How many 4/20 specials are you gonna do this year, Angie? Well, I’ve been writing like a madman and have a lot of pent up energy and thoughts and I might as well do something constructive and write. This idea started with a newspaper article that has been going viral in the UK cannabis scene.
This article features a family whose child has severe epilepsy and has found that cannabis has vastly improved their condition, but it’s extremely expensive because the NHS won’t subsidise the costs so they have no choice but to get a private prescription. Many people complained about the framing of the article being hostile towards medical cannabis users who don’t have as severe conditions as the person profiled in the article, and after some thought, I want to give the family the benefit of the doubt for a couple reasons. Firstly, I know how dishonest journalists can be, as someone with an MA in journalism, and the way a question is asked (leading questions, loaded questions, framing, priming) can affect the answer given. A great example of this can be found in this Yes, Minister clip where the questions are framed in a certain way and they are asked in a certain order to prime the survey taker to answer that final question in the way that the interviewer intends them to. It’s sneaky because they’re not telling the survey taker what to think, but they’re basically presenting their agenda in this sneaky way and going “what do you think?”. My husband has a physics PhD and works in academia and he always gets cross when he sees newspaper articles talking about scientific studies, but not linking to their DOI (digital object identifier) so the reader can look at the study for themselves, see the full results and the methodology and who funded the study and if it’s peer-reviewed and what journal it was published in and come to their own conclusions from an informed perspective.
As well, I can imagine with them having to pay Ā£2,200 a month (this number seems unusually high, but I’ll take them at their word) for their child’s medication, it’s extremely frustrating because a necessity like healthcare shouldn’t be priced like a luxury. Here in the UK, medical cannabis has been legal since 2018, but it’s more restrictive here than in other places where they may allow homegrow for medical cannabis patients (my birth state of Illinois offers this) and have less rigid requirements to obtain a prescription (basically just say you have back pain and presto!). Not only that, but you must have the funds to afford a consultation at a private clinic (can be anywhere from Ā£50 to Ā£200) and pay private prescription prices (Ā£5-10/gram of flower). In order to get a prescription here, you must have a diagnosis that qualifies and you must have tried at least two treatments that did not work for you. Unfortunately with many pharmaceutical drugs there are a lot of side effects that can do harm and there is that annoyance of the treatment treadmill. Cannabis is wrongfully treated as a last resort treatment when it really should be a first choice because it is natural and has fewer side effects. If you can’t afford to go private for healthcare then you can always buy cannabis on the black market, but that comes with risks because it’s illegal recreationally and you have to trust your dealer and all that. As a mixed-race immigrant with anxiety, it was important for me to get my prescription and I did and what a game changer it’s been. But I hate this implication that all medical cannabis patients are wealthy, when many of them are disabled and on a fixed income or are low income because of their disability so they have to sacrifice somewhere to afford the costs of their medication. I also hate that mental health issues are trivialised and implied to be less severe than physical health issues. Just because it’s in your brain or it’s invisible doesn’t mean it’s easier or less real. I don’t want to accuse the family of lateral ableism – I think it’s more the newspaper’s framing, but the sentiment of invisible disabilities mattering less is lateral ableism.
Anyway, one big complaint I saw all over the UK cannabis scene online was the respectability politics in that article, implying that THC/CBD oil is superior to flower and more “medical” and unfair, not backed up claims that most medical cannabis users who are prescribed bud are smoking their prescription (in the UK it’s only legal to vape flower, not smoke it or make it into edibles, but who can really enforce that in your house?), while ignoring that vape devices are an expensive purchase even though it’s more economical and healthy to vape your prescription. A person who can barely afford medical cannabis is going to have a hard time finding Ā£200 for a Pax or a Mighty. It makes me laugh that oil is considered more legitimate, medical, and natural because CBD oil is easily found at any health foods shop, but do they forget where the THC and CBD in the oil comes from? The cannabis flower itself! It’s also important to consider that there’s a big difference between the effects of inhaling cannabis (smoking or vaping) versus ingesting it (oil or edibles). When I vape, it’s more of a head high and I’m more functional, whereas when I take an edible, it’s a body high and I tend to get more couch lock and I get really sleepy.
There’s even more respectability politics in the article with it implying that the strain names like Alien Dawg make people take the medication and medical properties of cannabis less seriously. I’ve seen some more conservative cannabis activists saying we should abandon those strain names and use medicalised names like T(insert number here that indicates the percentage of THC) or C(insert number here that indicates the percentage of CBD), but these names don’t tell the entire story. Two strains could have the same percentage of THC or CBD and have very different effects because of the terpenes or the lineage and those strain names say something about the lineage. This is basically a Cliff Notes explanation and there’s a lot of details in there and I’m learning about it myself and I don’t want to bore you with that and ramble forever. In many places where cannabis is legal, it’s largely in the hands of corporations who get rich off the backs of all the cannabis cultivators and breeders who were doing all the work and putting their lives and freedom on the line because it was illegal and there were major penalties for cultivation, whole different animal from a possession charge. So it’s only fair that we respect the strain names given by these pioneers. It’s important to note that the only difference between recreational and medical marijuana is really just a sheet of paper. Just because someone’s using black market or homegrown cannabis doesn’t mean they aren’t taking medicine. The only thing keeping it illegal is just a few paragraphs in the constitution and a few pen strokes can change that.
There always will be people who are adamantly against cannabis and people who use it no matter what the different strains are called and no matter who the users are: how they dress, what their identity is, what their job is, or what their education is. As far as I’m concerned, there are people in that pro-prohibition camp that are too far gone and I can’t be bothered speaking to them. It’s fruitless and the conversation isn’t going to go anywhere. At best, I might plant a few seeds of doubt (pardon the pun), but it’s more productive to focus on the fence sitters because those are people who are more willing to listen. And it takes a multi-pronged approach. There are all kinds of people in society and different messaging resonates with different people. Find what they care about and what makes them tick. Some people are pro-legalisation because of the economy, potential tax revenue, public safety, public health, job creation, health benefits, freedom, human rights, or bodily autonomy. Different methods of persuasion will work for different people. However, we must also keep in mind that human beings deserve rights no matter what. Whether you’re a grey suit-wearing middle class white collar job kind of person or you’re a stereotypical non-conformist hippie stoner type, you deserve rights. Hippies and stoners are not lesser human beings than doctors, lawyers, engineers, and accountants. We need to do away with respectability politics and instead have solidarity for one another. We’re all in this together. Don’t fall for divide and rule. The Man wants people to bicker and fight amongst each other instead of fighting the real enemy: corruption and greed.
Respectability politics doesn’t work and it hasn’t worked. A suit has never stopped a bullet from a gun, and you can see that message in the Gary Moore and Phil Lynott anti-war song “Out in the Fields”, which was written about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. It also makes me think of The Kinks song “Some Mother’s Son”. There’s no true winner of a war. Both sides lose human beings – once they’re gone there’s no bringing them back, and on both sides families are mourning and they have a lot more in common than they’d think because at the end of the day, that dead soldier is some mother’s son (or daughter). If we think about things more on a human level, maybe we’d fight less. I don’t know, just a thought.
Another song I thought of when I was brainstorming this blog post was The Yardbirds’ “Mister You’re a Better Man Than I”. The message a simple one, don’t judge a book by its cover. You’re not a better person because you cut your hair, wear a suit, have a posh accent, have a bigger bank balance, believe in a certain faith, or hold certain political views. Someone’s appearance doesn’t tell the entire story. “Less respectable” looking cannabis users are just as deserving of equal rights as those who are “more respectable” looking.
If you study history you’ll see how it has never worked. The women’s liberation, civil rights, and gay liberation movements all happened contemporaneously and if you put milestones of each of these movements on a timeline I think you’ll see a lot of things happening more or less at the same time. And I’ll quickly demonstrate how it didn’t matter how respectable suffragettes, civil rights leaders, and gay people looked, it still didn’t save them from being oppressed.
Suffragette City: Women’s liberation
There were two different groups of women fighting for the right to vote: suffragists and suffragettes. You had suffragists who were more peaceful and you had suffragettes who were the more radical, militant faction that split from the suffragists. If you take a look at pictures of women marching for the right to vote, you’ll see that they don’t look like rebels at all, no rational dress or jeans and t-shirts or booty shorts and crop tops in sight. Even in their very nice, polished looking “respectable” outfits they were still brutalised by the police, thrown in jail, force fed, and tortured. Corsets and long skirts didn’t save them!
Fast forward to the present and there’s still respectability politics for women. You have slut shaming, body shaming, and clothing policing. No matter what a woman wears she is not asking to be assaulted, raped, or sexually harassed. It doesn’t matter how long her skirt is or how tight her jeans are or if she’s wearing a bra or freeing the nipple, women have bodily autonomy and consent is key. Clothing, or lack thereof, is not consent. You can see body shaming in the transphobic faction (they often call themselves gender critical) of the feminist movement where women’s bodies are scrutinised, often by other women, and deemed feminine or not feminine enough. It’s like phrenology but with waist hip ratios. There’s so much variety in human beings and women come in all shapes and sizes. A woman with a small chest isn’t any less of a woman than one with a large chest. A woman who is ruler shaped isn’t any less of a woman than one who has an hourglass shape. List goes on: hair length, shoulder width, body hair, you name it. Makes me think of that scene in Mean Girls where the Plastics all look in the mirror and obsess over the smallest things about their appearance while Cady is quite confident and says her biggest insecurity is that she sometimes has bad breath in the morning. She wasn’t socialised like the Plastics were, having to deal with cliques and constantly seeing unrealistic beauty standards in fashion magazines. I think a lot of us women internalise these body negative messages in the media. For those who haven’t seen the movie, here’s the dialogue:
Karen Smith: God, my hips are huge!
Gretchen Wieners: Oh, please. I hate my calves.
Regina George: At least you guys can wear halters. I’ve got man shoulders.
Cady Heron (narration): I used to think there was just fat and skinny. Apparently, there’s a lot of things that can be wrong on your body.
Gretchen Wieners: My hairline is so weird.
Regina George: My pores are huge.
Karen Smith: My nail beds suck.
(All three look at Cady…)
Cady Heron: I have really bad breath in the morning.
Respectability politics perpetuates sexism and serves the patriarchy. “I’m not like other girls” hurts all women.
Blackbird: The Civil Rights movement
All of us have seen pictures of the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights movement. One thing you’ll notice is that everyone’s so formally dressed and that’s because that was the standard then. Tracksuits were just for the gym and you wouldn’t dare leave the house in your pyjamas. Nowadays people wear onesies to university lectures and go on a Walmart run with their pyjamas on and no one really cares. In the old days many places had dress codes.
Like I said before, a suit doesn’t stop a bullet from a gun. Martin Luther King was wearing a suit when he was assassinated. So was Malcolm X. So was Medgar Evers. Look at the Civil Rights protesters. They were wearing their Sunday best and they were still brutalised by the police: clubbed, attacked by attack dogs, and sprayed at with fire hoses. Traumatised. Their respectable clothing didn’t save them from being wrongfully arrested and attacked. It didn’t undo the trauma. So once again, it doesn’t matter if you listen to jazz and classical music, relax your hair, wear a suit, and speak in an upper class accent or you listen to hip hop, have an afro or locs or cornrows, wear casual street clothing, and speak in AAVE, racists will still hate you. Once again, respectability politics doesn’t work and only perpetuates racism. Even if you try to appease the bigots and be a “pick me”, you’ll still get treated poorly and they’ll still think of you as lesser than them.
Glad to Be Gay: Gay liberation
Last but certainly not least, gay liberation. It’s still an ongoing movement because there are still 70+ countries where it’s illegal to be gay and even in countries that are more progressive and have laws that protect the LGBT community there is still homophobia and homophobic hate crimes being committed every day and people still get disowned by their families and discriminated against. Changing the law is important, but just because the law changes, it doesn’t mean attitudes change.
Respectable clothes didn’t save the thousands of gay and bisexual men who were arrested for simply being who they were. Look through the stories I talked about in last year’s 4/20 special and you’ll see what I mean. They were famous. They were talented. They all wore suits. Most of them didn’t even have long hair. A lot of them were very educated. Brian Epstein was an absolute gentleman and very well dressed and well spoken, so he would have been considered very “respectable” but he was still arrested for being gay in 1957 because England was very homophobic. His appearance, demeanour, and how he spoke didn’t save him from being a victim of institutionalised homophobia. He was blackmailed after his arrest and outed to his family. Look at Alan Turing, he saved Britain during WWII. He was a hero for cracking the Enigma code. He was incredibly smart, went to Cambridge and Princeton, and once again looked respectable. There wasn’t anything unusual about how he dressed. Yet he was arrested for being gay because his house was broken into and it came out that he had a boyfriend. He was a victim of a crime and that’s how the police found out. Two years after being sentenced to chemical castration he took his life. The first ever celebrity trial in the modern age was Oscar Wilde, who was on trial for being gay: to put it in perspective his trial was exactly 100 years before OJ Simpson. This was a man who was Oxford educated and known for being a great writer and extremely witty. On top of that, he was also known for being really well dressed: he was the blueprint for the 60s Peacock Revolution and even wrote theory on fashion. Fame and fortune didn’t save him from being sentenced to hard labour, which was essentially a death sentence. He never saw his children again, had very little desire to write anymore. All of these men I mentioned died relatively young: 32, 41, and 46 respectively. Respectability politics didn’t save them.
Fast forward to the 21st century and slowly but surely more and more countries were legalising same sex marriage. However, there were criticisms among some gay and bisexual activists who didn’t like that the movement for marriage equality prioritised gay couples with a certain “respectable” look: predominantly white, cisgender, vanilla, monogamous, gender conforming, not too flamboyant, “straight acting” (I hate this term so much because what do straight people even act like?) so they can be palatable for a straight majority. Certain voices didn’t get adequate representation: people of colour, trans and nonbinary people, polyamorous people, gender nonconforming people, people involved in kink. There was and still is this battle between assimilation versus liberation. Gay and bisexual doesn’t have a look and campaigns need to represent all of us. Why is it that we have to show that we’re just like straight people, when instead we can unapologetically embrace what makes us different. Diversity is a beautiful thing. It’s a good thing that we’re not all the same. We deserve equal rights regardless.
We shouldn’t have to hide who we are and be “seen but not heard” or wearing a mask. Don’t apologise for being yourself. So screw these conservatives who say “I support gay people as long as they don’t shove it in my face” because they’re lying. They’re acting like the liberals from Phil Ochs’ “Love Me I’m A Liberal”. They hate gay people whether they’re quiet and minding their own business or loud and proud activists. Being quiet and “palatable” for cishet conservatives doesn’t save you when they’re taking our rights away.
And then here’s another thing. There’s a loud minority of gay and bisexual people who believe in “LGB drop the T” and from there there are also people who are “LG drop the B” and this is bad. Bisexuals make up the largest group in the LGBT community and trans people have been there for gay liberation from the start and both groups need to be included and represented. Yes, it’s true that lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and trans people all have different needs and different experiences (and two people of the same identity can have very different experiences), but we need to show solidarity for one another. We need to unite because we’re stronger together. You don’t have to hate on another group to advocate for your own and to be secure in your own identity.
Respectability politics just leads to victim blaming. People deserve rights and basic human respect regardless and there shouldn’t be a need to “earn” respect. Homophobes are going to hate us whether we wear suits or pretty dresses or anything else. Flamboyant gay men and butch lesbians aren’t the reason conservatives hate us. They hate all of us regardless. Stop this “pick me” “one of the good ones” crap.
Here are some perspectives on this topic:
That’s enough ranting for today! Hope everyone had an amazing 4/20! Enjoy the weekend!
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