why i will never listen to or read joe.my.god or dan savage

http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2010/10/predictable-navel-gazing-over.html

the above is a link to one of the most repulsive, essentializing posts i have ever read. dear joe and dan...you (and your listeners/readers) are advocating for the same kind of violence that you claim to be "fighting" against. it is your way or nothing....there is no critical inquiry or conversation regarding your white male "ideas" or about how to "fix" something...and when, goddess forbid, someone does actually want to put your ideas into relief with others you simply go on attack mode...again...how white, male of you. does it really get better? or is this a rehashing of the myth of "the american dream"? if you work hard enough you can get whatever you want....because if you don't get what you want then you didn't work hard enough and therefore you are a failure? turn it around, the "it gets better" videos, as femmephane points out in this post:

http://tempcontretemps.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/why-i-dont-like-dan-savages-it-gets-better-project-as-a-response-to-bullying/

are created mostly by white, privileged gay men...and when you get to the bottom of this issue it doesn't address gay teen suicide at all it addresses a personal experience of "overcoming" that is universalized and repurposed as a truth. what happens then is the self-serving motivation that constructs these videos, as objects of truth claims, create an unchallenged and anitintellectual (much like the tea party is doing) violent and reactionary atmosphere wherein a teen who does commit suicide is going to be seen as a failure instead of the tragedy that it most certainly is. dan and joe...gay teen suicide is NOT about you or your lives...it is about hopelessness and oppression...it is about trauma and the loss of voice. if you really want to "make a difference" why don't you listen instead of throwing your lives up on a video and telling people to just stick it out or rather "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps kids" because "if you don't get through this difficult time then you have missed the point and you are a failure because you did this to yourself"...joe and dan....in your attempt to embrace this problem, to bring it closer to yourselves you (and i think inadvertently) are abjecting the very bodies that you want to speak to. we need dialogue not two guys (among many) who have tricked themselves into pretending to be self-absorbed mother teresas, and, btw, calling queer theorists "navel gazers" doesn't help your cause...at all...you're just name calling...something i'm sure that gay teens are all too familiar with. if you can't listen to other types of narratives, critiques, and standpoints then how in HELL are you going to be able to listen to bodies that feel hopeless, oppressed, and violently abjected into the periphery? ultimately this is about power...who has it...who doesn't...how it is moving through language. i don't see empowerment in these videos...i see a reinscription of a hegemonic struggle enunciating itself through privileged bodies who, in turn, are firming up their always and already privileged standpoints.