I wrote a post last year about a social media campaign that struck me as particularly distasteful, and—more importantly—particularly impractical. That campaign was called the FCK H8 campaign, and the video in question was pretty vulgar. I used the campaign as a jumping off point to talk about the gay rights movement in general, and offered some critical analysis of the movement’s focus.
Ivel Posada is not a fan of that analysis.
Ivel’s response presents some great points about the movement, and highlights some legitimate points of disagreement with my post.
In general, though, I think he drastically misses the mark, both in interpreting my original post and in some of the strategic points he makes in his.
First, I think Ivel grossly misinterprets my tone. Aside from misquoting me (I never described gay rights demonstrations as “scary” or implied that they were violent), and truncating quotes (more on this later), Ivel just generally misreads my motives and misapprehends my tone. He seems to be under the impression that I am offering up a flippant and condescending critique of the movement, and that I paint, “the gay rights movement to be an unsophisticated conglomeration of angry drag queens who seem bereft of the slightest notion of how to operate a politically effective campaign.”
I would like to assure Ivel that this was not my intention. I was not, furthermore, attempting to insult the intelligence of gay rights activists. I’m sure gay rights activists have considered the emphases that I promoted in my article, and have rejected them for other emphases. I don’t think they’re stupid for doing that, but I don’t think the position I espouse should be rejected out of hand because it is uncomfortable to entertain the thought that such an important movement might have its priorities mixed up.
If my analysis of the movement seemed not to include every aspect of the movement, that’s because it didn’t. At the time, I was writing a column characterized by short, punchy observations and opinions. People write books about the gay rights movement. I was merely trying to start a conversation.
But Ivel’s misinterpretation goes further than tone. This is partially my fault.
Ivel seems to think that my thesis is that the gay rights movement is fundamentally hateful, and that the FCK H8 campaign is a representation of that. My actual thesis, rather, is that the gay rights movement is preoccupied with the ideas of pride and awareness, and the FCK H8 campaign is a manifestation of that (which also just happens to be hateful). It’s a subtle distinction, and one I didn’t make well in my original post.
So when Ivel writes,
“How is it then that Paul manages to jump from the FCK H8 campaign to his overarching claim that the Gay Rights Movement as a whole exhibits the ‘vulgar, rude, borderline offensive, and purposefully combative’ characteristics he associates with FCKH8?”
he is asking a moot question. I’m not claiming that the gay rights movement is any of those things.
I certainly think that the gay rights movement should avoid being hateful, and that is one of the reasons I didn’t like the FCK H8 video in question, but I don’t see hatefulness as a fundamental characteristic of the movement. The larger flaw in the movement that I wanted to bring out was the preoccupation with pride.
Much of Ivel’s post is dedicated to explicating this very focus, and he presents an impassioned argument for the importance of pride-centric events. His discussion on identity politics is informative, and the issue of balance that he concludes with is essential.
“The Gay Rights Movement has to continuously balance the degree to which it stresses similarity to and difference from the heterosexual majority. A misbalance threatens to either disintegrate the collective action of our constituency or isolate members outside of it. If the present balance is off, I believe it is off in overemphasizing similarities to heterosexual persons.”
This gets to the heart of what I think our real disagreement is about. Ivel fears the disintegration of collective action, and doesn’t worry much about isolating people outside of the gay community. I would argue that the risk that the gay community will see its collective action disintegrate is minimal. The threat that they will isolate those outside of the gay community (or even just that they are not doing enough to engage people outside of the gay community) is very real and of practical political importance. This is a key strategic question for the gay rights movement. I think that swaying public opinion in favor of positive action on real policy goals should be the primary concern of the movement. Pride and intra-group solidarity should be secondary. When you’re petitioning for inclusion, a necessarily exclusive conception like pride should not be the focus.
There is a long discussion on why this is important in the comments to my original post. I won’t rehash it here, but suffice it to say that civil rights movements are typically most successful when they make their primary goal swaying public opinion to their side. MLK Jr. mobilized young blacks, to be sure, but his message and actions were targeted at the white Northern majority—that is, the people that mattered politically.
I would like to address the idea of “sameness” that crops up in Ivel’s analysis, and define how I understand “sameness.” It’s not the way Ivel portrayed my conception of sameness.
“’The gay community” continues Paul, ‘needs to mount a serious political movement to further gay rights. This fight, this movement, is about showing that you’re the same.’”
This quote sounds bad. You want gay people to pretend they’re the same as straight people, Paul? How could you be so insensitive?
Here’s the full quote:
“This fight, this movement, is about showing that you’re the same. It’s about showing that you’re people, not caricatures. It’s about showing that you can’t have your privacy grossly invaded and the value of your life put into doubt. It’s about showing that you deserve to be respected.”
I don’t think the gay rights movement should emphasize sameness as much as it should emphasize shared humanity. We’re all the same in that we’re all people. There are differences, sure: race, height, religion, favorite baseball team, sexuality. But we’re all people. That’s the point to drive home.
This issue of sameness versus humanity is especially pertinent to what I think is the best point that Ivel makes. When discussing the need for solidarity within the LGBT community, Ivel points out that if sameness is emphasized, the movement risks excluding and/or contributing to the alienation of transsexuals. This, unlike the fear that the gay rights movement will lose collective action or have difficulty mobilizing its members, is a consideration which clearly has immediate practical implications.
Now, I don’t know (or at least I don’t think I know) any transsexuals, so I can’t say for sure, but I would guess that they don’t walk around with boas all the time. That is to say, to quote my original piece, many of them—like their gay compatriots—are “good business owners, good employees, good citizens.” There is no reason why the humanity of transsexuals cannot be emphasized right alongside the humanity of homosexuals.
The dream that we can all move forward together is a great one. But that dream should not prohibit us from critically analyzing whether or not we are using the best tactics to achieve it.
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* In related news, Kerry Eleveld has a great piece for the Atlantic on the gay rights movement and other progressive causes that have struggled to achieve gains under the Obama administration.
“We’re being as polite as can be — even to the president,” [environmentalist Bill] McKibben wrote in an essay shortly after being freed from a two-day jail stint. “Instead of saying, ‘We won’t vote for you if you do the wrong thing,’ we’re saying, ‘Think how charged-up your supporters will be if you do the right thing.’ That’s a good political argument, I think — one look at the 2010 elections demonstrates the problem of a demoralized base.”
