25 July 2000
I'm going to cheat today, and post an email I wrote to my friend Richard awhile ago in response to an article in the Washington Post. Here's the article, if you're interested, but most my comments stand on their own.
"I have to say that I agree with your bitterness, only I would amend "queer establishment" to "gay and lesbian establishment"-- I doubt that that the assimilationists I get so frustrated with would ever refer to themselves as queer.
My take on 'the revolution' is this: gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in the liberal mindset (that is, those who believe the present system is ultimately perfectable) are the ones who are getting their way (marriage, military, adoption, McMillenium March, etc.) To generalize dramatically, what they want is what straights already have- a piece of the banal American pie. Since these people are in the majority, it's no wonder the gay world, as the article says, is getting boring.
The problem is, the people included in the above paragraph are either remarkably priviliged, remarkably naive, or both. Their movement just doesn't include transgender individuals, polyamorous people, people into S/M, queers, or really even GLB people who aren't white or middle class. I'm really concerned that the victories celebrated by the mainstream GLB movement have made people complacent, ignoring the state of affairs for people whose lives are on the next lower tier of acceptability to mainstream America. Sure, it's fine if the white corporate tennis-and-sweater-vest homo couple who live down the block want to register their partnership, but registered partnership is probably a lesser concern for a working-class latina lesbian who has to battle race and class issues as well as perhaps homophobia. I'd also wager a guess that serving in the military is not high on the list of priorities for a transgender person whose gender identity has been made a topic of public debate, or for a black gay man wrongfully apprehended by the police because he was "driving while black".
I think this divide between the HRCized GLB movement and, well, all the other queers has stemmed from two sources: a) an unwillingness to see homophobia as embedded in and intertwined with other systems of oppression and b) a focus on assimilation rather than real systematic change.
Personally, I disagree with the liberal ultimate-perfectability stance. Our social and legal systems are fundamentally flawed, and revisions can only make minimal improvements. Legitimizing gay, lesbian, and bisexual identities serves to increase the number of 'boxes' we can choose from- but we nonetheless must fit ourselves into a box. What kind of freedom is that? 'The movement' needs to fight for our right to love, live with, have sex (of any variety) with, and have children with whomever we wish, as well as our right to respect, dignity, and legal equality regardless of who we love, how we express our gender, what color we are, how we are abled or what religion we practice. In other words, we need a pretty major overhaul, one that isn't accomplished by, oh, letting gays into the military.
Well. I certainly managed to spit out quite the little diatribe. See what happens when you ask me for my thoughts?"