Word: act
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...first, seem counter-intuitive, in an atmosphere of ostensible apathy, why not come out? This pretense of indifference--which is solely a pretense--pacifies lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students into a mannerly silence. The closeted convince themselves that being out is not a necessity or a vital political act and that overt homosexuality, like homophobia, is simply a failure of good breeding. If it is common courtesy that keeps students from homophobic violence, it is also what keeps them from queer expression. To be openly queer, and thus offensively queer, is to call into question the heterosexual noblesse oblige...
...These acts should therefore function as paradoxical blessings to the queer community. They are an occasion for epiphany. Through them we may apprehend the meaning of coming out and staying out. We can understand that coming out is always a political act, always a political and ethical necessity. The craven rationalizations that keep the closeted entombed--the conviction that being out makes no difference--are as groundless as they are deadly. They cripple queer movements at their seminal moment (the avowal of queer identity) even as they strengthen heterosexual privilege by disappearing within...
...brothers and sisters spend their childhood acquainting themselves with petty crimes, dope and the unforgiving code of the streets: never, never snitch. The family dodges real and figurative bullets and seems to be getting on until, halfway through the book, members start dropping as if it's the last act of Hamlet. Davey, a schizophrenic, jumps to his death from a rooftop. Frankie, a promising young prizefighter, is shot dead while trying to rob an armored car. Kevin, a drug dealer, is found suspiciously hanged outside his jail cell. Sister Kathy, a serious pill popper, is shoved off a roof...
...family members and working as a laundress, and had decided to give away $150,000 of her life savings. OSEOLA MCCARTY wanted to give someone else an opportunity she had never had. I became the first recipient of the Oseola McCarty Scholarship at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her act was not a quest for fame. The gift was genuine good old-fashioned kindness that perfectly reflected the kind of person Miss Ola was. This small, quiet lady, who became another grandmother to me, lived a very simple life of charity. Miss Ola was sincere, sweet, hardworking and God-fearing...
...whatever its flaws--and they will, for some, include its brutal, off-putting imagery--Fight Club can't be ignored. It is working American Beauty-Susan Faludi territory, that illiberal, impious, inarticulate fringe that threatens the smug American center with an anger that cannot explain itself, can act out its frustrations only in inexplicable violence...