This mostly regards my last post, but these are important reading materials in general:
Zami: A New Spelling of my Name by Audre Lorde
A History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/some-animals-are-more-equal-than-others/?ref=opinion
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/28/opinion/la-oe-goldberg-gays-20101228
(Or google: “As Gay Becomes Bourgeois” by Jonah Goldberg… he tears it up!)
Sunday, April 10, 2011
For further (but short and sweet) discussion:
For those of you not following on FB/Twitter, I was involved with the Northeast LGBT conference discussing the dynamic between racial identity and sexual identity with regards to experience and politics. (What else is new?)
There were A LOT of areas that I could have covered in this field. (See: Queer Intersectionality and the Failure of Recent Lesbian and Gay ...
… Intersectionality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) but I was more interested in analyzing the power structures at work with the unique experiences of the people who attended the caucus. Specifically because i could teach theory till I'm blue in the face, but it doesn't mean anything if a person can't see these structures and forces at work in their everyday lives and if that person can't navigate life accordingly. What I really want to address at this point is some specific broader examples of the micro-political struggles that occur in the LGBTQ community in the United States of America today along racial lines.
As essential as it is to keep these power structures in mind when addressing daily personal struggles surrounding identity (especially interlocking oppressions) my interest lies in the "movement" surrounding the equality and overall acceptance of homosexuals into the traditionally heterocentric world at large. The question I am inclined to start off with is: What issues are at the forefront of this movement?
Marriage (a bourgeois staple), military service (linked to notions of patriotism and Americanism perhaps) and equal protection under the law are among the centric concerns. Obviously, this Angry Homosexist is an unmitigated champion for these causes as well. It is only just that queerfolk have the ability to exercise the same agency as straightvolk (lolz) and be able to hold the government responsible for ensuring basic security against discrimination.
These issues however get a disproportionate degree of attention in the national circus that is the LGBT identity. (I mean does Lady Gaga about the effects of racist and anti-transgender atitudes within the gay community?) Why is that?
Among a great complex of factors, the disproportionate attention and success rate of campaigns for the interests of wealthy, white men within the LGBT movement(s) really comes down to resources and logos.
The matter of resources is of foremost interest to me. As a Black male in the queer community, I am plagued by the issues of anti-homosexual violence, physical, emotional and epistemic, that occurs on multiple levels of the Black community in the United States. Be it in hip-hop culture, predominantly African American schools, gangs (loosely defined) culture or in Black churches, I am inclined to use the resources that I have to combat these social issues at work in my experience as a queer person. But as Black men, (earning 81-91% of our white counterparts and being consistently represented by heterosexual and token Black politicians who can only act in the interest of the majority anyway), we have little agency with regards to giving valence to our causes.
Further, how much more ability do I have as a Black cis-gendered queer male than a woman of color (earning 70% of every dollar that her male counterpart earns and CONSISTENTLY underrepresented even in terms of tokens) to give valence to my causes? How much more than my transgendered counterparts of any race? I do recognize the privileges that work for me in this regard.
However it is those who have always had the resources as a result of colonialism, cultural hegemony, patriarchy and religious inculcation that are able to champion the causes that affect them, even in the name of the LGBTQ community at large. This is inextricably linked to the issue of logos.
Logos refers to “logical speech,” and is something I touch on a lot when discussing interspecies ethics. Speaking the language of the oppressor; addressing the culture with the power to end the discrimination and systemic obstacles that are working against your community; sanitizing/bleaching your identity to appear less monstrous (read: Other) to the hegemony; looking like those in power (prop 8 posters anyone?); these symptoms (a.k.a. assimilationist politics) reflect the democratic notion of logos and how it affects political action. This of course works. It worked for the suffragists and worked for the Black Civil rights movement. But it comes at a cost (see: Bayard Rustin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Someone gets kicked to the back of the bus. Silenced.
Being a queer person of color, a gay polyamorist, transgendered, etc. places a person at the center of a battlefield fighting multiple hegemonic forces that can all seem to blur into one. The micro-political squabbles of the LGBT community reflect the struggle for us to gain the same access that other LGBTs have to realizing their goal for our community. Just food for thought.
There were A LOT of areas that I could have covered in this field. (See: Queer Intersectionality and the Failure of Recent Lesbian and Gay ...
… Intersectionality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) but I was more interested in analyzing the power structures at work with the unique experiences of the people who attended the caucus. Specifically because i could teach theory till I'm blue in the face, but it doesn't mean anything if a person can't see these structures and forces at work in their everyday lives and if that person can't navigate life accordingly. What I really want to address at this point is some specific broader examples of the micro-political struggles that occur in the LGBTQ community in the United States of America today along racial lines.
As essential as it is to keep these power structures in mind when addressing daily personal struggles surrounding identity (especially interlocking oppressions) my interest lies in the "movement" surrounding the equality and overall acceptance of homosexuals into the traditionally heterocentric world at large. The question I am inclined to start off with is: What issues are at the forefront of this movement?
Marriage (a bourgeois staple), military service (linked to notions of patriotism and Americanism perhaps) and equal protection under the law are among the centric concerns. Obviously, this Angry Homosexist is an unmitigated champion for these causes as well. It is only just that queerfolk have the ability to exercise the same agency as straightvolk (lolz) and be able to hold the government responsible for ensuring basic security against discrimination.
These issues however get a disproportionate degree of attention in the national circus that is the LGBT identity. (I mean does Lady Gaga about the effects of racist and anti-transgender atitudes within the gay community?) Why is that?
Among a great complex of factors, the disproportionate attention and success rate of campaigns for the interests of wealthy, white men within the LGBT movement(s) really comes down to resources and logos.
The matter of resources is of foremost interest to me. As a Black male in the queer community, I am plagued by the issues of anti-homosexual violence, physical, emotional and epistemic, that occurs on multiple levels of the Black community in the United States. Be it in hip-hop culture, predominantly African American schools, gangs (loosely defined) culture or in Black churches, I am inclined to use the resources that I have to combat these social issues at work in my experience as a queer person. But as Black men, (earning 81-91% of our white counterparts and being consistently represented by heterosexual and token Black politicians who can only act in the interest of the majority anyway), we have little agency with regards to giving valence to our causes.
Further, how much more ability do I have as a Black cis-gendered queer male than a woman of color (earning 70% of every dollar that her male counterpart earns and CONSISTENTLY underrepresented even in terms of tokens) to give valence to my causes? How much more than my transgendered counterparts of any race? I do recognize the privileges that work for me in this regard.
However it is those who have always had the resources as a result of colonialism, cultural hegemony, patriarchy and religious inculcation that are able to champion the causes that affect them, even in the name of the LGBTQ community at large. This is inextricably linked to the issue of logos.
Logos refers to “logical speech,” and is something I touch on a lot when discussing interspecies ethics. Speaking the language of the oppressor; addressing the culture with the power to end the discrimination and systemic obstacles that are working against your community; sanitizing/bleaching your identity to appear less monstrous (read: Other) to the hegemony; looking like those in power (prop 8 posters anyone?); these symptoms (a.k.a. assimilationist politics) reflect the democratic notion of logos and how it affects political action. This of course works. It worked for the suffragists and worked for the Black Civil rights movement. But it comes at a cost (see: Bayard Rustin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Someone gets kicked to the back of the bus. Silenced.
Being a queer person of color, a gay polyamorist, transgendered, etc. places a person at the center of a battlefield fighting multiple hegemonic forces that can all seem to blur into one. The micro-political squabbles of the LGBT community reflect the struggle for us to gain the same access that other LGBTs have to realizing their goal for our community. Just food for thought.
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