top of page

What does it take to generate tolerance?

  • Writer: Amanda Riddell
    Amanda Riddell
  • Aug 18, 2024
  • 3 min read

The AI cartoons are interesting, but the frustrating thing about it is that they're so sanitised. Like, I'm literally trying to render what happened when I first came out, which was endless parents literally shielding their children in the streets so that they wouldn't see the sick freak with a beard and a dress. My view of this is really simple: the only way to actually create tolerance is to display, articulate and criticise intolerance. Right now, there's a lot of people in the rainbow community and other communities that are unwilling to confront the statistical realities of disadvantaged communities and pretend that we're all able to coexist easily in a wonderful world with no problems. That's because they're the privileged groups. They largely have their human rights, and their gender or sexual or social or cultural expression isn't considered to be socially stigmatised. They might feel like Uncle Tom's if they come from a minority group, but they got an education and played the identity card to get their solid social status (yes, that's a dig at Red Scare: fucking American-type actors are always status-obsessed). - I mean, the gay community literally had to campaign en masse for law reform in the 1980's, and even then they still needed to form radical activist groups in order to push that kaupapa further, and move from legally acceptable to socially tolerable.


That transition occurred over decades, but one of the significant milestones is obviously the Human Rights Act 1993. With transgender people, we're pretty much in that same boat. We're legally acceptable, but the social tolerance is a very thin veneer. If I hadn't gone and studied before I came out, there's no way that I could've survived. I'm white, well-spoken and fairly attractive, but even then my life is ridiculously complicated because of the rampant transphobia. I won't accept anything less than a complete apology from the 'allies' that want to make a nice drama that makes them feel good based on material that I wrote in the ghetto while they were mocking me and attempting to manipulate me. - The Wellington community has to admit that the experiences that I have described are factual realities: I really was socially ostracised, shamed and literally told that they wouldn't tolerate me unless I wore male clothes (and male clothes only). Even the admission would be nice, but an apology is non-negotiable if I'm ever to return to any of the cultural events that I occasionally attended as Michael. They have to accept the legal reality of my copyrights, and that the reason that we have copyright protections at all is very simple: so that people like me can't be pushed around by the rich and the influential. People don't get to make a movie simply because it suits them to humour me in order to appear tolerant, even though they couldn't handle a script that I thought was very gentle and tame compared to my IRL experience. As I said, I will seek an immediate injunction if any attempts to produce a story that uses my Tina script and my EP songs ever begins. I will get that injunction because the songs are clearly my copyrighted material and literally only exist in my head and fingers They must accept that they have zero legal right to that material and that is a fair, valid, sane, stable and rational answer.

 
 
 

Recent Posts

See All
'c'mon, just one episode'

No. Weeded Out can't be made for copyright reasons. Also, one might say that Weeded Out has already been made as the film within the...

 
 
 
More about the NZ School of Music

I'm pissed at the NZSM faculty for essentially blaming me when they were the ones afraid to give me information to fight the uni with,...

 
 
 
'surrender'

Yeah, I'm not done with asking for apologies, but I'll be reviewing cultural things. Totally out of the loop, though. If people are...

 
 
 

Comments


bottom of page