Tag Archives: queer ethics

Seeing Pink: Discrete Categories and Queer Estrangement

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Mother would be proud.

Mother would be proud.

Later today, Barack Hussein Obama will ratify his already historic accomplishment when he once again swears the oath of office as President of the United States, and, predictably, one will again hear his historic accomplishment characterized in a way that raises troubling questions about the social and cultural construction of racial identities: “first African American (read black) president reelected” is a story much easier to tell than “first commonly acknowledged multi-racial president reelected.” The president’s own statements, such as the references to his white grandmother in A More Perfect Union, his memorable 2008 speech on race, suggest the president himself wishes the complexities were more accessible. No doubt, the president understands, better than most, how systems of racial oppression depend on the vigilant maintenance of the false binary between white people and people of color, enforcing by law and custom the mistaken notion that racial differences define discrete categories, intentionally obscuring the liberating nature, specifically, of the infinitely diverse and continuous categories of racial expression, and, generally, of the multidimensionality of racial identity. A heavily reductive, and plainly racist culture seems inclined to erase Obama’s maternal ancestors, just as the slave laws of the southern states once disregarded the white heritage of the multi-racial child, sired by a white slave-owner and born into bondage. The message, straining though it does against the facts, is clear: one must be either black or white, and to be white is to be somehow pure, so that any amount of blackness negates all whiteness. Conceptually, the color line remains inviolate.

In recent decades, intersectionality theory, exploring as it does how systems of oppression operate simultaneously and interdependently across biological, social, and economic axes of sex-gender, race, class, ability, and sexual orientation, has illuminated the significance of our collective short-handing of the president’s racial complexity, by revealing the centrality of the fallacy of the discrete category to many recognized matrices of domination.

Queer estrangement circa 1992

Queer estrangement circa 1992

The insight is especially poignant for queerkind, and highlights with sadness our estrangement from one another: queer from gay, gay from lesbian, cisgender from transgender. By definition, we all struggle within the intersected tensions experienced along at least two of the principal axes on which oppression operates: sex-gender and sexual orientation. The practice of non-conformative sexual orientations entails non-conforming sex-gender behaviors, while transitional and intersex sex-genders occasion infinitude of potential non-conformative sexual orientations.

Certainly, much queer estrangement arises from justified anger, and when, as a person of white cis-male privilege, I witness a call-out, or see resentments rooted in sex-gender or racial injustices otherwise manifest, or find myself growing indignant, I try to remember what Obama said about such anger in that 2008 speech:

That anger [as had been expressed by Reverend Jeremiah Wright] is not always productive. Indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving our real problems…But the anger is real; it is powerful, and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.  

Importantly, just as the black women who originated intersectionality theory advanced a legitimate critique of twentieth century feminism as then articulated by white women, so intersectionality theory yet constitutes a legitimate critique of a gay movement politics that ignores sex-gender.

The fallacy of the discrete category perhaps finds its greatest range of influence and its most profound effects along the axis of sex-gender, by virtue of its universal and early application. Indeed, the question of whether one is girl or boy, a question replete with binary assumptions and tautological arrogance, greets each and every one upon birth, and the answer colors, in pink and blue pastels, a lifetime of gender expectations to come. Among the privileges attending whatever visible genitals one might then present, society has not recognized the privilege to alter, defy, disregard or escape those genitals, except to surgically enforce the fallacy of the discrete category, in this case the reductive boy-girl binary, as in the mutilation of intersex infants or the sterilization of transgender adults. Although with considerably less tragic results, this fallacy dominates even the most sex-gender-privileged among us, blinding us to the inauthenticity of the binary regime and hardening us against our more empathic impulses, impulses that might mitigate the estrangement between those who differ only in how they differ.

These complexities, unfortunately, like the complexity of the president’s racial identity, challenge our comprehension, remaining inaccessible beyond a shroud of commonplace misperception. To see through the veil is to perhaps glimpse the turning of Yeat’s falcon in the widening gyre: first-wave feminism discounting the intersection of race and sex-gender, then, more recently, the gay movement discounting the intersection of sexual orientation and sex-gender, and now, this latest controversy of estrangement between second-wave feminism and twenty-first century transgender politics, in which feminism twists itself into a defense of essentialism, as if to discount the intersection of sex-gender with itself, or stated another way, as if to discount the intersection of the complex of traits we commonly consider to determine a person’s “sex” and the complex of traits we commonly consider to determine a person’s “gender.”  Perhaps no other intersectionality better reveals the error of essentialism and the fallacy of the discrete category, the very tools historically chosen to subjugate all females.

In her recent book, Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class, and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics, Urvashi Vaid writes with insight and compassion about the very complexities which now seem to estrange queerkind, and the practical realities, for the queer movement, of what theorists call intersectionality. Vaid, herself no stranger to the complexities of intersectionality, either in her personal life as a queer woman of color born to the immigrant working class, or as a leading light of queer liberation, marshaling resources and organizing people in empowering ways for more than three decades, convincingly argues that “…justice means intersectional practice…” and that to truly succeed, the queer movement must expand beyond the narrow pursuit of equal legal inclusion in the established norms to instead transform the norms themselves. Having taken her title from a quote by Toni Cade Bambara, Vaid writes in the introduction:

For me, an irresistible revolution is one in which the LGBT movement deploys the power it has gained to challenge and change traditions of ignorance, violence, poverty, and authoritarian control that continue to dominate the world. This moment calls for a renewed progressive and feminist politics defined not by narrowing but by expansion. It calls on us to answer the question posed by the Indian gay advocate and lawyer, Arvind Narrain: “Is the imagination of queer politics merely about access to rights for queer citizens or also about questioning structures which limit the very potential of human freedom?”

Since Karl Marx first described the materialist approach to understanding history, movements for social, legal, and economic change have paired these words: revolution and transformation. Vaid uses the words seemingly interchangeably, as have I, even in these pages. But the disambiguation of the two words might guide the queer movement well as it navigates “this moment,” for while any transformation can be revolutionary in some sense, not all revolutions are transformational in any sense. Writer and activist Starhawk, in what may be her most powerful book, Dreaming the Dark, uses these words seemingly interchangeably as well, but she also cautions against the revolution that merely replaces one complex of external power structures with another, the revolution that merely comes full circle, the revolution that alters the order of power structures without transforming the structures themselves. Transformation, after all, is about changing the form (e.g. the institution of marriage itself), not the content, (e.g. whom law and custom permit to marry) and revolution, too often, while changing the faces of those exercising power-over, leave the old shapes of external power structures intact. The story of the non-transformational revolution, therefore, is, for Starhawk, a story of estrangement as much as the story of apocalypse, the story of good against evil, or the story of the fall, all instruments of culture employed to the singular purpose of domination.

I agree with Vaid that to succeed in any meaningful way, our politics must stretch to the transformational, not merely the revolutionary. To do so, we must begin, individually and collectively, to open our minds to the complexities of our inner selves and our public identities. We must recognize that a queer movement that fails to address issues of race, class, ability, and sex-gender will fail to transform, regardless what revolutions it might accomplish. We must act according to principles of justice that transcend the profuse and continuous and fluid categories of identity we wrongly perceive as few and discrete and fixed. We must unite in a coalition dedicated to racial justice and economic justice and sex-gender justice no less than queer justice because “…justice means intersectional practice…”

All of these concerns are connected already, in the fallacy of the discrete category, whether we connect as allies to unseat it or do not. All of these causes have essentially always been one, an age-old lurching away from domination, whether we work as one well-networked coalition for global justice or do not. Failing to recognize these connections in our puzzle of intersectionality is more than a mere conceptual mistake, however, because movements for social and legal and economic change are not mere abstractions. Exclusion of people of color, or transgender people, or lesbians, or differently-abled individuals, or any of our queerkind from circles of queer power, and exclusion of their concerns from the movement’s agenda also constitutes a tactical mistake because the movement depends on popular support from an ever more demographically diverse population (both in the sense that once predominantly white nations like the US are ever more demographically diverse over time and in the sense that as the movement expands globally, it encompasses ever more demographically diverse populations around the world) for success. These same exclusions constitute a strategic mistake because they force a narrowing of the movement’s sense of collective purpose, deprive it of the innovation and evolution that arises from collective thinking and collective action in diverse groups, and imperil its long-term sustainability. Moreover, and perhaps most troubling to me personally, these exclusions constitute an ethical mistake because they betray queer moral values of authenticity, empathy, and mutual care. Only by reclaiming these values do I believe we can overcome our estrangement from one another. Only by reclaiming these values do I believe we can forge a politics of transformation.

Estrangement for all.

Estrangement for all.

Throughout his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama sometimes expressed his ambition to be a transformational president, and he alienated many progressives when he elevated Ronald Reagan as his example. Perhaps, even after eight years, history will not credit Obama with changing the shape of anything, but if even a handful of people recognize in the president’s racial complexities, and our collective short-handing thereof, the falsehood of the discrete categories under which they struggle, then I must believe that a transformation is indeed underway.

Send in the Marines

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A few years ago, I was growing medical marijuana on a nine-acre farm in Northern California as part of a small patient collective. Every fall, our collective invited everyone we knew who might be available to help us harvest, trim, cure, and jar our medicine for the year. It’s a tedious process, requiring great care if one intends, as we did, for the conserved medicine to retain its full therapeutic powers until the next harvest. Once cutting has begun, the success of the project depends on completing the work in a timely manner, so extra hands were always welcome.

As everyone sat around the large worktable, scissors snipping furiously, meticulously trimming away any leaf matter to leave only perfect nuggets of potent flower-buds ready for their second curing, we talked about everything – music, farming, philosophy, cooking – and as these crews were usually diverse in many respects, the topics of choice often steered to the queer. So I wasn’t surprised when one worker’s mention of the recently commemorated Veteran’s Day and my partner’s interjection that I was a veteran led to a discussion of the imminent repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT). But I was surprised when this femme-dyke, whom I had known for years, asserted that, because I had enlisted in the military, I couldn’t legitimately identify myself as queer. “There’s no such thing as a queer in the military,” she said.

"...as deserving as Mrs. Colin Powell."

“…as deserving as Mrs. Colin Powell.”

I remembered those words when I read about Ashley Broadway. She’s the legally married spouse of Lt. Col. Heather Mack (US Army) who was denied admission to the officers’ spouses club at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. (Apparently, Mack and Broadway are queer enough by Army standards.) The controversy garnered more coverage yesterday when the Associated Press (AP) reported that the Marine Corps has advised its legal staff that spouses clubs operating on its installations must admit same-sex-gender spouses if they wish to remain on base. According to the AP, the Marine Corps commandant’s Staff Judge Advocate referred to the “stir” at Fort Bragg in his emailed instructions: “We do not want a story like this developing in our back yard.”

Interestingly, the Marine Corps’ top lawyers cite the existing non-discrimination policy applicable to such clubs, language that does not specify protection for sexual orientation. According to the AP, the emailed memo explained, “We would interpret a spouses club’s decision to exclude a same-sex spouse as sexual discrimination because the exclusion was based upon the spouse’s sex.” Perhaps that explanation will satisfy defenders of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a law plainly intended to enforce complete non-recognition of queer military spouses, even the lawfully wedded wife of a Lieutenant Colonel.

I think my femme-dyke critic made a fair point in one logical sense: Militarism is the norm, and queerness, by definition, exists outside the norm, and therefore, “There’s no such thing as a queer in the military.” It’s also true that I didn’t self-identify as queer per se before the Navy kicked me out for being, well… per se queer. Yet, I must challenge her criticism on the larger question of the meanings of queer and queerness, especially their meanings in contrast to other terms of static identity deployed on the battlefields of identity politics.

I believe that queerness is not merely a more extreme or radical expression of non-conforming sexuality, not merely extra-gayness, or far-left anti-military and socialist gayness. Rather, queerness is the rejection of conformity as a norm. To be queer is to embrace diverse non-conformity as the only norm, to acknowledge the multi-dimensionality and fluidity of desire and sex-gender, and to cultivate a world free of the boundaries prescribed by norms of desire and sex-gender. Queerness is a reflexive idea, its all-encompassing inclusion applying even to itself, so that anyone, everyone can be queer. Queerness is an expansive, liberating idea, an idea rendered most powerful in circumstances, like military service, most dominated by norms of conformity, so that otherwise quite conventional soldiers and sailors and marines assume queer power by the most subtle of nonconforming thoughts and actions. Indeed, the military is full of queers. It always has been.

QueersFightBack2In the early years of the queer visibility movement, I lived across the street from the Marine Corps Barracks at 8th and I Streets in Southeast Washington, DC, where I earned the distinction of a place on the out-of-bounds list, local addresses marines were ordered not to visit. My experiences there corroborated my earlier suspicions, initially formulated during my active duty service, that the Marine Corps are the most homoerotic, potentially the queerest of the service branches. The corps’ subsequent, and even recent resistance to the repeal of DADT seemed to further confirm my suspicions, as the resistance itself suggested an unseen pressure, perhaps, one could say, even a latent institutional homosexuality. Of the four branches of service, the USMC has always seemed most to embody the attributes of the closet case, jarhead violence against queer neighbors once so common as to spark demonstrations like the one we staged outside my doorstep in the summer of 1990. Two decades later, the marines, at last, are peaking out of their closet, defying DOMA to queer the corps, and leading the way for the other branches of service to finally begin to acknowledge the spouses of Americans willing to die for our right to be different. And to them, my inner sailor and my inner queer can only answer: outstanding!

Queer Fears, Queer Hopes

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Discharged

When the United States Navy discharged me for homosexuality in 1987, I returned to a civilian world in which I identified as gay, but I was almost immediately uneasy with that label, and as the decade drew to its close, I found myself ever more likely to call myself queer. AIDS had a lot to do with it, no doubt. Gay, conveying as it did the merry lightheartedness explicit in its dictionary definition, hardly seemed appropriate in a community so devastated by illness and death. By 1991, the word itself seemed to catch in my throat. I was angry, I was grieving, and I was serious, but I was most especially not merry. My friends and lovers were most especially not lighthearted. The whole world could see: we were not gay.

At the time, I believed my entire generation was rejecting the identity of gay. We would all be queer, now, nevermore to be gay again, no going back. In the words of a Queer Nation slogan, words I used myself: the queer revolution had begun. Our shared tribulation in the era of AIDS, I thought, would propel us beyond the old labels of identity politics, beyond the restrictive branding of visibility politics, beyond the special interest agendas of a myopic political movement, and beyond even the constraints of a binary understanding of sexual desire and gender.

I don’t intend to revisit the last thirty years of history, gay or queer, in the pages of this blog. Neither do I mean to debate whether I was mistaken, in 1991, when I declared along with others the beginning of a queer revolution. Nor do I propose to relate herein my own queer experiences of the last half-century. (I’m writing a book to attempt those hurdles.) Rather, with this blog, I intend to look humbly and skeptically forward, perhaps to seed the future with little bits of queerness in hopes they will someday sprout into nonconforming splendor, and to add my own queer voice to all those who continue to resist assimilating trends and hetero-normative expectations in the ongoing struggle that may yet, indeed, reveal itself as a queer revolution.

To begin, then, I would share with you my greatest fears and hopes for our queer future, and I will try to explain them in the context of the current movement for marriage equality. I’m not a lawyer, or an academic philosopher, or even a queer studies scholar. I’m just a self-educated thinker groping for answers, unable to account for his own contradictions. Please accept what follows in that spirit.

My greatest fear is that the gay movement will be successful in achieving legal and social inclusion through a mere expansion of the shared conventions around sexuality and desire, rather than by challenging the very paradigm of acknowledging such conventions at all. I won’t argue against the far-reaching successes of the gay movement in my lifetime; I have contributed to those successes, and I applaud those successes as possibly necessary steps to a queerer future. However, if the essence of queer power is derived from the unique perspectives and diverse potentialities arising from the experiences and circumstances of non-comformity, how do we retain that power once same-sex-gender desire has become just another kind of normal? In other words, I fear that achieving the acceptance to be gay will rob us of the power to be queer – a staggering loss, not only to queerkind, but also to humankind. My other fear, closely related to the first, is the likelihood that any expansion of shared conventions will never be adequate to encompass sexuality and desire in all its diverse expressions, so that all frameworks of legal and social inclusion mapped to sexuality and desire will ultimately prove to be exclusive. To define a convention is to create the unconventional.

Thus, the movement for marriage equality presents a real problem for me. My queer conscience tells me that the institution of marriage is deeply flawed – historically, legally, and culturally flawed. My queer conscience tells me that no amount of gayness will ever rescue marriage from its religious, sexist, and elitist past. My queer conscience tells me that the proper role of the state is not to choose whose consensual adult relationships are suitable and whose are not; adding same-sex-gender couples to the list of approved relationships doesn’t overcome that very troublesome objection, and doing so will not extend the indicia of marriage to all. My queer conscience tells me that humans, queer or not, have not evolved to mate exclusively for life, and to mate exclusively for life is the very definition of marriage, by law and by custom, even according to those friendly courts whose recent decisions seem to favor us. My queer conscience tells me that marriage, as we know it, is fundamentally wrong.

My greatest hope is that the expanding socio-cultural conventions around non-conforming sexuality will create an environment of both freedom and security for the next generation of faggots and dykes and freaks of all stripes: the freedom, possibly, to be queer in some altogether yet unimagined way that, needing no name, abandons the static labels ever encroaching on desire, together with the security, hopefully, to be fully included in family love and civil life, regardless of labels or lack thereof, an inclusion protected under law and implemented through a healthy secular culture. 2013 may well be the year the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) rules the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to be unconstitutional. DOMA’s repeal, combined with the 2012 repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) promises a future when queer sailors, soldiers, and marines will enjoy the same spousal benefits enjoyed by service members in traditional, that is to say, different-sex-gender marriages – something I myself once demanded in a manifesto distributed at the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights, when such a possibility seemed an unlikely and distant dream. Only once this long overdue expansion of benefits to queer service members is realized can we truly say we have lifted the ban, and such a clear victory for queer economic justice will undoubtedly signal a new, more accepting era in American life.

Thus, even as I object to marriage for important reasons, my queer conscience tells me many will benefit directly from the expansion of benefits promised by full marriage equality, and many more will benefit indirectly from the legitimating affect it likely precipitates. My queer conscience tells me marriage equality will bring the most deeply felt change where change is most needed, in those conservative subsets of our society, like the military, or communities of faith, where queer youth are most likely to feel isolated, afraid or desperate. My queer conscience tells me that although gayness may not suffice to rescue marriage from its religious, sexist, and elitist past, queer values of authenticity, empathy, and mutual care can illuminate its future, helping to shape an institution that is more secular, equitable and democratic. My queer conscience tells me that by overcoming the heterosexist barriers to marriage equality for lesbians and gay men, we provoke questions about all the heterosexist barriers to a richer queer life. My queer conscience tells me, after all, that even I might want to get married some day.