I think that many radical queer viewpoints and actions are misinterpreted on campus because people don’t understand the political ideas behind them, so I’m taking the decidedly moderate step of giving people some background for those ideas. I’m not the voice of any community—radical, moderate, queer, or otherwise.
Radical queer politics starts with the idea that the very definition of normalcy excludes queers from being normal, and that leads to discrimination and violence. The radical queer answer to this is not to expand the definition of normalcy to include some LGBTQQ… identities and behaviors, but to challenge the legitimacy of normalcy itself.
An example of the framework: There’s a guy who trips me every day because my hair is blonde. I want him to stop. That can happen a) if he stops thinking that tripping blondes is okay or b) if I dye my hair brown. Either way, I won’t be tripped in the future. In (B) I’m not normal, so I take action to become normal. I give strength to the ideas that were getting me tripped by playing along with them. In (A) I challenge the structure of normalcy. I refuse to play by rules that won’t let me win. (B) is the easier solution because it doesn’t challenge this guy’s beliefs about blondes or tripping. In (A) he needs to restructure those beliefs and also the foundations for those beliefs, like the idea that hair color is a relevant category. (A) is what the radical queers want.
To bring it back to LGBTQQ… issues: if someone says that gay men are bad because they are feminine and the response is “that football player is gay and he’s totally butch,” the idea that men shouldn’t be feminine has not been challenged at all. Rather than refute the terms in which the question was asked, (by saying “Some gay men are feminine. So what?”) this response implicitly agrees with the foundation of the original homophobic comment.
The ideas that vilify queer identities are some of the most deeply rooted in our society. The idea that lesbians are bad has roots in patriarchy. The idea that a homosexual couple shouldn’t adopt a child has roots in beliefs about what a family should look like. The fact that someone can’t get health insurance through hir partner’s job has roots in political and economic ideas about the distribution of resources. These ideas are not as explicit in every day life as a homophobic comment, so they are harder to challenge.
Let’s take the idea of “civil discussion.” The norms for civil discussion allow only certain topics and vocabulary and thereby limit the ideas that can be expressed. Abnormal subjects like queer identities and experiences can only be discussed “civilly” when they are expressed in terms of normalcy. So when radical queers refuse to “politely explain” something, they are not just being impatient. They are refusing to twist their existences into something that can be understood in the language of normalcy. They’re refusing to dye their hair.
I hope that people consider these ideas before they write off radical queer politics. That said, I do not think there have been many social movements that have used only one set of tactics, or only one set of principles to legitimize their actions. When we come together on campus, let’s think about the most effective action we can take to see local results, and also to delegitimize the ideological foundations of the injustices we’re fighting. Let’s focus on strategy rather than political absolutes and name-calling.
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