2011/05/29
2011/05/27
2011/05/24
Queerhate and how to fight it
From the presence of Britain's “stately homo” Elton John and his partner at the royal wedding, you might conclude that lesbians and gay men had achieved not only equality, but respectability. A look at recent homophobic violence and the chilling statistics behind it forces you to think again.
A recent high profile attack left socialite Philip Sallon with a 50/50 chance of survival. Across London, homophobic crime fell by 3% in 2010, but in the West End it rose by 21%, and the small drop over London follows a 20% rise in a previous period.
Over the years, other cases of appalling violence demonstrate the ferocious hatred behind the now rather cliché term, homophobia: Jody Dobrowski, beaten to death in 2005, Oliver Hemsley, viciously stabbed and left paralyzed in 2008, Ian Baynham, kicked to death in Trafalgar Square in 2009. At almost the same time, in 'gay friendly' Brighton, a young lesbian couple were punched in the head by two men, while a third looked on.
Discrimination and abuse are also rife. In a recent case, a gay couple were thrown out of the John Snow pub, Soho, for kissing. This was not an isolated incident and seems to be part of a trend. Following the attack on Philip Sallon, his friends held a march through Soho to appeal for witnesses. As a result, one came forward - but the parade itself was attacked!
Despite these widely reported cases, homophobic crime remains underreported. One reason is that victims don't believe the police will take complaints seriously. When the two Brighton lesbians were attacked, police waited 12 days before appealing for witnesses! No wonder those targeted by gay-haters are cynical regarding police action.
Homophobia is also not being confronted in education. Teachers at the recent NUT conference warned that endemic homophobia is likely to rise as the number of faith schools grows. The Catholic church has criticized the national code of conduct to challenge discrimination, clearly signalling that religious institutions cannot be trusted to uphold equality in the schools they control. Recall, too, that the Catholic church is responsible for some of the worst and most widespread abuse of children and youth.
There is no dividing line between verbal abuse and bullying and violent attacks on victims of prejudice. Often, verbal abuse is the prelude to an attack, and insults and bullying as a whole 'legitimize' physical assaults by demeaning and dehumanizing the targets of verbal abuse.
What can be done to combat this wave of gay hatred? Undoubtedly, the best answer to those who want to turn back the equality clock is a new drive to demand full rights and social equality for lesbians, gay men, transgender people and queer people generally.
We need to build a militant activist movement, and to uphold the right and establish the practice of selfdefense. We also have to dispel the complacency that is based on the false idea that equality was established when celebrities like Elton John and David Furnish were finally able to tie the knot.
It is crucial that this movement be rooted in working class politics. The trade unions have been central in promoting and upholding LGBT rights in the workplace and in wider society. Again, there is a certain complacency here, which a militant queer movement can shatter, injecting some radicalism and urgency into the campaign for equality.
Equally, winning the mass of workers – the only social force capable of creating a society free of exploitation and oppression – to the cause of lesbian and gay equality is the key to ultimate victory. Most queers are workers, too, and equality and liberation are class issues.
2011/05/19
Lesbians and gay men ~ how do we get equality?
Can lesbians and gay men achieve equality under capitalism? To answer this question, we need to understand the role families and relationships play within the system.
Families vary, but for most people their own family is a place of some security, and if they are reasonbly lucky, acceptance and love. But it is also a basis for the oppression of lesbians and gay men, as well as women generally. That's because, as a social unit, the family is where capitalism reproduces, maintains and – along with schools – educates and trains labour power. From the bosses' viewpoint, that's all workers and their children are: present and future means of producing wealth and profit. It's no surprise, therefore, that any behavior that challenges the family is stigmatized and repressed.
Only a monogamous, heterosexual, child rearing unit is promoted as natural and normal. Sexual and moral codes reinforce this, no matter how stultifying and oppressive for all concerned, but especially women, children, lesbians and gay men. The church, though increasingly marginalized, still plays an important role in perpetuating this morality, as was apparent during the royal wedding of Kate and William Windsor.
Until relatively recent times, medical 'science' and psychology also promoted the view that non-heterosexual behavior was perverse, sick or abnormal, and even attempted to 'cure' it! On top of this, a battery of repressive laws enforced by the capitalist state imposed brutal penalties for gay sex and laws still deny full equality for single-sex partners.
Because capitalism needs to protect its form of the family by perpetuating lesbians and gay oppression, equality and liberation become class questions. This is so even though there are non-working class lesbians and gay men. Only by creating a new social and economic reality where exploitation of labour power for profit is a thing of the past – classless communism – can social oppression be ended.
What are the implications of this for the struggle itself, and for the lesbian and gay and workers' movements? Middle or even upper class gays and lesbians have taken up the fight for equality, but are also often able to avoid the worst effects of oppression. And being oppressed does not automatically turn you into a rebel!
Working class lesbians and gay men formally share the same oppression as thier middle or upper class counterparts, but in more extreme forms, and with much less opportunity to escape either the family environment or oppression in the workplace. Furthermore, the class interests of working class and upper class lesbians and gays are quite antagonistic.
To be successful, therefore, a movement for lesbian and gay liberation needs to do two things. Firstly, it must develop a strong, class conscious working class core, able to work out a program that challenges the social basis of oppression. Secondly, the movement has to resist separatism or autonomism and ally itself with the broader workers' movement – unions and political parties - ensuring these become bastions of the struggle for equality, and that lesbian and gay liberation become integral to the struggle for working class liberation and socialsim.
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