Patricia Arquette did something different. “To every woman who gave birth to every citizen and taxpayer of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights,” she said, in her Oscar acceptance speech. “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.”
And, at once, the chorus began.
“Patricia Arquette is awesome! Patricia Arquette is great! We’ve come so far.”
“What about women of color? What about queer women? What about gender minorities?”
Both valid points.
But why do “We have come so far” and “We have so far to go” have to be in opposition to one another? Why can we not acknowledge how far we have come, without forgetting that there is still a long way to go?
Days like today demonstrate the multiplicity of our experience.
Today, June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled, by a 5-4 vote, that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage.
Today, June 26, 2015, President Barack Obama delivered a eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was gunned down during Bible study last Wednesday at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, along with Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Sharon Coleman-Singleton and Myra Thompson.
Today is a day of great joy. It is also a day of continued sadness.
Most of all, today is a day to remember that we have come so far. In the US, gay marriage is legal, the President made a speech on LGBTQ issues, and, I would argue, LGBTQIA+ individuals are more widely visible than at any time in the past.
BUT: trans people (not to mention trans people of color) still face tremendous amounts of discrimination, coming out is still an ordeal for LGBQTIA+ youth and there remain 39 states where a person can be fired or evicted for being who they are.
Condemnation of the Charleston church shootings has come from most corners of the country and the world (aside from a few Republican presidential candidates).
BUT: the very fact that someone could come to believe in the inherent inferiority of black people (I’m not quoting such ideas, so you can go read them yourself) in the twenty-first century is mind-boggling, mental illness or not. It speaks to a system of racism that is still institutionalized in this country, still present in its social fabric, no matter what laws have been changed.
It’s this kind of thinking that makes my head hurt.
BUT: it’s this kind of thinking that’s necessary today. It’s why words like “intersectionality” have become so important. Because there’s multiplicity in every issue and every event. We’d do well to remember and acknowledge that multiplicity.
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