the Soc dem left lexi discourse confirms one of my fears about the ways we have generally argued for queer liberation.
Historically, the argument has revolved around whether or not being gay or trans is a choice. This rhetorical device made it easy to compare queer liberation to the civil rights movement, which likely played a central role in increasing queer acceptance.
Despite its effectiveness, this argument in some ways obscures the full purpose of queer liberation and largely to the detriment of certain kinds of queer people.
In my unqualified opinion, queer liberation isn't about granting rights on the basis that we are essentially a diseased caste of people who can be tolerated so long as we try to assimilate. It is about our intrinsic right to self determination and expression.
Our ability as people to identify, associate, and express ourselves freely, without capitulating to the narrow demands of a stifling culture which elevates stringent ideas of cisheteropatriarchy, is the authentic goal of queer liberation.
To that end, even if being queer was a choice for most people, it would change nothing about the validity of our movement. But, this position is of course much harder to argue for. It's much easier to win over conservatives by appealing to their narrow cultural standards.
So, in order to win favor we correctly emphasize that it's not a choice. We correctly demonstrate that gay people are capable of living quiet lives with their same sex spouses that are all but indistinguishable from traditional ones.
We show that, with the right operations, trans people can pass flawlessly and effectively perform the roles of the gender they are transitioning into. We look forward to studies that try to find a gay gene and get nervous when this inevitably leads to nothing.
We love to place masculine, straight passing gay men and thin, effeminate, pretty, polite white trans women at the forefront of our movement, to show that, while we may be afflicted with this dreadful condition of queerness, we can still assimilate flawlessly into society.
And there is nothing necessarily wrong with this. Queer people are capable of these things. There are trans people who fulfill the cultural aesthetic and social roles of their gender, there are tons of gay men and women who are authentically masculine and feminine respectively.
This has become a problem because it has made the acceptance of queer people based on our ability to effectively assimilate, instead of being based on the fact that we simply deserve to live our lives however we see fit and has come out the cost of certain queer people.
One consequence of this respectability politics approach to queer liberation, has been the denigration of flamboyant and effeminate gay and bisexual men by society at large and more masculine gay men.
Society is gradually becoming willing to tolerate the existence of queerness in men so long as it doesn't have to see it, allowing for a gradual increase in the effective assimilation of masculine gay men. Their queerness is invisible and thus can be effectively ignored.
However, feminine and flamboyant gay men aren't just queer invisibly through their private habits, they are visibly queer in their gender non-conformity. This makes them targets from homophobic straight people, as well as gay and bi men who still tacitly support gender conformity
Because, while being gay may be a horrible affliction that we try our best to apologetically assimilate into mass culture, those audacious gay men who are confident in their sexuality and gender non-conformity, threaten that enviable condition of assimilation.
So, straight passing gay men stand alongside their homophobic friends in denigrating their more overtly queer brethren.
Another manifestation of the negative effects of our discourse around choice and queer assimilation is biphobia. Note that I'm using bi here as an umbrella term for bi, pan, poly, and omnisexual.
Since we still pathologize homosexuality as some unfortunate condition that certain people must live with, but we try our best to tolerate so long as they're quiet about it, by what right do those audacious bi people seek their own liberation?
Afterall, for us, in some sense it is effectively a choice. We are willing to put up with gay people who have to try to assimilate despite their homosexuality, but what excuse do bi people have not to do the proper thing and enter into a proper straight relationship?
Well, none of course, therefore, bi people must pick a predefined side, select a cultural role to hoist upon themselves. It would be best if we just instead came out as either gay or straight.
This is partially seen in the patriarchal and biphobic phenomenon which sees all bi men as gay and all bi women as straight automatically.
One of the most prominent modern consequences of our pathology and assimilation based approach to queerness has been the endless denigration of nonbinary people and trans people who transition in pursuit of gender euphoria rather than in response to gender dysphoria.
Though trans people are still thoroughly marginalized, passing and traditionally attractive trans people who fit well into the platonic ideal of the gender roles they are meant to can get some level of acceptance.
Once again, this acceptance is based more on invisibility than actual acceptance (this is what I call tolerance) and the empathy people have when we hear about the very real struggles people deal with on the topic of gender dysphoria.
Nonbinary trans people, do not have this privilege. There is no predefined gender role for them to fit into. Ones who are visually androgynous cast doubt on our confident views of binary gender. This makes them unique, in the sense that their assimilation is all but impossible.
This is compounded by people who aren't trans because of gender dysphoria, but rather because they want gender euphoria.
I mean, the audacity of people, to define their own gender identity for no other reason than it is what is best for them. Won't they think of our sensibilities? What do we do with a person who can't be cast into a specific restrictive gender role?
The highest form of the assimilation and pathology approach to queerness is seen in the transmedicalist and binary transgender reaction to nonbinary and non-dysphoric trans people.
There are other manifestations of this approach to queer issues (the denigration of neo-pronouns, the hyper focus on our ability to be monogamous, etc) but I'm getting tired, and I think I've made the picture clear.
Ultimately, I think this can only be overcome by remembering that our movement is not about our ability to assimilate into a hierarchical culture as acceptable aliens. Our goal should be to liberate ourselves from that culture
to live freely, to define our own selves, as we see fit, for no other reason than the fact that we deserve to be free.
That's the pretentious end to the thread
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