I’ve been debating over the last week whether I want to start making memorial posts whenever somebody is killed because of our sad adherence to kyriarchy.  I’ve been wondering how much I should write if I do decide to make them.  I’ve wondered what the best policy for balancing my own feelings on the situation and my desire to teach.

I’m still struggling as to whether I want to do memorial posts.

Other blogs do memorial posts.  I was thinking that because there are people that read my blog that don’t necessarily follow the same news channels that I do, that I could put a face on the violence that impacts people like me.  There’s no question that much of the violence directed at people that are not male, cis, hetero, or otherwise norm-conforming is motivated by hate.  There’s no question that the violence directed against us is minimized or often blamed on us.  It continues to be a huge problem in our communities.

Every time that somebody’s life ends because of hate, whether it be homophobia or transphobia or sexism or racism or classisim or ageism or anything else, I could write a post talking about the hate that courses through our society and remind everybody one more time just how poignant our fear is and how we as a society need to check our behaviors and words to prevent another such tragedy…

You’ve all seen those posts.

But here’s what I wonder.

  1. Look at the media.  When we’re not crazed killers or the butt of jokes, we are corpses.  We are bodies, or at best, victims.  And every time we pass around our newest piece of evidence that the world hates us we further that victimization.  I’m not saying that there’s no value in highlighting the violence that gets inflicted upon us.  But it’s just as important to discuss people as actually having lives, breathing laughing loving crying hating lives with meaning.  Which leads me to my next point.
  2. Too often in these memorial posts we make the person’s death the entire point.  The people in question are only notable for dying.  At best, passing around their names, faces, and the circumstances of their deaths seems like ambulance chasing to me.  And at its very worse, we disrespect the person’s life by appropriating their life (and more specifically their death) for use in our latest lecture.  Who can tell me anything about Kitty Genovese other than the fact that she was killed and that her death sparked a bunch of social psychological research?  Her life has been erased – only her death and the lessons that it has for us remain.
  3. This blog focuses primarily on theory.  While that theory is rooted both in my own experiences and in the real-life experiences of other people, I rarely discuss lives.  Because of the first two points it feels wholly inappropriate for me to simply write a post every time somebody’s life is lost to hate.  I don’t want to perpetuate the identification of people by their corpse status without ever talking about lives.

The problem is this – there are times when it becomes necessary to bring up some point in history as proof that what I say is not unfounded.  And so I will be forced to bring up those names, those deaths, and participate in all of that appropriation.  It’s not even a question of whether I will do that – I have already and I will continue to do so in the future.  It’s unavoidable.  Obviously there are varying degrees of sensitivity that I can use.  Obviously, throwing around people just for the sake of doing so it’s to be avoided.  But using them as a means to make a cogent point?

And if I were to take that one step further and make a memorial post?  What would I say?  Nothing but the basics?  Or should I continue to make cogent points, to use this latest death as a platform with which to write an essay about homophobia among youth (as per recent news)?

The last is very common to see.  And I have seen some very touching pieces written by people who use the memorials to highlight social ills.  But I wonder whether the person being bandied about would appreciate being used in such a fashion.  Whether they would appreciate the concern of random strangers who zero in on their lives solely because of the circumstances of their deaths.  I wonder how they feel about their deaths being used as educational experiences.  I wish I could ask.  I feel so selfish.

I wonder whether, if it’s okay to use people’s deaths to educate while providing evidence, it is okay to continue to do so in the form of memorial posts.  How do we find an appropriate balance between consciousness raising and life appropriation?  What do we do to ensure that we treat these people with the proper and due dignity?

Honestly I haven’t come down on one side or another.  I’m aware of and have seen the good that these can do, and if the post seems to focus more on the negatives it’s because general consensus seems to be that it’s okay and I want to focus on the issues I have with that status quo.

Your thoughts?