Monday, July 11, 2011

Radicals and the Media

Recently, this whole "genderless baby from Toronto" story has been consuming my social network feeds and discussions. Obviously, the concept of a child being raised without a mandatory sex is controversial, but that's not what l want to discuss here. The most important thing to learn from this story and the public's reaction is one I feel we as radicals will never learn, try as we might. To make it as simple as possible, the lesson we must learn, as radicals, as people in alternative communities, is to never talk to the mainstream media ever ever ever.

Now I understand this lesson may be harsh for some. A lot of us, myself included, suffer from something I call the Andy Paradox. Named after one of my best friends, Andy, of Transgeneration fame, the Andy Paradox describes the often irresistible urge to explain anarchism, communism, or any radical school of thought, to as many people as possible. It is our hope, we sufferers of the AP, that if we distribute our message to the masses, they will have to listen. Our message is so simple, so compassionate, that any decent human who hears it will have to take heed and embrace our politics of mutual aid and fighting oppression.

The problem is, of course, that the mainstream media hates us. It has absolutely no desire to help us in our convert the masses to liberation. The only thing the mainstream media wants with us is a story, the more sensational and controversial the better. So they will do things like deliberately misquote us, edit our interviews in completely misleading ways, manipulate our emotions to make for more volatile responses, and all sorts of tricks. The producers of Transgeneration did this to Andy, and if you've seen the docuseries, you'll barely remember an angry, raging, punk trans guy who was fairly easy to dismiss. The tricks they pulled on him were dirty (showing up to his apartment when he was incredibly sick and barely lucid, making him recall minute details of the police brutality he has endured and then editing out the context so he appeared to be without justification for his tirades, etc) and the tricks they play on us will always be dirty.

I know I will totally be outing myself as a huge nerd, but I've always been incredibly impressed with this book series' grasp on security culture, so here it goes: It's like the character Rita Skeeter in the Harry Potter series. For those of you who haven't read it (oh I'm so sure), Rita Skeeter is a reporter for the major newspaper in the wizarding world, the Daily Prophet. When Rita interviews other characters, she uses a magic tool called "Quick Quills". What this handy little writing utensil does is more of a translation service than a recording service. For example, when Rita says, "My name is Rita Skeeter" the quill writes "Supremely attractive blonde, Rita Skeeter". Or when Harry Potter answers a simple yes or no question, the quill says, "Harry's eyes well up with tears as he recounts the nightmares he's had about his parent's death."

Ok, but here's the thing: all reporters are Rita Skeeter and all of their pens are Quick Quills. I have experienced this myself, when I was a freshman in college. I agreed to give an interview to a local magazine about being a queer high school student in Milwaukee. I was nowhere close to radical at the time, I was just happy to promote visibility for queer kids. This was 7 years ago, but I still remember the absolute horror I felt when I read the published article. I never said at least 75% of the things I was directly quoted to have said. And now that article is on the internet, for anyone who knows my birth name to google, where I say such brilliant and profound things as, "Being gay in high school is really hard."

And Andy? Dear Andy, dear brilliant, passionate, amazing Andy, will probably never change. I almost don't want him to, to be honest, if it weren't for all the trouble he gets himself into. Andy is the person who converted me to anarchism, both of us sitting on his dirty, sticky with beer, wood floor in his old punk house during a party, him drunk as hell and me having a privileged girl existential crisis. His message is perfect. He could change one million minds, I truly believe it, if only he could reach them. And despite all of the incredible amounts of shit and pain he has been delivered for all of his encounters with the media, he often says he doesn't regret doing them, because he knows the message is getting out there, in some small way, to some small group. Of course, then shit he says in interviews gets used as court evidence against him in lawsuits, so really, it all evens out I suppose.

For all intents and purposes, it seems like baby Storm's parents are perfectly wonderful, kind, and caring parents. They clearly love their children and should not be blamed for inviting or acquiescing to the media's desire to profile their family. They are just suffering from the Andy Paradox. It's not an insult to their characters, indeed people who suffer from this Paradox are often noble, selfless, kind, and horrifyingly idealistic. We all need to learn a lesson from this family, and from Andy, and from every radical that tries to talk to the media. Don't do it. Your intentions are pure, but that doesn't matter. A pure heart is not enough when cooperating with evil, and any radical worth their salt knows what the capitalist media truly stands for.

Maybe we should take a leaf from the anarchists of yore, and do Emma Goldman style speeches around the country, or maybe all of us should just try to talk to our friends and family if we're privileged enough to be able to do so. But we are primary sources, every one of us, walking around on little legs. We deserve to be examined and analyzed, not the shoddy secondary and tertiary sources the media creates from us.

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