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NEWS & LETTERS, MAY 2003
Woman as Reason
Queer Liberation or commodification?
by Amy Garrison Amy Garrison is young lesbian activist in Memphis, Tenn.
This column is adapted from her talk on "Sexuality and Revolution" at
a recent News & Letters meeting. --Ed. The Stonewall riot during the summer of 1969 might be
the seminal event in queer revolutionary history. After weeks of ruthless
persecution by police, mostly characterized by unprompted raids on New York
City's gay bars, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn rioted as the bar staff, drag
queens, and transgender clientele were arrested without cause on June 28. The violent riot was suppressed by the police in
the early morning hours of the 28th, but peaceful protests of the incident
continued well into the day. Gay men and their supporters gathered outside the
bar and held hands, kissed, and chanted. Within a month the Gay Liberation Front
arose from the struggle of the queers involved in the riot in an effort to
overturn existing, oppressive social policies and practices. The riot and the formation of this group established a
precedent in queer political history, and while it was undeniably an important
first step toward equality for queers in this society, the Stonewall incident
fell short of being truly revolutionary. For the first time, queers were
identifying themselves–if not explicitly–as a philosophical category
composed of oppressed individuals, as the Other, as a body of people with a
valid critique of their objective conditions. STALLED AT CULTURE AND IDENTITY But the queers who composed the new Gay Liberation Front
and the pro-queer groups since that era have been stymied in their struggle for
queer equality because of their emphasis on a partial rejection of the
capitalist machine of oppression. They have made the first dialectical
movement–which Marx calls first negation–in that they have established their
opposition to their specific grievances with capitalist society. But because most queer political groups have failed to
recognize the importance of transcending that first negation–of negating their
opposition and moving forth with their struggle for a new human society, where
all human relations are radically transformed – the queer movement stalled
sometime after Stonewall. The most political queer organizations are now
preoccupied with is progress without revolution, with making legislative
changes without changing the entire political framework of this society, with
improving the relationships between queers and heterosexuals without improving
the whole of human relationships. What is worse is the tendency of many queers to identify
the pro-queer movement as merely a cultural movement and not one with broad
social and political implications. The queer movement, in its general refusal to completely
oppose capitalist ideology, has itself been subject to commodification and
corruption. The tradition of queer "pride" is the best example of this
perversion. Various symbols of queer pride are adopted by capitalist producers
and aggressively marketed to the queer population. Queer beer, queer credit
cards, queer vacation packages, queer dating services, and queer mass media are
some of the worst examples of the queer identity being appropriated, packaged,
and produced by exploitative capitalists. Even the queer pride celebrations held every June in
U.S. and European cities are usually just that–celebrations, a time for queers
to flaunt their queerness with reckless abandon and abundant alcohol but without
a thought for the practical and theoretical development of the queer movement. REJECT ALL ALIENATIONS Queers seem to be faced with the dilemma of a stilted
political movement concerned with superficial, legislative improvements and
highly commercialized social movement which attempts to validate every
preference, indulgence, and whim of the queer person without regard for his or
her self-development and without regard to the objective, oppressive context of
the society-at-large. We queers cannot remain trapped between these two
alternatives if we have a serious commitment to improving our position in
society; nor can we ignore the fact that our problematic situation is a subset
of the problems of capitalism as a whole. We must accept the challenge of rejecting capitalism's alienated mode of relations between humans–a problem that has clearly been exacerbated by capitalism's method of production–and put forth our own way of relating to each other and to all of humanity. Only then will we be on our way to the respect, recognition, freedom and equality to which all of humanity is entitled. |
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