Queer Politics, Racism, and the Responsibility of a Movement toward Change

This is an aside from my weekly posts, prompted by a number of recent events, including the anniversary of Stonewall, the DOMA and Prop 8 rulings, the VRA decision, and the Trayvon Martin case.  This is a long one and gives me that "slow down you angry, radical lesbian" feeling, so there's that warning. 

I was, like many people, extremely happy about the Court decisions related to same-sex marriage.  DOMA is gone and California once again has marriage equality (although I understand the ruling is more complicated than that for a number of reasons).  This will make my life easier in the future, when I want to get married and have kids, buy a house and make sure that my wife has what she needs financially, be absolutely positive that in case of medical emergency everything is as it should be.  Federal marriage benefits are extensive and important and the gay community won big in terms of protecting those of its members who are now married or who will choose to be in the future. 

That being said, I am uncomfortable about same-sex marriage for a number of reasons, both theoretical and political (not that the two are entirely separate).  I think that it is problematic that same-sex marriage received the bulk of the money in queer politics over the past several years while issues like LGBT homelessness, health care, sex education, and hate crimes were all either pushed down a rung on the ladder of importance or tied to the cause of marriage as if somehow this one victory would fix the other issues, as if somehow every member of the queer community wanted and needed marriage, first and foremost, and the rest could just wait a minute.  

The saga of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act demonstrates fairly clearly the gay political food chain.  The 2007 deal to exclude transgender people from those under the umbrella of protection was sold as smart but unfortunate politics.  Of course trans people would get those rights as soon as possible but in the meantime, some protection is better than no protection and forcing a conversation about gender identity and expression would just alienate moderates and the general American public, who do not understand what it means to be transgender and who do not want to understand (as if this were not reason to push harder for protection for trans people.  Your gay-married neighbor and his two dogs are adorable but that trannie down the street, I just don't get it.).  Here again the T in LGBT was left out in the cold and the political sell of protecting everyone but those who were just as likely or in many cases more likely to be harassed or fired but less understood in the general public won out over the importance of an inclusive movement. 

Related to this, I am deeply troubled by the fact that the queer community has not questioned more its desire to be a part of an institution that has perpetuated heteronormativity and has a history of sexism and misogyny.  I understand the practicalities of marriage.  Many queer people are in long-term monogamous relationships and will benefit from the opportunity to have them recognized by the state.  I also understand that we essentially just sought and gained entrance into the equivalent of the all-hetero country club without asking why they were all-hetero in the first place or what the long-term cost of entry might be.  Sure, we're playing golf, but who gets to be the caddy now?  What topics of conversation are off-limits?  What past sins do we have to forget to stay in the good graces of those who would let us be a part of their group? We are deemed "normal," or normal enough, anyway, but are we now expected to sit down and shut up?  It is my fear that we have paid and will continue to pay a political price by making marriage the central issue.  We have turned ourselves into queer mirrors of heterosexual counterparts, slightly different, but not too different, and really just a reflection trying its hardest to be like the original.  

The thing is, part of our political power comes from being unlike the original.  We do not have the same stories as our heterosexual neighbors.  Being queer and growing up queer in our society makes us different.  We have to fight to be ourselves (whatever "self" means, thank you queer theory. Got you, bro.).  Sure, love is love, but let's not pretend like everybody at preschool ooohed and ahhhed over two little boys "flirting" the way that they would have for a boy and a girl.  In fact, the two little boys might get time-out or parents might be called, told in hushed tones in the hallway.  Same for the boy who wants to wear dresses, who feels like his body doesn't fit. Things are changing but not that much.  We are different and why shouldn't we be?  Difference is okay.  Difference is powerful.  It makes us look at things again and ask new questions about ourselves and others.   

It seems like the message of the movement for marriage equality is that everybody is really all the same and wants the same things.  It's an appealing message for both sides.  We get to be "normal," and argue that some great mistake has been made in recogniziing our normality, a misfiling of the paperwork.  Of course we want to be normal because we know the alternative and it feels like someone yelling "dyke" at you on the street or dropping your boyfriend's hand when you leave the dark of the movie theater because those guys were looking at you a little too closely. It feels like the fear of telling your parents; the drop in your stomach that never goes away and the church sermon that sometimes makes its way to the front of your mind. Sinner, sinner, sinner.  Of course we want to be normal. On the other side, what is less threatening to a majority than a minority who wants to be like them and look like them? Of course this could never actually happen because it would eliminate the hierarchy created by the marginalization of those who are different, but it's a win for those in charge.  Nothing is really ruffled when the impossible goal is to look the same.  (Again a note on theory, I promise I don't have the idea of an evil criminal hetero mastermind controlling the world.  It's obviously more complicated, but it seems undeniable that a system of power that privileges heterosexuality exists and is maintained by the existence and condemnation of difference.)  All this is to say, the difference of queer people creates a power to subvert and challenge traditional systems of power by pointing to the fact that other options exist and moreover, that their existence alone makes it impossible for the lie that everyone is meant to be a certain way to continue.  We are the evidence to the contrary, and I think that should be a site of power, not a fact to be suppressed and hidden under a political movement seeking sameness.  

While we were celebrating the rulings on DOMA and Prop 8, the Court also handed down the VRA decision.  The power dynamics of the world at large do not suddenly disappear in queer politics and the concerns of the majority overpower here as well.  The T gets forgotten and it is also true that the voices and specific concerns of women and people of color lose ground in the discussion about the "bigger community."  Since second wave feminism, there has been discussion of intersectionality and the ways in which queer people of color experience oppression at many levels and are often forced to pick an identity in order to find political solidarity.  This is wrong.  Although I am gay, I am also white, and this means I have privilege and should be working to take it apart just as I want to challenge heteronormativity. I, and the white majority in the queer community, need to listen to the voices of queer people of color.  We need to call ourselves out and refuse to let our own advantages slide while preaching about the oppression we feel.  We cannot ignore our own privilege while seeking to dismantle someone else's. 

The concerns of people of color should be the concerns of all queer people because if we are really trying to represent our community as a whole, then we ought to consider the wide variety of identities of queer people and further, we should be in solidarity with all women and people of color, whose struggles also indicate the damage of hegemony.  The Court essentially suggested with their VRA decision that we are in a new age without the same need for oversight.  My favorite line from Justice Ginsberg in her dissent, which is excellent: "Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”  We should be concerned that the Court believed that things had changed so much that Southern states (really all states need it, I think, but that's a separate issue) should not need approval before changing their voting laws and procedures.  We should be concerned because what it says is that there is a prevailing idea that we are moving toward sameness, and it's a post-racial world, and a black president means racism must be dead or dying.  This is the same logic that could be used to tell the queer community to shut it.  We can get married.  Things have changed, so stop yelling about who has the power.  Everybody is equal, as you can see.  

Everyone isn't equal.  I woke up to a newsfeed filled with posts about Trayvon Martin and the not guilty verdict.  Aside from the particulars of the trial, the entire situation indicates a bigger problem.  We are the society that made George Zimmerman, that breeds and fosters racism in every person (myself included, obviously) but which refuses to acknowledge that reality.  So one man becomes the problem.  We are the society that would suggest that a black boy walking down the street in a hoodie should take his hood off, for God's sake, what does he expect?  What do we expect? Justice is supposed to be blind, but in a society filled with racism, sexism, and homophobia, it cannot be blind.  It only puts on blinders to the reality of inequality in the way that we live our lives every day.  This is an uncomfortable topic, but we should talk about it.  We should scream about it, in fact, because the dialogue about a post-racial world and the successful fight for racial equality is getting so loud that people talk about Dr. King like he's a hero of old and George Zimmerman like he's a relic in his racist thought.  If you can hide the problem, then it doesn't exist.  

The queer community has a responsibility to be outraged as it celebrates the victory of DOMA and to question its own priorities in the current political fight.  We have a responsibility to work with and listen to transgender people and queer people of color, queer women and those whose voices it might be easier to ignore. We have to acknowledge and fight the harmful hierarchies and privileges in our own community.  Although white members of the queer community do not feel the same struggles as people of color, we do benefit from racism, and we can push ourselves to recognize and reject those benefits at every opportunity, to provide what we can to those in our community whose struggles are beyond what we experience ourselves.  We can't pretend like everyone is the same or that the invalidation of DOMA means that everyone will be treated the same.  If we choose to continue with that trend, then we at least need to take responsibility for the fact that we are making a choice to leave others behind and win a fight that is not so much concerned with change as it is with the priorities of those with the loudest and most powerful voices in our own community.  We want the country club and the caddy doesn't matter.  We want to be the same or as close to it as we can get.

This brings me to Stonewall.  In June 1969, a bunch of ragged and run-down queers decided they had had enough and fought back against the police at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York.  Badass queens and butches fought with their high heels and whatever else they had.  They were outcasts and they decided to protect themselves, because who else was going to do it?  Today we celebrate this with Pride parades.  In Berlin, they even call it Christopher Street Day.  We're celebrating the queers who refused to let themselves be taken in without a fight.  Let's not be taken in without a fight.