are wrong.

To come back to Mumford, I don't think she's denying bigotry, I don't think she's brainwashed, and I don't think she's victim-blaming--particularly because there's good reason to think there is no victim here. She's navigating a difficult issue, keeping her eyes open and her biases before her, which is the best any of us can do. Mumford is allowed to feel heartbroken for doubting--no one has to apologize for feelings--but she's also allowed to doubt. As are we all.