Pirates 1ac

Contention 1 is the Past

As a child, I used to play pirates all the time. I would pretend
to be that swarthy deviant in my fake eye patch and toy
parrot, plundering my backyard with skull and crossbones
waving above my head. I guess I admired their freedom; their
refusal to talk, dress and behave the way they were supposed
to. They didnt have parents, governments, churches to tell
them what to do, and they seemed happier because of it. I
wanted to find buried treasure, to save the day, to disrupt
society, and to do what I wanted.
This dream was dashed on the rocks by my parents when I was
7. They didnt want me to admire and role-play these evil
immoral plunderers They took away my pirate books and
replaced them with bibles and morality textbooks. They
instead taught me to be a slave; how to talk, how to dress,
how to behave, and most egregiously, who I was supposed to
love. They told me these things were natural, and that by
going against it, I would be unnatural.
Well FUCK that. Im sick of people like that telling ME what to
do. Fuck their bibles, and fuck their morality. I want to live in a
world where my sexuality, my mannerisms, my dress and my
behavior are all considered beautiful because I AM BEAUTIFUL.
So now, Im angry. I am throwing away my bibles, my morality
texts, and taking back my pirate books and my pirate
mentality.
You see
Pirates were the ultimate form of resistance. Their plundering
and immoral lifestyle put them in direct confrontation against
the seafaring empires of their day.
Craig D. Patton is an Associate Professor of History in the Department of Social Sciences at Alabama
A&M University. His training is in European history; he has published a monograph (Flammable
Material: German Chemical Workers in War, Revolution, and Inflation) and several articles on workers
and industrial unrest in Germany in the early twentieth century. However, since starting to teach World
History, his scholarly horizon has expanded and he has presented papers on patterns of imperial
expansion and colonialism in the early modern and modern eras as well as on teaching with
technology and film. , http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/9.1/patton.html, 2012

similarities between episodes of piracy since one of the

main concerns of world history is to look for large-scale, global patterns . However, as
So far this essay has emphasized the

noted in the case of China, there were also significant differences in these outbursts of piratical activity and these

can provide valuable insight into the role of specific political, social, and cultural factors in shaping the pattern of

while people everywhere often became pirates for

similar reasons, the type of organizations and societies they created were vastly
different, reflecting the peculiar social-cultural dynamics of the societies in which they arose. During the golden
age of Caribbean piracy in the early 1700s, pirates created a unique "counter-culture" in which
normal patterns of hierarchy and behavior were turned upside down a situation depicted
piracy in each instance. For example,

with some degree of accuracy in the Disney pirate films. However, in the ancient Mediterranean or late imperial
China life among pirates more faithfully reflected the traditional patterns that prevailed among broader society.

one of the main reasons for the popularity of pirates first

in print and then in films was their apparently free and easy life styleone devoid of
the manifold constraints of normal life. This libertarian, or perhaps libertine, approach to life is played
to the hilt by Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow who mocks the rules of "civilized"
behavior and is contemptuous of those normally regarded as his social superiors .
Even before Pirates of the Caribbean,

While examples of this can be found in all the Pirates movies, perhaps the best example is a scene in the most
recent one, On Stranger Tides. Here, after making a mockery of the English judicial system and its bewigged
practitioners, Captain Sparrow is whisked away to an audience with King George. Instead of being impressed and
deferential though, first he jests with the king and his ministers and then makes a shambles of the royal audience
hall in an effort to escape. Later in the movie Sparrow engages in repeated bouts of riotous living on both land and
sea, spending almost as much time drinking and chasing women as he does searching for treasure. The message is
clearbeing

sorry!

a pirate is fun for it means never having to say please, thank you, or

Although a caricature, the Pirates of the Caribbean reflects what a number of recent studies have

On their ships and in their hideouts,

pirates practiced a lifestyle deliberately at odds with that of conventional society as
a way of expressing their opposition to it and the way it oppressed men such as
themselves. In the early modern era seamen occupied the bottom rungs of the
social ladder and had little prospect of ever climbing higher. Many were displaced
rural or urban poor who served on sailing ships either because they had no other
choice or they had been tricked or coerced into service . While onboard they had to endure
revealed about pirate societies in the early modern Caribbean.

terrible conditionsovercrowding, meager and often rotten food, a multitude of diseases, grueling work with
frequent and often disabling accidents, and low pay. To make matters worse, they were subject to harsh, even

Being a pirate was

certainly a dangerous occupation, but not much more than being a simple sailor and
it did, in fact, offer an escape from many of the rigors of normal life . For example, pirate
ships had a strongly egalitarian character which set them apart not only from
regular merchant ships but from overall society with its strict hierarchical principles .
Thus, pirate crews elected their officers, chiefly the captain and quartermaster, and
carefully limited their powers and privileges. These limits were often spelled out in
articles of conduct drawn up at the start of each voyage.
brutal, discipline at the hands of captains who had virtually unlimited power over them.37

Pirates carried this resistance to the extreme by allowing

queer and deviant bodies.
Kristance Harlow is a freelance travel writer, editor, and researcher. When shes not compulsively traveling the
globe, shes looking up weird facts and writing about them. An avid culture geek, shes a trained anthropologist and
archaeologist, http://listverse.com/2014/02/01/10-ways-pirates-were-different-than-you-thought/, February 1st,

2014

The lasting mythology of pirates has painted them as a special breed of man who were sexist, womanizing, bearded
hooligans with a taste for strong liquor and gold. Ever hear of the idea that sailors have a woman at every port? The

Pirates rejected puritan society and were socially

very liberal. They openly welcomed homosexuality and even had their own form of
gay marriage. Matelotage was a civil partnership between two male pirates.
Matelotage partners openly had sex with each other. The men shared their property,
had the other as their named inheritor, and lived together. It just wasnt always a
strictly monogamous enterprise.Just as today, sexuality is a spectrum, and the
relationships were sometimes bisexual. When the French sent hundreds of
truth may be more interesting than the fiction.

prostitutes into Tortuga in the mid-1600s, they were trying to counter matelotage.
The result was not what they expected. The fluid sexuality of the pirate community
welcomed the prostitutes and many engaged in threesomes with the women.

Because of the pirates opposition to their empire, we call

upon their tradition in our fight against the norms and ideas
that oppress queer people around the world
We are commandeering this ship. Debate is a unique place
filled with the smartest and most critical people our age, and
we can use that to create change in the real world. Vote Aff to
affirm our pirate ethics and turn debate into a queer pirate
ship.
Modeling off of pirates is an effective mode of revolution
against prevailing ideas. Pirates are cool because they attack
the system, and not in spite of it.
Brewin 12 [Kester Brewin, teacher and writer on issues around theology, theology,
technology, and occasionally pirates. Mutiny! Why We Love Pirates and How They
Can Save Us 2012. ES]
A splinter of Roberts spirit is in each of us. We are all pirates now because, in these
times of increasing corporate greed, cultural privatization and financial oppression
the fight that was once their has now become ours. Infamous in their time, pirates
like Roberts were nonetheless distant characters, exotic figures from the far off high
seas, firing cannon on Her Majestys ships or mounting raids on trade vessels
transporting goods around far-flung colonies. Their distant battles have now arrived
on our doorsteps and flashed up on our screens. Pirates are now everywhere, taking
up residence in radio stations, winning seats in elections, distributing films and
music because their ancient battles against rich merchants have come home to us
in our modern struggles navigating the channels of consumer capitalism. Perhaps
we allow our children to imitate these disreputable characters, and metaphorically
take up our own cutlasses with smiles on our faces, because part of us knows that
pirates offer something that speaks deeply to our human ache for justice . Roberts
and his crew sing to us, in bawdy tones no doubt, of freedom, of rebellion, of highspirited liberty from all in our culture that would seek to tie us down, hold us back
and eek out of our pockets every last taxable dime that is owed. Pirates like
Bartholomew Roberts rose up because they had had enough of the violence and
injustice they suffered at the hands of ship captains moving commodities around
the New World, a triangle of trade which funded the violence imperialism of Spain,
Portugal, and England. The aristocratic merchants and princes who controlled this
proto-capitalism did so without thought for the slaves they abused nor the sailors
they paid pittance to. Though skilled seamen were integral to the creation of
fantastic wealth, they were completely disenfranchised from it, denied any rights to
benefit from their labour.

Contention 2 is Claiming Spaces

Our Pirate movement is key to create change. Anything short
of total revolt against heteronormativity cannot defeat it.
Mary Nardini gang 2009 (criminal queers from Milwaukee, Wisconsin toward the
queerest insurrection 2009)//gingE
Some will read queer as synonymous with gay and lesbian or LGBT. This reading falls short. While those who
would fit within the con- structions of L, G, B or T could fall with- in the discursive limits of queer, queer is
not a stable area to inhabit. Queer is not merely another identity that can be tacked onto a list of neat social
categories, nor the quantitative sum of our identities. Rather ,

it is the quali- tative position of

opposition to presentations of stability - an identity that problematizes the
manageable limits of identity. Queer is a territory of tension, defined against the
dominant narrative of white-hetero-monogamous- patriarchy, but also by an affinity
with all who are marginalized, otherized and oppressed. Queer is the abnormal, the
strange, the dangerous. Queer involves our sexuality and our gender, but so much more. It is our desire
and fantasies and more still. Queer is the cohesion of everything in conflict with the
heterosexual capitalist world. Queer is a total rejection of the regime of the Normal.
As queers we understand Normalcy. Normal, is the tyranny of our condition;
reproduced in all of our relationships. Normalcy is violently reiterated in every
minute of every day. We understand this Normalcy as the Totality. The Totality being the
interconnection and overlap- ping of all oppression and misery. The Totality is the state. It is
capitalism. It is civilization and empire. The totality is fence-post crucifixion. It is rape and
murder at the hands of police. It is Str8 Acting and No Fatties or Femmes. It is Queer Eye for the
Straight Guy. It is the brutal lessons taught to those who cant achieve Normal. It is
every way weve limited ourselves or learned to hate our bodies . We understand Normalcy
all too well. When we speak of social war, we do so because purist class analysis is not
enough for us. What does a marxist economic worldview mean to a survivor of bashing? To a sex work- er? To a
homeless, teenage runaway? How can class analysis, alone as paradigm for a revolution, promise liberation to
those of us journeying beyond our assigned genders and sexualities? The Proletariat as revolutionary subject

We must create space wherein

it is possible for desire to flourish . This space, of course, requires conflict with
this social order. To de- sire, in a world structured to confine desire, is a tension we live daily. We must
understand this tension so that we can become powerful through it - we must
understand it so that it can tear our confinement apart. This terrain, born in rupture, must
challenge oppression in its entirety. This of course, means total negation of this world.
We must become bodies in revolt. We need to delve into and indulge in power . We can
marginalizes all whose lives dont fit in the model of heterosexual-worker.

learn the strength of our bodies in struggle for space for our desires. In desire well find the power to destroy not

We
must be in conflict with regimes of the normal. This means to be at war with
everything. If we desire a world without restraint, we must tear this one to the
ground. We must live be- yond measure and love and desire in ways most devastating. We must come to
under- stand the feeling of social war. We can learn to be a threat, we can become
the queerest of insurrections.
only what destroys us, but also those who aspire to turn us into a gay mimicry of that which destroys us.

A pirate ship however, is not a utopia. Rather it is a

heterotopia.
Joe Bonnie and Shannon Lee Dawdy 12 (Anthropological Quarterly, Volume 85,
Number 3, Summer 2012, pp. 673-699 (Article) Published by George Washington
University Institute for Ethnographic Research DOI: 10.1353/anq.2012.)
One of the major splits amongst anarchists are among those who believe in radical free market capitalism (i.e.,
allow private property and profit-making enterprises to exist, but set them free from any type of regu- lation or
government interference) and those who believe in a socialist or communist sharing, or even in abolition of all

one can
project upon pirates either a mask of unbridled greed (Anderson 2001, Leeson 2009, Starkey
2001a) or one of communitarian profit sharing (Rediker 2004, Lessig 2004, Bey 1991, Ludlow 2001).
Understanding what piracy represents in terms of either historic nostalgia, or future
utopia, requires accepting its ambiguity . In fact, rather than pirate utopia, it may be
more useful to think about Pirate Heterotopia. Foucault (1967) coined heterotopia to
describe the ways in which certain places at once mirror society and create an ideal
project of what we fantasize society should be (cemeteries and formal gardens are two common
examples). They are at once conceptual and real spaces which mimic our idealized
notions and influence our behavior and belief, pushing us to- wards these ideals. A
pirate heterotopia, whether a ship, a haven, or an information network, reflects real
ideals diverse people have about political economies at the same time that it
encourages piratical behavior, be that pillaging, sharing, or revelry. At the root of
the pirate fantasy meme then, resides a desire to reverse the overwhelming forces of
globalization and the tyranny of neo-imperial monopolies, extractive industries , and,
private property, in line with James Misson. So just as in the days of yore and good old pirate lore,

in the words of the Wall Street protestors, banker welfare.

Heterotopia is a concept created by French philosopher Michel

Foucault. He describes heterotopia in his essay Des Espace
Autres:
Foucault 67 [Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias." Architecture,
Mouvement, Continuit 5 (1984): 46-49. The publication of this text written in 1967
was auhtorized by Foucault in 1984. M. Foucault n'autorisa la publication de ce texte
crit en Tunisie en 1967 qu'au printemps 1984. This text, entitled "Des Espace
Autres," and published by the French journal Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuit in
October, 1984, was the basis of a lecture given by Michel Foucault in March 1967.
Although not reviewed for publication by the author and thus not part of the official
corpus of his work, the manuscript was released into the public domain for an
exhibition in Berlin shortly before Michel Foucault's death.
http://foucault.info/documents/heterotopia/foucault.heterotopia.en.html AL]
First there are the utopias. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that
have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society.
They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down,
but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces. There are also,
probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places - places that do exist and
that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like countersites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real
sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented,
contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all place s, even though it
may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are
absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call
them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias. I believe that between utopias
and these quite other sites, these heterotopias, there might be a sort of mixed, joint
experience, which would be the mirror. The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a
placeless place. In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual
space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a
sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself
there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia
in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on
the position that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence

from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that
is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on
the other side of the glass, I come back toward myself; I begin again to direct my
eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am. The mirror
functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the
moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with
all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived
it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there . As for the heterotopias
as such, how can they be described? What meaning do they have? We might
imagine a sort of systematic description - I do not say a science because the term is
too galvanized now -that would, in a given society, take as its object the study,
analysis, description, and 'reading' (as some like to say nowadays) of these different
spaces, of these other places. As a sort of simultaneously mythic and real
contestation of the space in which we live, this description could be called
heterotopology.

From these Heterotopias, pirates were able to bring the empire

to its knees.
Cordingly et el, David- Life Among the Pirates: The Romance and the Reality (London, Little, Brown

& Co., 1995) Cordingly, David (ed.) - Pirates (London, Salamander, 1996) Hill, Christopher - Liberty
Against the Law: Some Seventeenth Century Controversies (London, Penguin, 1996) Hill, Christopher 'Radical Pirates?' in Collected Essays, Vol. 3 (Brighton, Harvester, 1986); and in Margaret Jacob and
James Jacob (eds.) - The Origins of Anglo-American Radicalism (London, George Allen and Unwin,
1984) Klausmann, Ulrike, Marion Meinzerin and Gabriel Kuhn (trans. Nicholas Levis) - Women Pirates
and the Politics of the Jolly Roger (Montreal, Black Rose Books, 1997) Rediker, Marcus B. - Between
the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo- American Maritime World
1700-1750 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987) Rediker, Marcus B. - 'Liberty beneath the
Jolly Roger: The Lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, Pirates' in M. Creighton and L. Norling (eds.) - Iron
Men, Wooden Women: Gender and Atlantic Seafaring, 1700-1920 (Baltimore, John Hopkins University
Press, 1995) Ritchie, Robert C. - Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates (Cambridge,
Massachusetts and London, Harvard University Press, 1986) Wilson, Peter Lamborn - Pirate Utopias:
Moorish Corsairs and European Renegadoes (New York, Autonomedia, 1995), http://www.ecoaction.org/dod/no8/pirate.html, 1999
"In an honest Service, there is thin Commons, low Wages, and hard Labour; in this, Plenty and Satiety, Pleasure and
Ease, Liberty and Power; and who would not ballance Creditor on this Side, when all the Hazard that is run for it, at
worst, is only a sower Look or two at choaking. No, a merry Life and a short one shall be my Motto" - Pirate Captain
Bartholomew Roberts.(1) During

the 'Golden Age' of piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries,

crews of early proletarian rebels, dropouts from civilization, plundered the lucrative
shipping lanes between Europe and America. They operated from land enclaves, free ports; 'pirate
utopias' located on islands and coastlines as yet beyond the reach of civilization .
From these mini-anarchies - 'temporary autonomous zones' - they launched raiding
parties so successful that they created an imperial crisis, attacking British trade
with the colonies, and crippling the emerging system of global exploitation, slavery
and colonialism.(2) We can easily imagine the attraction of life as a sea-rover, answerable to no-one. EuroAmerican society of the 17th and 18th centuries was one of emergent capitalism, war, slavery, land enclosures and
clearances; starvation and poverty side-by-side with unimaginable wealth. The Church dominated all aspects of life
and women had few options beyond marital slavery. You could be press-ganged into the navy and endure conditions
far worse than those experienced on board a pirate ship: " Conditions

for ordinary seamen were both

harsh and dangerous - and the pay was poor. Punishments available to the ship's
officers included manacling, flogging and keel-hauling - the victim being pulled by
means of a rope under the hull of the ship from one side to the other. Keel-hauling
was a punishment which often proved fatal ."(3) As Dr. Johnson famously observed: "no man will be
a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in jail with the chance of
being drowned... A man in jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company."(4 )

In

opposition to this, pirates created a world of their own making, where

they had "the choice in themselves" - a world of solidarity and fraternity,
where they shared the risks and the gains of life at sea, made decisions
collectively and seized their life for themselves in the present, denying its
use to the merchants as a tool for the accumulation of dead property . Indeed,
Lord Vaughan, Governor of Jamaica, wrote: "These Indyes are so Vast and Rich, And this kind of rapine so sweet,
that it is one of the hardest things in the World to draw those from it which have used it for so long."(5)

Our plundering of space comes first if we are to use debate as

a weapon against society. Foucault explains:
Foucault 67 [Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias." Architecture,
Mouvement, Continuit 5 (1984): 46-49. The publication of this text written in 1967
was auhtorized by Foucault in 1984. M. Foucault n'autorisa la publication de ce texte
crit en Tunisie en 1967 qu'au printemps 1984. This text, entitled "Des Espace
Autres," and published by the French journal Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuit in
October, 1984, was the basis of a lecture given by Michel Foucault in March 1967.
Although not reviewed for publication by the author and thus not part of the official
corpus of his work, the manuscript was released into the public domain for an
exhibition in Berlin shortly before Michel Foucault's death.
http://foucault.info/documents/heterotopia/foucault.heterotopia.en.html AL]
In any case I believe that the anxiety of our era has to do fundamentally with space,
no doubt a great deal more than with time. Time probably appears to us only as one
of the various distributive operations that are possible for the elements that are
spread out in space, Now, despite all the techniques for appropriating space,
despite the whole network of knowledge that enables us to delimit or to formalize it,
contemporary space is perhaps still not entirely desanctified (apparently unlike
time, it would seem, which was detached from the sacred in the nineteenth
century). To be sure a certain theoretical desanctification of space (the one signaled
by Galileo's work) has occurred, but we may still not have reached the point of a
practical desanctification of space. And perhaps our life is still governed by a certain
number of oppositions that remain inviolable, that our institutions and practices
have not yet dared to break down. These are oppositions that we regard as simple
givens: for example between private space and public space, between family space
and social space, between cultural space and useful space, between the space of
leisure and that of work. All these are still nurtured by the hidden presence of the
sacred. Bachelard's monumental work and the descriptions of phenomenologists
have taught us that we do not live in a homogeneous and empty space, but on the
contrary in a space thoroughly imbued with quantities and perhaps thoroughly
fantasmatic as well. The space of our primary perception, the space of our dreams
and that of our passions hold within themselves qualities that seem intrinsic: there
is a light, ethereal, transparent space, or again a dark, rough, encumbered space; a
space from above, of summits, or on the contrary a space from below of mud; or
again a space that can be flowing like sparkling water, or space that is fixed,
congealed, like stone or crystal. Yet these analyses, while fundamental for reflection
in our time, primarily concern internal space. I should like to speak now of external
space.

Contention 3 is Queer Rage

When you are deciding the ballot, our framework for this
debate is who can best transform the debate sphere into a site
of resistance against heteronormativity the social order. We
solve best because
The only possible action is violent resistance. We need to
reclaim the political and make the debate space a queer space.
The following text is from a manifesto published in 1990 at a
pride parade:
Queer Nation, 90 (Text of a manifesto originally passed out by people marching with
the ACT UP contingent in the New York Gay Pride Day parade, 1990. Queer Nation
Manifesto http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/queernation.html)//gingE
How can I tell you. How can I convince you, brother; sister that your life is in danger. That everyday you wake up

You as an alive
and functioning queer are a revolutionary. There is nothing on this planet that validates, protects or
encourages your existence. It is a miracle you are standing here reading these words. You should by all
rights be dead. Don't be fooled, straight people own the world and the only reason
you have been spared is you're smart, lucky, or a fighter. Straight people have a privilege that
allows them to do whatever they please and fuck without fear . But not only do they live a life
free of fear; they flaunt their freedom in my face . Their images are on my TV, in the magazine I
bought, in the restaurant I want to eat in, and on the street where I live. I want there to be a
moratorium on straight marriage, on babies, on public displays of affection among
the opposite sex and media images that promote heterosexuality. Until I can enjoy
the same freedom of movement and sexuality, as straights, their privilege must
stop and it must be given over to me and my queer sisters and brothers . Straight
people will not do this voluntarily and so they must be forced into it. Straights must
be frightened into it. Terrorized into it. Fear is the most powerful motivator . No one will
give us what we deserve. Rights are not given they are taken, by force if necessary. It is
easier to fight when you know who your enemy is. Straight people are you
enemy. They are your enemy when they don't acknowledge your invisibility and
continue to live in and contribute to a culture that kills you . Every day one of us is
taken by the enemy. Whether it is an AIDS death due to homophobic government inaction or a lesbian
bashing in an all-night diner (in a supposedly lesbian neighborhood), we are being systematically
picked off and we will continue to be wiped out unless we realize that if they take
one of us they must take all of us.
alive, relatively happy, and a functioning human being, you are committing a rebellious act.

The manifesto goes on to talk about the influence of changing

the perceptions of queer bodies. Judge, your ballot could save
lives. Our pirate ethics are key to disrupting the system of self
hate, and transform debate, and society into a system of self
love.
Queer Nation, 90 (Text of a manifesto originally passed out by people marching with
the ACT UP contingent in the New York Gay Pride Day parade, 1990. Queer Nation
Manifesto http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/queernation.html)//gingE
For anyone to say that coming out is not part of the revolution is missing the point .
Positive sexual images and what they manifest saves lives because they affirm
those lives and make it possible for people to attempt to live as self-loving instead

of self-loathing. As the famous "Black is beautiful" changed many lives so does "Read my lips" affirm
queerness in the face of hatred and invisibility as displayed in a recent
governmental study of suicides that states at least 1/3 of all teen suicides are Queer
kids. This is further exemplified by the rise in HIV transmission among those under 21. We are most hated
as queers for our sexualness, that is, our physical contact with the same sex. Our
sexuality and sexual expression are what makes us most susceptible to physical
violence. Our difference, our otherness, our uniqueness can either paralyze us or
politicize us. Hopefully, the majority of us will not let it kill us.

The role of the ballot is to serve as an ideological endorsement

of our kritikal position wherein the ballot as posited as
intellectual currency on the discursive marketplace.
Debate has the power to spread ideas, and offers a space to
affirm or negate certain types of speaking. Voting for an
affirmation of pirate heterotopia shows the debate community
and everybody who sees your ballot that you embrace this
position and to you, this is what the debate space should
represent. Lindsay VanLuvanee, explains:
VanLuvanee, Lindsay, Debate coach at ISU, 2011
Debate is a discursive activity and through wins and losses rewards and reprimands
certain types of speaking. The debate community has never been too formalized
about their eligibility standards, rather, in this community, it is largely about the
audiences expectation, who speaks with credibility, who is eligible for the
outrounds. Eligibility standards in debate are reinforced through embedded and
often unquestioned cultural norms about what constitutes good and bad
debate, connected to assumptions about credibility, power, speed, presence, and
tradition. We are graded according to idealizations of the proper debate subject
that, rather than being reasonable, appear practical, because of how we distribute
success here through the ballot. The assumption that debate provides a space for
commonality and agreement about the terms of the discussion ignore the various
ways that debaters must negotiate their own subjectivity in order to speak in the
first place. Many here have forwarded a belief in objective standards of fairness
but this leads us to ask: fair for who? in the end, objective standards of fairness
are better understood as culturally embedded norms about which subjects meet
dominant standard.

Our Pirate heterotopia that we create in the debate space is a

way of changing the world . Not voting for the advocacy is a
form of passive acceptance of heteronormativity that
invisibilizes and allows violence to continue. Rejection right
now is key. This is from that same Manifesto
Queer Nation, 90 (Text of a manifesto originally passed out by people marching with
the ACT UP contingent in the New York Gay Pride Day parade, 1990. Queer Nation
Manifesto http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/queernation.html)//gingE
Where Are You? You talk, talk, talk about invisibility and then retreat to your homes to
nest with your lovers or carouse in a bar with pals and stumble home in a cab or sit
silently and politely by while your family, your boss, your neighbors , your public servants

deride us and punish us. Then home again and you feel like
screaming. Then you pad your anger with a relationship or a career or a party with other dykes like you and still
you wonder why we can't find each other, why you feel lonely, angry, alienated. Get Up, Wake Up Sisters!! Your
life is in your hands. When I risk it all to be out, I risk it for both of us. When I risk it
all and it works (which it often does if you would try), I benefit and so do you. When
it doesn't work, I suffer and you do not. But girl you can't wait for other dykes to make the world safe
for you. stop waiting for a better more lesbian future! The revolution could be here if
we started it.
distort and disfigure us,