Kulturkampf

[benji]

Eight because this is great discourse:

Even their children could not be more perfect. For one thing, they are twins, and there are few things cuter than twin babies (besides cats, which are infinitely cuter). And these are biracial children, a handy defense when people bring up Pete Buttigieg’s troubled relations with his Black voters while mayor of South Bend, Indiana. As Nathan J. Robinson pointed out in an extensive review of Pete’s (first, so far) autobiography, Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future, “South Bend African Americans make half of what South Bend whites make. They’re twice as likely to be in liquid asset poverty as whites. Their unemployment rate is nearly twice as high.” Buttigieg attempted to win over African American voters during his presidential run, but it was too late, and he failed miserably in South Carolina: to his surprise, Black voters turned out to be smart people who knew his history. Given their talent for curation, it’s hard not to wonder if the Buttigieges didn’t also choose their children as carefully as Melania Trump chose her outfits. This doesn’t mean that the pair don’t love their incredibly adorable children, but given that even Chasten looks like he was chosen from a catalog of “Good Gay Men,” it’s safe to say that even the most seemingly personal details of Pete’s life are carefully chosen.

Chasten Buttigieg pushes aside such complications surrounding living and dead public figures in favor of heroic narratives that present much simpler tales: brave gay people fighting against all odds and sometimes facing the worst consequences. And, certainly, the current political climate on LGBTQ issues is deeply troubling: recent anti-trans legislation has mushroomed across the United States, leaving trans children, youth, and adults under threat of attack and erasure (we will note, again, that Chasten makes no significant mention of trans people in the book), and gays and lesbians are hardly much safer amidst a rising tide of conservative politics. But if a memoir about gay life and its possibilities is to be honest with its audience, it needs to be less afraid of the raw truths facing its readers.

I Have Something to Tell You presents a gay life that, having overcome some obstacles, is nevertheless able to purposefully stride towards an apolitical “American” life. Along the way, it recasts vital parts of American and gay history. In this version of America the Gay, gayness is translated as either a tragic life to be overcome or as one that can only be happy when straight people first pity you and then allow you to marry. Inconvenient complications, like angry queers organizing around AIDS or demanding rights outside of marriage, are quietly brushed away. It’s an admonition to “youth” to only be a certain kind of gay. As a political manifesto, I Have Something to Tell You provides a blueprint for a gay constituency whose only challenge to American empire and capitalism is that our most oppressive institutions should be queer-affirming.

Chasten and Pete will serve as the Ken and Ken dolls on top of a wedding cake, obscuring any memory of a time when queer radical action meant demanding the seemingly impossible: universal healthcare, an end to poverty, housing and security for all. Chasten has something to tell us, sure, but it’s a well-modulated, soothing whisper, telling tales of good gay people sitting decorously at the table. Queer people have suffered and continue to suffer enormous harm not just because they’re queer but because capitalism only sees their worth when their identities can be deployed to further its own ends, and its spits out those too inconvenient to have around (angry radicals, trans queer youth demanding a say in their own health, and so on). But youth, across sexualities and whatever their age, deserve more and better. They deserve to know their radical history and that the world can be an exciting place for them, but they also need to know that they should avoid and ignore decorous gay men whose lives, fabricated across multiple, anodyne memoirs, serve to erase both the darkness and the rich complexity of real lives.

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