Thursday, January 20, 2011

Green Lesbians

Jonathan Kay attended an anti-Israel event at U of T last night and was struck by the, erm, Sapphic makeup of much of the crowd:
Perhaps more interesting than the speakers themselves was the crowd — which was disproportionately female, almost entirely white, and (by my casual observation of whose arm was wrapped around whom) heavily populated by lesbians.

This was not entirely surprising to me: Anti-Israeli activism has attained a sort of cult following among Toronto gay activists, who otherwise would be twiddling their activists thumbs in a country where gay marriage is legal and uncontroversial. But it is an interesting phenomenon nonetheless: anti-Israel types like to make a very big deal of the broad “community” and “coalition” they are forming. [QuAIA's Tim] McCaskell, in particular, spoke (naively, I thought) about how queer anti-Israeli activism was allowing gays to forge links with Arabs and Muslims (He can prove this point to my satisfaction by holding a Gay Anti-Israel rally in any Arab or Muslim country of his choosing). Yet when it came time to hold an anti-Israel meeting in downtown Toronto last night, just about the only people who came out were seven or eight dozen campus rainbow-flag types...
Why would rainbow-flag types let one colour--Muslim green--predominate when it's the colour flown by pathological homophobes? Might it be a way of projecting their lingering self-loathing onto the one group--i.e. "the Zionists"-- it's acceptable to hate in their circles?

Just a thought.

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