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Just about everyone agrees: gays can win more support for civil equality by partering with ally-communities. This is a nice-sounding idea, particularly in the San Francisco bubble. But what does it mean -- and is there a point at which collaborating stops being beneficial?
The reason we bring this up is because there was a CHARMING little skirmish on the local Protest8sf Google Group this week. The group was doing some coordination for last weekend's pro-life protests when one member expressed some skepticism: the connection between gays and abortion is a little murky, rhetorically speaking, he argued. (We're paraphrasing.) Isn't this just confusing our message? Doesn't it look totally baffling to have a protest sign that veers fro abortions to gay marriage to immigrant rights?
Lively admonishments ensued. The people behind the pro-life protests are the same people behind prop 8 (we're paraphrasing again); so it doesn't matter if we're talking about abortion or gay marriage, we just have to demonstrate against them, no matter what they're doing.
The problem here is that everyone's arguing over two different points. Point one is, "should the cause of gay equality take advantage of its inherent overlap with many other causes and communities, and if so, which ones?" And point two is, "when communicating with the public, should we limit ourselves to one message at a time?" (There's a third point raised here that's too fraught for us even to address right now, despite our strong feelings on the subject: "can protesting be counterproductive?")
The answer to point two is easy: yes. Don't hurt the public's brains with a hodgepodge of conditions and connections. By all means, try different tactics; but don't try them all at once or you'll never be able to figure out which one is successful.
But point one is more elusive. Yes, obviously activists should share resources. But with whom, and how? Obviously gays need to work on cooperating with religious folks, old folks, Republicans, and minorities. Those are the people who were misinformed, whose partnership must be won. But what about causes like abortion, or labor, or affirmative action, or gun control, or the Campus Socialists -- is there a real benefit to joining those similarly liberal causes? Do these causes have anything to contribute to each other, aside from sharing mailing lists? Do they even have mailing lists?
By defending Planned Parenthood, are we getting closer to gay marriage? If we donate to Greenpeace, will they help us fight discrimination? By protesting on behalf of Palestinians, are we working to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell? Or should we be protesting on behalf of Israel? Uh oh, murky murky murky.
What do you think?
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Hmmmm.... Is it inconsistent to be against abortion and also against gay folks forming families and adopting?
Is that a wedge that can be used against the family values wonks out there? Areas like this might be a place where communication and cooperation between leftists with different issues might be valuable.
What I think is that the gay movement can't be gay and nothing else. Because gay people are more than gay and they have multifarious concerns. It does not help politically for any movement to isolate itself.
It also can't let itself be soley defined by the agenda of well-off urban white men...for lack of a better way of putting it.
More abstract-ly, I think the idea of 'gay community' is false. There's people of differing sexual orientations everywhere in every social group and situation. Unity of culture is not truthful. If we look at like that instead of looking at sexual orientation like it was a race or tribe perhaps our strategy could be more effective.
I agree As a straight white man who has strong feelings about these issues, what people (I'm paraphrasing) fail to recognize is that "gay" (or queer) can be better and more-inclusively promulgated as a political perspective.
The problem is that this would undermine the long, insular and tightly-held identity of The Gay Community, which could probably not happen without epic drama and infighting. Go figure.
Point two is dead-on, but the inverted logic in point one is what's frustrating with "these people" (I'm paraphrasing):
"should the cause of gay equality take advantage of its inherent overlap with many other causes and communities, and if so, which ones?"
This is totally self-serving elevation of the cause over the people. It's not the cause that overlaps, it's the community. This is normal.
You support both gay and abortion rights? Great, but yes it does dilute the message if your instinct is to scribble (and I do mean "scribble") a sign that includes both. This is dumb. Who cares what else you're into at an abortion rights protest? Nobody even needs to know that you are specifically a gay rights protestor who is acting on behalf of abortion rights. "No on 8 supports abortion rights" is too much. Have a little restraint and act for the cause, not yourself and your petty (and possibly failure-prone) fiefdom.
Do not put the cart before the horse. Act on the issue, not on predictions about likely outcomes and follow-on effects. "Free Mumia" serial-activism just colors you unserious. Focus on the cause and focus the cause, then become a member of more than one. If the No8 people want to have a contingent at a rally, great, but dignity demands they make it about the rally, not the one cause you think should apply to the entire political landscape ("See, gay marriage is about freedom, so anything freedom-oriented needs to have the gay marriage voice. A big No8 sign will be perfect!"). You don't see me down there with a "Missionite hipsters who secretly live in Noe Valley support abortion rights" sign, because the first part is absolutely irrelevant and only serves my ego (such as it is) in including it.
I really dislike activists whose level of sophistication never transcended the dorm room. Support abortion rights at an abortion rights rally. Support gay marriage at a gay marriage rally. "There's a time and place for everything" cannot, no matter how emphatically you argue, be paraphrased as "Everything is for that time and place."
This based on the supposition that protests are actually effective. I don't think we have any proof that this method is effective, yet alone that it is the most effective method.
Absolutely. I think their efforts would be much better directed at political lobbying, but that environment is much less receptive to a t-shirt saying, "fAgS pAy Ur SaLaRy!!!!!!!", so enthusiasm might wane. It's a tough problem.
But, y'know, if they're gonna protest, might as well make it as effective as possible, even if the result is not much.
Point one & two:
The "thing" that wishes to limit queers right to marry (if such a right exists...but that is a fish from a different pond), and the wishes to limit reproductive freedom is what bell hooks would call the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. In all that we queers do, we ought to be fighting this hegemony. Many folks fail to see the interconnectedness of the issues, but all most all of the ills of society can be traced back to that evil, greedy, system which values whiteness, straightness, and maleness. Being any of those things is not evil. The system that favors them is. We as queers ought to be doing everything to shatter these systems and institutions. In order to address a part of the system, we must take down the whole system. And that starts from within. We cannot authentically seek equality until we have adopted an ethic of equality.
But once we have shown that our structures do not give privilege to certain individuals simply because of who they are, we must do everything we can do combat the evil of our time, and that means showing up at pro-choice events and being fully present to that need. We ought not show up to pro-choice events with signs that say "Stop the H8!" That is not being an ally, that's being and opportunist and is boarding on abusive.
It means showing up in Oakland to say that we white folk do not accept that a white cop was so quick to draw a gun and shoot an unarmed person of color.
It means showing up in Palo Alto when the police chief explicit boasts about racial profiling.
It means saying something to the person at work who always complains about Mexicans learning to speak English.
It means showing up and saying something. It means being ever vigilant that we are not adding to the pile of shit that already exists. It means working day and night to be allies.
But this doesn't answer the question "with which causes do we choose to collaborate?" The link between Walk for Life and Prop 8 is relatively clear -- among our enemies, there are many actual, specific organizations that are collaborating on those efforts. But the link between Prop 8 and the BART shooting is murkier: it's not like there's an organization called "Californians For Oppression" that supports Prop 8 and police racism. They may be sort of similar, oppression-wise; but there's no actual system or organization that connects the two things.
Also, it is very difficult to take seriously anything that follows the phrase "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy." Believe in a WSCP if you want, but saying it out loud generally elicits a collective eye-rolling generally reserved for tin-foil hats. It pretty much ensures that only giddy college students will keep reading.
I think that question has been answered a few times on SFIST. You may not like the language, but the idea of white supremacy is descriptive and truthful. On a more basic level, and this has been said here a couple times, there is an obvious connection between the oppression of gay people and the issue of police brutality in general. I personally think joining in an effort for police accountability actually makes more sense and is easier to logically connect to gay rights than even abortion is. Go figure.
Even beyond that, here we have Oakland, a black working class community, my community, profoundly affected by this brutal event. I'm not sure there even needs to be a 'logical' connection to gay rights. Nothing is going to stop me from demanding police accountabilty. I'll use every tool I have, including ones that were used or built to fight prop 8. I don't see what the problem is with that.
I don't think 'we' decide collectively what issues 'we' are going to work on. I think individuals take action and others chose to join them or they don't. Different groups can go in different directions and still support gay liberation. Gay activism must spread out to other issues to be successful. That's Harvey Milk 101.
I too am not interested in the socialist newspaper or connecting Oscar Grant to Gaza, but I'm free not to give those fools any of my energy.
Allow me to go out on the unpopular branch of the day to help you make your point. I am all for male and female gay rights. Guys want to get with guys, no big deal. Gals want to get with gals, again no big deal. Any odd numbered mix of the two sexes trying to figure out who gets the hand is fine by me.
My problem with the LGBTG community is the fine line between pre-op and post-op tranny's. It's one thing to identify as a woman, get some boobies and use a little duct tape to tuck the twigs and berries for that desired effect. It is another issue entirely to go under the knife to have one's cock removed or copypasted on to the body.
If you consider all issues like inviting people who intentionally maim themselves in the name of fixing their sexual identity then I think you can get past the whole abortion rights or palling around with Republicans conundrum.
Sex change operations are the most extreme form of body modification possible. An inverted penis makes Lizard Man look like just another guy with a tattoo.
The gay community did not put together a unified message or a single compelling argument for their cause. Instead, there was just a lot of self-absorbed whining.
Maybe instead of blaming "the system" you should get a leader who is eloquent and politically capable to go around making impassioned speeches. It worked before. Just a thought.
Oh, and the under-30 gays -- you have no right to complain, since you didn't care about this issue enough to do anything (no, just voting doesn't count. Sorry.)
I think Robin's correct; that sentiment will be verrrrry unpopular with some readers. Maybe we can all agree that it's simply impossible to understand the experience of gender reassignment if it's something you haven't been through yourself.
The comment does help to make my point, though: some topics are so divisive and complex that it can be a distraction to try to tackle them. Maybe some issues -- like nondiscrimination for trans people -- need to be addressed in isolation so that their complexity doesn't completely derail other causes. In essence, quarantine the biggest obstacles so you have time to rally more troops; like doctors would do with an epidemic, or nerds with a bossfight in an RPG.
But then again, it really does seem unfair to trans people, leaving them out to dry on their own like that.
Well, it's an easy problem to solve once you recognize that there is in fact no "fine line." What is this difference between transsexuals and GLQ's that needs dealing with separately? It's all about breaking down the heterosexist structure of the law, not in addressing each queer subculture separately.
In point of illustration, repealing miscengenation laws did not require each race to be identified.
Goddammit, that wasn't supposed to be a reply! The comments on here are totally fucked.