Saturday, August 3, 2013

women, people of color and LGBT's vs. social purity

I've already pointed out how the the social purity stance on non-reproductive sex shut out LGBT's but how did they shut out women and people of color, many of whom were also LGBT? Well, let's think about it. The labor movement, which wanted fair wages and safe working conditions, etc., was in high gear. But so was the bitter South's crusade to institutionalize segregation. The labor movement wanted to empower Women. They were concerned with fairness and equality. But the social purist wanted to ''protect'' women. They were concerned with domesticity and ''womenhood.'' Most in the social purity movement saw women's  suffrage as the way to empowerment, while many  in the labor movement saw suffrage as an upper class issue. See how this gets complicated? But it does not stop there! Regarding race, the social purist were abolitionist, for the most part, but they also thought people of color, especially African-Americans, were amoral and hypersexual. Amorality and hypersexuality imply a disposition toward homosexuality, rape, etc. ''Social purity'' also meant ''racial purity'' because amalgamation, or race mixing, is a social construct.
    So, the social purist were making enemies all over the place! They're newspaper columns, letters to the editor and editorials were constantly rebutted and challenged, and often by well known activists' and thinkers like Mother Jones, Ida B.Wells and W. E. B. Du Bois.
    As an aside, I want to point out that some African-Americans, Caribbeans and Africans today see homosexuality as a product of slavery and colonization, which has an element of social purist/purity thinking.
    I personally think that the way to change society and the world is from the inside out and not the outside in. One has to change his/her self first and let his/her ''vibration'' affect others. Trying to control others will always backfire because people are motivated by whats in they're heart not by what somebody else says or a government dictates. The social purity movement, although they're intentions were good and had foundation, had it backwards.

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