Content Notice: Sexual objectification of queer women.
On issue #4,200 of “Dudes Who Really Should Stop Embarrassing Themselves,” a rig pig named Robbie Picard started a meme criticizing Canada’s oil imports from Saudi Arabia, because in Saudi Arabia they execute lesbians, and lesbians are hot.
The controversy began Sunday when a Facebook page called the “Canada Oil Sands Community”published a racy meme of “two girls kissing” in an attempt to link “Canadian oil” to “equality”:
But despite the negative reaction to the message, Picard decided to double-down Monday.
Speaking to American Energy News, Picard said the Saudi Arabian government’s treatment of gays justified using an erotic photo of “two girls kissing”:
“I’m kinda shocked that everybody’s talking about two girls kissing on a poster, like it’s the end of the world, instead of the bigger issue that if you’re gay in Saudi Arabia they’ll hang you or cut off your head … We in Canada, especially in Ontario and Quebec, have no problem gassing up our cars and supporting this regime that commits far more horrors than two pretty girls on a poster.”
Picard, who describes himself as a “gay oil sands supporter,” said the meme “is part of a bigger plan” to start conversations about Canadian oil exports, and suggested that “the people who are most upset are the straight, middle-class white guys.”
I’ll probably need this facepalm a few more times
Holy tangled hot mess of stupid.
Of course, Robbie Picard will argue that anyone who opposes his… erm… “criticism” is obviously a supporter of Saudi Arabian violence. Thing is–his conclusion isn’t false. Trudeau has been boosting trade deals for weapons to the Saudi Arabians and Arabia is almost certainly using them in egregious human rights violations and preparing to cause more grief in the Middle East. Not many people object to Picard’s conclusion that we should stop arming a brutally oppressive regime (or more generally stop fucking with the Middle East with pseudo-military intervention), but he seems to lack the acumen to realize most of his critics are pissed about his premise.
Including me.
Repeat after me: The rights of queer women are not defensible because you fetishize them; the rights of queer women are inalienable because they are human beings who ought to be afforded the full degree of agency and freedom that all people are supposed to have. It is sexist to argue that women who aren’t even attracted to men still exist to serve as pleasure for men.
It is further ignorant to suggest that things “aren’t so bad” at home, when anti-Queer hate crime in Edmonton alone has tripled in half as much time as the year prior. Six times the rate of hate-motivated incidents, assuming the trend persists, but nah, nothing to see here folks. Y’all should be grateful for your tenfold rate of homelessness and rape and widespread discrimination and the conservative attempts to criminalize your bathroom use–at least you aren’t being executed. At least, not yet. Wait until Jason “I don’t get caught up in the details” Kenney gets elected, then you can complain.
Lastly, I am not a straight middle-class white guy, yet I find no difficulty in calling you an insensitive tonedeaf dipshit.
Picard later apologized a couple days after I wrote this article and put it on AtG’s schedule. Credit where credit is due, I suppose. He may have doubled-down prior to apologizing, but he got there eventually.
Corrected a Freudian slip–oil exports was meant to be oil imports.
-Shiv
That should be oil imports – that is what Picard (and hord or other Oilsands Apologists) are going on about in their p1nkwashing.*
I think you are conflating Arms an/or Oilfield Equipment/services exports with oil imports.