Jason Evan Mihalko, Psy.D.

02/27/2018

Best of all, you can stream them all right now.

02/11/2018

There are heroes who should be honored all year, but especially during Black History Month.

02/03/2018

Today is day three of black history month. I'm using the month to remember (and celebrate) lesser known (and maybe not so lesser known) black q***r people (from the past add present) that don't frequently get mentioned.

Today's mention is Staceyann Chin.

From "Homophobia"

"Yet everyday I become more and more afraid to say black, or radial, or woman.... Even in friendly conversation I have to rein in that bell hooksian urge to kill motherf**kers who say stupid s**t to me all day, all day...

F**k you, you fu***ng racist s*xist turd. F**k you for crying about homophobia while you exploit the desperation of undocumented immigrants to clean your hallways, bathe our children, cook your dinners.... I want to scream out loud ALL OPPRESSION IS CONNECTED YOU DICK...

At the heart of every political action in history stood the d***s who were feminists, the anti-racists who were gay rights activists, black men who believed being vulnerable could only make this community stronger..."

02/02/2018

Today is day two of black history month. I'm using the month to remember lesser known (and maybe not so lesser known) black q***r people that don't frequently get mentioned.

Today's mention is Ess*x Hemphill.

American Wedding

by Ess*x Hemphill

In america,
I place my ring
on your c**k
where it belongs.
No horsemen
bearing terror,
no soldiers of doom
will swoop in
and sweep us apart.
They’re too busy
looting the land
to watch us.
They don’t know
we need each other
critically.
They expect us to call in sick,
watch television all night,
die by our own hands.
They don’t know
we are becoming powerful.
Every time we kiss
we confirm the new world coming.

What the rose whispers
before blooming
I vow to you.
I give you my heart,
a safe house.
I give you promises other than
milk, honey, liberty.
I assume you will always
be a free man with a dream.
In america,
place your ring
on my c**k
where it belongs.
Long may we live
to free this dream.

02/02/2018

Today is the start of black history month. I thought I'd spend some time remembering lesser known (and maybe not so lesser known) black q***r people that don't frequently get mentioned.

Today's mention is Richmond Barthé.

Barthé was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s; then he crashed into obscurity. Did his homos*xuality have anything to do with that?

10/13/2017

"They're releasing some good ones we use every day to wash cars, change oil in our cars, too cook in our kitchen...to do all that where we save money."

Serviceable other, right here.

People of color, worthy only if they serve the needs of white people.

Gross.

08/12/2017

I had some things to say on Twitter this morning about Charlottesville, white men marching with tiki torches, history, racism, white supremacy, and moral imagination.

August 11, 2017

07/20/2017

Racism Scale: where do you fall?

06/10/2017

"There's more out there than Cliff, who works at Google and takes selfies hiking with his dog."

05/05/2017

"So we take care of each other. Because but for the grace of God there go I one day. And we hope that we will be shown that mercy, too. It is the ultimate test of the character of this country confronting our chamber today. Not the power we give the strong, but the strength with which we embrace the weak."

05/04/2017

Would it be funny if a comedian said Hilary Clinton was worth no more than as a "c**k-holster"for Bill Clinton? How about Ivanka Trump? Is it funny if we suggested she was worth no more than being a c**k-holster for Jared Trump? How about Sheryl Sandberg? After her husband Dave Goldberg died should she have disappeared from public view because her purpose in life--being a c**k holster for her husband--was over?

Of course not.

But it's funny to say that Donald Trump is a c**k holster for Vladimir Putin?

It is kind of funny. It's also rather painful.

In graduate school my first dissertation chair was very thoughtful about language. She discouraged us from using phrases like "dark humor" or "black ice" because it constructs a language in which darkness is bad. It promulgates in our very language a racism that equates darkness--black skinned people--with bad. She also noticed when we used phrases that suggested women were bad (no skirting around an issue, because it builds upon negative connotations of women). She also always stopped when we said something sucked. Glenda would talk about how allusions to oral s*x--in a negative context--ended up promulgating negative stereotypes about people who had same s*x s*x, or women, because those are most often the people who suck, and to imply that sucking is bad continues to promulgate negative hateful stereotypes.

Glenda's attention to language often would seem pedantic. Yet she had an important point. Language is complicated. How we use it is complicated. What we invoke with our language has many layers. While it may seem ridiculous to avoid phrases like "black ice" or "blind carbon copy" or "c**k-holster" -- it also is not ridiculous. The way we use language both reveals our implicit bias and also constructs our implicit bias.

I laughed at the c**k-holster comment. I also winced. Colbert was expressing his anger at Trump by suggesting he wasn't a very good man. He disparaged his masculinity and his value as a man. He did this by implying that he was a c**k-holster for another man. An object of use--an object to be penetrated. In one phrase he managed to invoke misogyny, homonegativity and toxic masculinity. In one phrase Colbert also invoked our toxic r**e culture.

Martha Nussbaum writes extensively about the notion of projective disgust. She links projective disgust to s*x--and especially the ways in which our toxic s*xuality in our world often becomes a way to work out our feelings about disgust. She sees s*x as a place where people play out projective disgust. Women's bodies--LGBT bodies--black bodies--become objects that serve as repositories for unwanted disgust. Men--white heteros*xual men--use these "lesser" bodies as repositories for the disgust they cannot tolerate within their own bodies. So when one thinks of a c**k holster, it conjures up the very notion of a receptacle for disgust.

Colbert was funny. Colbert was also painful, too.

It concerns me he doesn't recognize he was both, and that his audience didn't recognize that either.