No words

This is not a feminist thread. This is just me feeling inexpressibly grieved at the utterly pointless waste of life in the name of hate this morning.

The unanswerable question Why? howls through my head as tears cloud my vision.

"not a feminist thread" Maybe it is. Feminists can be/are concerned with all people, not just female people.

Orlando mother waiting since 4AM to find out about her son:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/06/12/devastating_abc_clip_of_christ...

So difficult to see her pain. Isn't it time we grew up and stopped this.

I don't understand what can be so wrong in someone's thinking that this is ever a reasonable solution to something they are against. I'm not even delving into the essential wrongness of their opinions.

>1 sturlington: I don't understand what can be so wrong in someone's thinking that this is ever a reasonable solution to something they are against.

I don't understand why this happens so often in the United States. We treat mass shootings like tornadoes or earthquakes -- something unpredictable we just have to endure.

>5 southernbooklady: I don't want to be a part of this country anymore. I need to see good people, who have a voice that can actually reach a lot of people, stand up and say this is not who we are.

I feel like a march on Washington is in order. Something needs to be done. Something needs to change. I don't want this as my "normal."

>6 sturlington: March on the NRA. They're the ones with all the politicians in their pockets. Nothing will be done until that changes, sadly.

>7 .Monkey.: I know. If you are on Twitter, check out @igorvolsky.

Check out igorvolsky (@igorvolsky): https://twitter.com/igorvolsky?s=09

Hah, very nice. I'm not on it (can't stand the way it works) but I love that.

There are crazy people everywhere. Look here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Admiral_Duncan - Far-Right rather than radical Islam in that case. In the USA it is easier for them to get hold of automatic weapons and do things like this Orlando attack. People are shot in the UK but I thank goodness for our much more restrictive gun laws.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article83368952.html

It's amazing (or not so much) what a jumble of hatreds the man possessed. A wife-beating, racist homophobe.

I'm having a lot of thoughts and a lot of feelings about this, but I'm expressing them in safer spaces than LT is currently able to provide. I do not have the emotional energy to talk about the topic in a completely unfiltered environment.

>12 lorax: Understandable. It's truly awful. It is inconceivable that people can have that sort of headspace that not only bigoted hatred is acceptable and fine but murder for such "reasons" is then justified in their eyes. I mean how do you even get there?? (Stop, that's rhetorical, I know a big part of how the nation has gotten there. *sigh* Still though, it's just... :|)

>12 lorax: Safe space and time for grieving is what all of us need. This was an attack on gays and lesbians, but it was also an attack on all of us who believe we can build a better world where all human life is valued, where all differences are celebrated.

I thought this was a powerful piece of writing linking this attack as well as previous mass murders aimed at women and black people directly to toxic masculinity.

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2016/06/13/recipe-for-a-shooting/

We live in a country where up until yesterday, the question of which bathroom people could use had become a national preoccupation. Where fighting political correctness had become a top priority in a presidential campaign because certain people don't like being called out on their hateful language. Where now, in the wake of our worst mass shooting yet, it seems easier to ban an entire group of people from entering our country based solely on their religion than to take some meaningful action on gun control. What could be more anti American than that?

Meanwhile, Republican politicians who have worked tirelessly to demonize and deny rights to GLBT people flood the airwaves with their lukewarm thoughts and prayers while refusing to admit that the victims were targeted because they were gay.

It's hard to believe that I could feel any more disgusted than I did after Sandy Hook. Now we have to watch the victims of this massacre be erased, while Donald Trump crows about how right he was about the evil Muslims.

Please stop the planet. I want to get off.

>14 sturlington: One mistake in that. There does seem to be one feeling that men are allowed to express. Men can express anger. It seems to be manly in the US to be angry at ...

I think the American public is addicted to rage.

Intimate partner violence and the toxic masculinity that fuels it are the canaries in the coal mine for understanding public terror, and yet this connection continues largely to be ignored, to everyone's endangerment.

At keast 57% of mass shootings are related to domestic violence.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/in-orlando-as-usual-domestic-violence-...

“At this point, it’s clear that there is some correlation between domestic violence and mass shooters and we have statistics that show it,” says Samar Kaukab, the former director of the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence. “People who experience a loss of control in the home often try and express their anger about that loss of control against society on a larger scale.”

https://theintercept.com/2016/06/13/was-orlando-shooters-domestic-violence-histo...

For days I too had no words.

Now I'm finding them again.

First, a few of you may be interested in this new group:

http://www.librarything.com/groups/queernation

The onslaught of hypocritical right-wing "compassion" for LGBTQ people which aims to instrumentalise us for Islamophobic warfare (same as they do with women in general), while ignoring the fact and consequences of their own homophobic hatreds, fills me with disgust I can't describe.

That many of those are in fact glad of this massacre because they view it as deserved punishment of the sinners, drives home how far from true acceptance LGBTQ people still are in wide society.

Tolerance isn't enough. We have to be respected. We have to be embraced. We have to be loved like everyone loves their own.

I admire Samantha Bee's anger.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/06/14/samantha_bee_s_segment_on_the_orl...

I'm angry too.

>20 sturlington: Yes! I just watched her a couple minutes ago.

>14 sturlington: This comment by James Baldwin captures a lot of what the blogger you linked to was decrying:

The American ideal, then, of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American idea of masculinity. The ideal had created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white. It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that it is virtually forbidden – as an unpatriotic act – that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood.
— 1985

The New York Times connects the dots between domestic terrorism and mass terrorism. It's good that this issue is getting wider coverage.

“Having a history of violence might help neutralize the natural barriers to committing violence.”

Control and Fear: What Mass Killings and Domestic Violence Have in Common http://nyti.ms/1rplMP0

I think our media and governement thrives on instilling fear and hate in people. They need to create more problems, so they can waste more money on the military and sell more magazines/commercials. Lives are being lost over greed.

>23 sturlington:
Thanks for sharing. There is something toxic here that people seem to finally be thinking about. But I just feel hopeless: if the massacres of schoolchildren don't change minds, nothing will.

And I want to throw up every time I see anti-LGBT Republicans talk about terrorism like (a) their own homophobia had no role in this or (b) they care about gays now just because they hate Muslims more.

God if it hasn't been all bad news lately.

This is happening now. A Democrat led Senate filibuster for gun control - background checks and a buying ban on people under federal investigation.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2016/06/senate-democrats-just-began-filibuster-d...

Jo Cox, the British Labour MP has been shot and stabbed outside her constituency surgery and is in a critical condition.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36550304

edited to add link

Here's a profile of Jo Cox for anyone that doesn't know her.

http://news.sky.com/story/1712965/jo-cox-mp-profile-of-former-oxfam-activist

I am finding it harder and harder to read about the inexplicable violence and tragic waste of life we are seeing around the world. I spent the last 2 days following the Oscar Pistorius sentencing and watching a lawyer portray him as almost equal to Reeva Steenkamp in deserving our pity. There are so few words in me right now.

>27 klarusu: Very disturbing. I keep hoping that some part of the globe is free from the violence that seems to be engulfing the US.

As an aside, what does "constituency surgery' or "holding a surgery at Birstall Library" mean?

>28 Taphophile13: It's when an MP or other legislator is in their district and is available for constituents to come by and voice their concerns.

>29 RidgewayGirl: Thank you. That's what I expected but I had never heard it referred to as a surgery. I'm more used to the term town hall meetings.

>30 Taphophile13: Actually it doesn't sound anything like a town hall meeting but more of a way for constituents to meet one on one with their representative. Something that doesn't happen in the US unless the constituent is wealthy.

She has died, according to news reports.

Horrible.

We've lost a relatively new politician who had the potential to build bridges across parties and was motivated by a strong commitment to human rights. It's just so pointless. How many more people with bright futures are we going to have taken from us? What saddens me most though, is the fact that her two young children don't have a Mum tonight.

i think her husband's statement has relevance to this thread:

''Today is the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. More difficult, more painful, less joyful, less full of love. I and Jo’s friends and family are going to work every moment of our lives to love and nurture our kids and to fight against the hate that killed Jo.

“Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it everyday of her life with an energy and a zest for life that would exhaust most people. She would have wanted two things above all else to happen now, one that our precious children are bathed in love and two, that we all unite to fight against the hatred that killed her. Hate doesn’t have a creed, race or religion, it is poisonous.

“Jo would have no regrets about her life, she lived every day of it to the full.”

>34 klarusu: That did it. Hoping this would be a day without tears.

From the Guardian:

A 52-year-old man has been arrested and police are investigating reports the suspect shouted “Britain first”, a possible reference to the far-right political party, as he launched the attack.

>35 sturlington: I'm just heart-sick this week. We need strong women with passion and voice in positions where they are heard. We need the future people each and every one of the dead in Orlando could have become.

>27 klarusu:, >32 sturlington: It's a brutal story. I don't know Jo Cox, but I hate the fact that the viciousness of the attack is all too familiar.

I never heard of Jo Cox before today. The cursor blinks at me as I try to find the words, words that won't form in my brain. Why and why again? Why can't we . . . ?

This column in The Washington Post hits a positive note: What happened when an Orthodox Jewish congregation went to a gay bar to mourn Orlando.

In our large and vastly complex modern societies, it is regrettable, but unsurprising, that it takes a tragedy of this scale to breach the berms that separate subcultures. Social fragmentation strikes me as one of the biggest challenges facing industrialized countries.