Birdwatching is Racist, Imperialist, and Homophobic
Woke demands hegemonic control of intimate joys.
Fri Oct 8, 2021 Danusha Goska
On September 27, 2021, David Sibley, a birdwatching celebrity, posted the following on his Facebook page. "The outdoors is for *everyone* and has felt unsafe to many LGBTQIA2S+ folks for too long … Today, ask yourself 'What could I do better?'" Sibley "warned" that birders were liable to make "hurtful and dangerous comments" and that "sensitive" and "vulnerable" people should "avoid the comments section." LGBT people "struggle to feel and BE safe in the outdoors." Mind – Sibley was not condemning very real and reprehensible anti-LGBT violence. Sibley was specifically accusing birdwatchers of violence.
Follow-up comments from Sibley's fans were overtly accusatory of birdwatchers. One wrote, "Too many white cis/het (and male) people are so used to not having to think about anyone but themselves. It's part of the foundation of white/straight privilege. They don't have to think about race or gender, because it doesn't affect them every single day, like it does so many others …'I like my privilege, and I don't want to have to think about those who don't have it!'" Another wrote, "LGBT+ people [are] threatened, attacked, even murdered" – by birdwatchers. And another, "Homophobia and the violence that flows from it is a well-documented scourge" – among birdwatchers.
At least since 2014, activists have alleged that birdwatchers and birdwatching are racist. Bird names are white supremacist and imperialist. Birding's Woke elite are now changing the official names of every bird named after a white, male naturalist. The Montezuma quail will keep its name. Montezuma reigned over a slave-owning, war-based empire that practiced religiously-mandated cannibalism and the torture and murder of children sacrificed to Tlaloc, the Aztec rain god. No matter, Montezuma, who wore regalia comprised of the feathers of hundreds of dead birds, was superior to groundbreaking white naturalist John James Audubon.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/birdwatching-racist-imperialist-and-homophobic-danusha-goska/
