May 20, 2009
Who is Yasmin Nair, and Why Does This Alleged “Queer Lesbian” Parrot Right-Wing Anti-Gay Talking Points?
If you haven’t had the unfortunate experience of running across Yasmin Nair before, consider yourself lucky.
My luck ran out when The Bilerico Project decided to allow this woman (who calls herself a “queer lesbian who loves
And if that doesn’t get your hackles up, this will: She’s dead-set against marriage equality, this so-called “queer lesbian.”
We’ll get back to the marriage issue in a moment, I promise.
As you may know, I was involved in a binational relationship for seven years, and, having operated a discussion list on the issue for most of those years, have communicated with literally hundreds of other couples in which one partner was a U.S. citizen, and the other foreign-born, with no way to live together legally in the United States.
Suffice to say: Anyone who has not experienced the particular and unique cruelty of the United States’ discriminatory, anti-gay immigration law cannot begin to imagine the emotional anguish involved.
You think maintaining a bicoastal relationship is tough? It is, certainly — but if three thousand miles is all the distance between you, thank your lucky stars you live in the same damned country, and when one of you puts the other on the plane home for the umpteenth time, neither of you is wondering and worrying that you may never see each other again because the government says you can’t.
Partnered with a foreign national, you don’t realize until all your options to stay together are exhausted that you are completely helpless, and completely hopeless. You will have four choices: Live together in another country, live underground in the U.S. (risking deportation for your partner, and jail time and fines for both of you), continue to live apart and burn through every penny you have on phone calls and plane tickets, or break up. That’s all. There are no other choices.
And until you get to that point, you have no idea just how backwards the United States really is: The U.S. stands alone among western industrialized nations; no less than 25 counties — including Australia, which has a federal ban on same-sex marriage, less-than gay-friendly countries such as Brazil, and almost-hysterically sexually-repressed countries such as Japan — provide same-sex immigration rights.
To be an American in a same-sex binational relationship is a hell I wouldn’t wish on…
Well, actually, there is someone I would wish it on: Yasmin Nair.
There’s little I can say about Yasmin Nair that hasn’t already been said by those who do understand the binational struggle — and what I do have to say here is nothing compared to what I’d like to say.
It all starts with Nair’s exceptionally misguided, misinformed, and downright mean-spirited attack on the UAFA, which she calls a “quick-fix solution for a privileged few” (negating most un-privileged people like me, and most binational couples I have known, right off the bat) and “Just like gay marriage … thrust down ‘our’ collective throat.”
Watch as she sets up the strawman comparison of the UAFA to comprehensive immigration reform (CIR), as if it were an either-or proposition. It isn’t.
See how she repeatedly attempts to deflect valid points from people directly impacted by U.S. immigration law with “I’m sympathetic to your situation…” when it is crystal clear she is not at all “sympathetic” (much less
Watch her attempt to make same-sex immigration rights out to be a backdoor to same-sex marriage — the same empty, “slippery slope” fallacy of the Radical Religous Right! — when marriage equality, as long as it remains unrecognized by the federal government, has no bearing on immigration, which is controlled by the federal government.
(In other words, you could win marriage equality in each of the fifty U.S. states and every territory, but until there is federal recognition of same-sex marriage, affording exactly the same rights as heterosexual marriage, foreign-born same-sex partners will NEVER be able to emigrate to the United States without passage of the UAFA. And: Never mind that the struggle for immigration rights began long before the fight for federal marriage, which hasn’t even begun in earnest yet, and cannot even be attempted until DoMA is overturned.)
Realize that she uses the UAFA, specifically the backdoor-to-marriage strawman, as yet another excuse to attack same-sex marriage equality, which she opposes, vehemently: “This is marriage by another name. I happen to be against gay marriage…” Another classic Radical Right talking point.
And in response to a commenter who asks, “isn’t the denial of a basic civil right a harsh ‘political’ circumstance?” Nair replies: “In order to believe that, one would have to believe that marriage is a basic civil right. And I don’t believe that it is.” As if her “belief” matters in the context of constitutional law? Again, classic right-wing nonsense: The religious Anti-Gays believe marriage is not a right, either, and they believe their belief somehow trumps the law.
(She “sputters against gay marriage with the degree of venom one has come to expect out of the Illinois Family Institute,” wrote the Gay Liberation Network in response to a 2008 piece by Nair in the Windy City Times. “[S]he is setting up a strawman in order to target activists and groups she doesn’t like,” wrote Roger & Patricia Fraser. “Such divide-and-conquer tactics are typical of the Right with its use of wedge issues to split working people apart.”)
See how she repeatedly asks commenters not to relate personal stories regarding same-sex immigration, because, according to Nair, it is solely an economic issue, and personal stories are unimportant and irrelevant. (The real reason she doesn’t want to hear personal stories? We’ll get to that in a moment.)
And make sure to read the comments, which Nair had shut down when the kitchen got too hot for her:
Facts, Fiction, Money and Emotions
I want to point out one comment in particular, from my (IRL) friend Marta Donayre. Brazilian-born Marta and her partner Leslie Bulbuk are the co-founders of Love Sees No Borders; there is no one who knows more about same-sex immigration than Leslie and Marta, and no one outside Immigration Equality itself who has devoted more time or energy to righting the egregious wrong done binational couples on a daily basis in this country. (They’re also two of the smartest, warmest, most quick-witted women you could ever hope to meet.)
Marta’s response to Nair:
Yasmin, you don’t get it.UAFA is not the problem here. Current immigration law is based on family reunification. CIR WILL include family reunification, and hopefully expand the narrow definition of family as immediate family… that is, spouses and children under 16. But right now, that is the legal definition of family in immigration law for ALL families, not just same-sex couples.
Therefore, if you want to change this particular aspect, you should join forces with immigration advocates who would like to abolish the nuclear family as the definition of “family.” I have yet to meet one, so if you do, please let me know. I would love to talk to them. (there has been interest in expanding it, but not eliminating it)
One of the things that turned me off about UAFA is that the broader LGBT community began using the immigration/UAFA talking point as an argument for marriage while doing nothing to enhance the passage of the bill. THAT to me was the problem. Using the suffering of a segment of the community to push an agenda that will not help that segment (marriage is a state-by-state strategy, and federal issues like immigration will be dealt with later).
Also, you sorely contradict yourself when you argue the financial implications of NOT having UAFA as being elitist. And that is exactly true. People with means can get around not having relationship recognition. I’ve seen anything from moving abroad to opening a company in the U.S. for this purpose. But once I received an e-mail from a couple where one was a waiter and the other a bus-boy. Their only hope would have been UAFA. Therefore, the bill would help those in need NOW and who can’t afford expensive lawyers or have the skills to seek employment or move abroad. And you are right when you say that it won’t help ALL LGBT people, but no bill helps ALL in one community.
You and I have privately gone at this in the past, and my position remains that UAFA is a piece of the puzzle, and not the whole solution. Just like the DREAM act will not “fix” immigration law, nor will it help all immigrant students. I would like to see you take an approach similar to the one you took about UAFA with, say AgJOBS or the DREAM Act. On their own, none of these bills do #@$%#%^&^ for CIR, but together they do, and UAFA is part of that.
And yes, I agree with the fact that some of the spin is less than ideal. As I said, in my personal case I saw immigration being used too much as a means to push marriage, while doing little for the passage of the bill itself. THAT’s what the problem… talking the talk, and not walking the walk. The intelligent debate here would be around that “strategy” rather than the bill proper.
Quite honestly, at times your posts on matters of this nature sound too academic and quite distanced from reality. It’s awesome that you advocate for an utopia where all people have all the rights based on birth alone. I too want to see that. But until we get there, we have to work with what we have in order to pave our way there. It’s not an either/or, rather a both/and.
My last comment is around the good immigrant v. bad immigrant argument. This is a trait that’s used even by the immigrant rights movement… “hard working people.” They also present a “wholesome” image of what an immigrant family looks like, which by the way is a nuclear heterosexual family. When are you going to write about this? When are you going to question the heteronormative family model within the immigrant community? I would love to see your commentary about how the immigrant rights community sides itself with the oppressor in order to push forward their agenda. Yes, the LGBT community does that too, and all oppressed communities do it. They figure out how they are the most alike with the oppressor and present that image. Yet you seem to only latch onto that perspective when it comes to the LGBT community and no one else. I would be very interested in reading similar commentary of yours about other communities.
But my favorite comment comes from someone named Rebecca:
You write: “with regard to the issue of people being denied entry because they’re in a relationship - that applies to opposite-sex couples as well, does it not? So does the issue of using the tourist visa too often. So - that’s not discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, but the law being used exactly the same way it would be used on straight couples.”No, the discrimination comes in the fact that straight couples have the option to get married and stop using a tourist visa. None of us in binational relationships have that option, so we are stuck with the tourist visa as the only option to see each other.
“Okay, people, from here on - if you have a personal situation, feel free to share it. But I can’t and won’t be responding to your individual stories (unless it connects to some kind of a political point).”
Guess what? This is personal, for many many people. I’m being forced to leave the country so I can live with my partner, who can’t get a visa. So are hundreds, thousands of others. And you’re right, by criticizing this legislation that has the potential to correct an injustice that deeply affects our daily lives, you come across as insensitive. Worse, you neglect to recognize that couples who are poor, and/or where one person is from a non-European country are being disproportionately hurt by the current situation– someone from Iran doesn’t have the option to bring his partner home like someone from Canada or the Netherlands does, and it requires even more money and resources for a couple to jointly immigrate to a third country like Canada than it would for an American living and working here to sponsor her partner if it were possible.
Good luck on comprehensive immigration reform– we need it. But please consider expending your efforts supporting true dialog between the many disparate groups affected by injustice in our current system, rather than dismissing the very real and harmful discrimination that we do face as gay binational couples.
And Melanie (who wrote the deeply affecting piece on the impact of Proposition 8 on her family), drives home the reality of current immigration law:
I too am a binational couple. The consequences of my not being able to sponsor my wife resulted in me having to choose to leave my country with the love of my life (for past eight years) and our 4 year old daughter whom we had together or to stay in the US with my 11 year old child who I share custody of with an ex. What would you have done? . Had I been straight, the passage of the law you deny as relevant would have been MY BEST PATH to her immigration and keeping our family in tact. Fortunately we managed with 12 hours left to illegality, $15,000 in legal fees later, and stress beyond belief to complete our process that kept her here.
Head over to Melanie’s blog, where, in addition to reprinting her comment in its entirety, Melanie has a few more things to say regarding her exchange with the insufferable Ms. Nair: “Queercents shuts down new blogger’s first blog to comments.“
On his own blog, Madison Reed, who with his Belarusian partner “are painfully affected by the grotesque inequalities built into U.S. immigration law that the Uniting American Families Act will correct,” writes:
Nair seems to take jabs at the institution of marriage in general, and rightfully laments the extreme hardships that millions of undocumented illegal immigrant workers face, but she unconvincingly accuses the people who support the UAFA as being some kind of odd and selfish leftist gay elitists. Her information is riddled with error - no doubt deliberate disinformation, or else she’s just plain stupid.When asked for clarification, or decently confronted with reasonable arguments in support of the Uniting American Families Act, she resorts to humiliating personal attacks and finally censorship, after first sidelining me on her blog, followed by her refusal to publish my final reply to her bullsh*t. After sending a complaint Queercents.com’s founder, Nina Smith, her topic’s activity was shut down. Thank you Nina!
One can only be led to question the purity of Nair’s motivation for attacking us. Who is she working for, or why is she grinding her axe against decent people who are fighting for justice? …
Censored by Yasmin, 5/7/2009:
Dear Yasmin,
I sensed you would in the end resort to this tactic of silencing those who have presented valid arguments for the Uniting American Families Act, and equality for bi-national same-sex couples.
What’s your argument? Despite your voluminous piffle, you really haven’t stated any clear intellectual argument against the UAFA or even marriage, or presented reasons for your opposition to anything. Now you tell us that you are against “gay marriage,” whatever that means.
I’m wondering if you’re one of those incomprehensible gay right-winger Republicans! Who are you, and whom do your represent? I’m curious to know, but I doubt that I’ll be posting again on your thread. It seems to serve no purpose.
~Madison Reed
And now, Nair uses Bilerico to further attack her critics at Queercents.com — as “incoherent,” “trite,” “blissfully unaware,” “mindlessly disengaged,” “sexist and misogynistic,” and “vicious, angry, xenophobic, and hysterical.”
And, when complaining about readers who responded with real-life examples of the damage inflicted on their lives by U.S. immigration law, she asks such ridiculous questions as: “Does writing about a subject require someone to submit a resume testifying to personal experience in the topic? Is it so out of bounds for someone to dare suggest that we ask serious questions about a piece of legislation or an action that could influence a lot of other policies without ourselves being directly affected by it?”
The answer: One’s credibility depends on knowing what one is talking about, and those who obviously know nothing of which they speak completely undermine their own credibility by speaking solely in abstracts about issues that impact people.
And that is what Yasmin Nair doesn’t understand — or pretends not to: people are not issues.
And that is how the Radical Religious Right has managed to oppress us so successfully, for so long: Just like Nair (who is among their best students, whether she is one of them or simply an unwitting pawn), they are careful never to let a face be put to any LGBT-related issue; they de-humanize us, turn us into an abstract — because allowing anyone to see LGBT people as people — with lives, emotions, families, friends, joys, sorrows — would expose their persecution of us as nothing but pointless, hate-driven bigotry, and would expose them as the cruel, heartless bastards they really are.
In Chris Hedges‘ discussion of the depersonalization of nonbelievers by radical fundamentalist Christians, the reason is clear:
“This attack is waged in highly abstract terms, to negate the reality of concrete, specific and unique human characteristics, to deny the possibility of goodness in those who do not conform. Some human beings, the message goes, are no longer human beings. They are types.”
Sadly, the vast majority of commenters at Bilerico are right in line with Nair’s pathetic, self-pitying mewling and continued attacks. Is this the kind of reader Bilerico wants to attract?
I must also wonder: Why would Bilerico publish this swill? And why did Nair use a different outlet to continue slinging mud at her targets? Did Queercents.com wise up and cut off the confused, misinformed, and utterly nasty Ms. Nair?
I sincerely hope for the sake of their own credibility, Queercents.com has wised up, and Bilerico will.
With anti-gay “queers” like Yasmin Nair, who needs enemies?
Yes, I’d rather deal head-on with the likes of Maggie Gallagher and Peter LaBarbera and all the rest. They lie about us, shamelessly and without repent or remorse, but at least they’re honest about their contempt for us. I never have to wonder where they’re coming from, or what motivates them. Yasmin Nair, on the other hand… Is she a right-wing plant? Just a pot-stirring attention whore? Or does she actually believe the half-baked garbage she comes up with?
Oh, and Yasmin: Now you can go and write another column about the horrible lesbian over at Lavender Newswire who said all sorts of mean things about you — which seems to be more your forté: running to the nearest Web site crazy enough to publish your nasty attacks on people you pissed off at the last Web site crazy enough to publish your intensely offensive, stunningly insensitive, and yes, downright homophobic drivel.
Go ahead, Yasmin. Attack away. I always enjoy an extra boost of traffic. We’re still loving all the traffic RightPundits.com sent us (and continues to send us) after they didn’t like what we said about Carrie Prejean. So feel free to pitch in and help raise our Google PageRank.
And if you attack me, that will be an hour or two out of your life you won’t have to attack binational couples, who don’t need any more of your shit.
P.S. May you fall madly, hopelessly, eternally, and inextricably in love with a woman in Iraq, or China, or Vanuatu. And that, Ms. Nair, is not a blessing, but a curse.
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Filed Under: Civil Rights, Homophobia, Immigration, Marriage, Radical Religious Right, Random Bigotry
