GLBTQ Identity Politics

[bluedawg12]

GLBTQ Brothers and Sisters-

I am thinking out loud here, and by no means speaking for you or for everyone.

Comments and insights are welcome and encouraged.

I am trying to learn and to educate myself as I go along this journey of fighting for gay rights.

I find myself stumbling to express myself being unaccustomed to the language of political struggle and unfamiliar with the detailed history of various rights movements.

One of the main tenets of our fight, at least from where I stand, is that this is a human rights argument. Our own GLBTQ human rights argument.

Marriage is certainly a part of it. So is freedom from fear, freedom from hate language, freedom from institutionalized oppression, freedom from violence against our persons psychological and physical. When people tell us: to go slow, it maybe because they subconsciously admit the pervasiveness of homophobia in the nation at large, they are saying what we know - but come they come to a different conclusion.

There have been other human rights movements before, African American civil rights, women’s rights, abortion rights, reproductive rights, to name a few.

While we share the same goal as other movements, namely, advancing the interests of our group, we are not those movements, GLBTQ is a political identity movement with our own unique history and collective experience which makes us similar in goals to other movements, and yet different in our own experience.

I believe most movements have an arc. Movements often start with discourse about acceptance, move forward towards pride, then faced with resistence often splinter into a.) separatism b.) power and finally, after a hard fought battle, if all goes well, acceptance and re-assimilation.

It’s my conclusion, for the moment at least, that gay rights has gone from talking about it for four decades, to gay pride for three decades, and now with the open assault on our human rights that indifferently took away the rights of one entire section of humanity with the press of a button I think we have done all of the outreach we possibly could do and more, if you think haters don’t know gays look at all the haters who have gay family, ask DarthCheney, ask NewtonGingr*ch. We’ve all heard the “Some of our best frineds are gay...but...on marriage...oh, that’s between a...blah blah blah.”

It is time to regroup, work within our community in terms of educating ourselves about who we are, bolstering our pride, forming efficient strategy and while outreach should continue and we should build political coalitions, and while peaceful protests serve a purpose we do not need to go begging, cajoling and debating people into understanding what their bigotry implies in terms of our humanity.

I found this of interest as it gave me an over view of “identity politics.”

Comments are welcome and if anyone has a greater depth of knowledge about this
I am really hoping to hear from you– I am learning as fast as I can how to best express the realities of where we are in the GLBTQ experience at this time in history, so I can understand where we need to be going.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics

Identity politics is political action to advance the interests of members of a group whose members are oppressed by virtue of a shared and marginalized identity (such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and neurological wiring). The term has been used principally in United States politics since the 1970s.

The origin of the term itself, however, is obscure; although SNCC invented many of the fundamental practices, and various Black-Power groups extended them, they apparently found no need to apply a term. Rather, the term emerged when others outside the black freedom movements—particularly, the race- and ethnic-specific women's liberation movements, such as Black feminism— began to adopt the practice in the late 1960s.

The best-known aim of identity politics in the United States has been to empower the oppressed to articulate their oppression in terms of their own experience—a process of consciousness-raising that distinguishes identity politics from the liberal conception of politics as driven by individual self-interest. Identity politics may thus focus on diverse forms of identity: race, ethnicity, sex, religion, caste, sexual orientation, physical disability or some other assigned or perceived trait (see below for a more complete, but still non-exhaustive, list).

The practice of identity politics naturally entails some degree of separatism.

Theorists of identity politics have argued passionately that oppression shapes the consciousness of the oppressed such that oppressed people usually internalize their oppression.

Only in the atmosphere which obtains when members of the oppressor group are not present to enforce unjust definitions of equality, justice, and right, and the norms that derive from such definitions, can the oppressed begin the difficult work of consciousness-raising, the first step toward the organization of the oppressed to struggle for a liberation defined in their own terms.

Others counter that the intolerant homogeneity of mainstream culture is precisely the fact that makes full acceptance impossible, and that social justice movements should aim not toward integration but rather multicultural pluralism, without recourse to the types of oppressive homogeneity now at play.

Still other critics have argued that groups based on shared identity, other than class, can divert energy and attention from more fundamental issues, such as class conflict in capitalist societies.

[bluedawg12]

1. More info on gay identity politics

http://courses.missouristate.edu/RalphSmith/scholarship_identity_joh.htm

Identity in Political Context:

Creating the Collective Subject

In his recent analysis of the agonistic tendency of movements to produce and simultaneously deconstruct collective identity, Joshua Gamson (1995) asserts that the "ways in which the American political environment makes stable collective identities both necessary and damaging . . . sorely undertheorized and underexamined" (pp. 402-3). Current work in social movement theory points toward the question of why and how movements which struggle to construct boundaries around a unifying identity at the same time exhibit the "drive to blur and deconstruct group categories, and to keep them forever unstable" (Gamson, 1995, p. 393). This is an important area of investigation to students of collective behavior and to lesbian/gay political activists. For some advocates, measurable achievements in improving the lives of lesbians and gay men has been purchased at the price of accepting an exclusionary, rigid and intellectually inelegant gay identity, while for others, academic and radical disruption of a stable and positive gay identity impedes progress toward tangible political goals. Evans and Gamman (1995) define the paradox succinctly: "The necessary fiction of a cohesive identity must be spoken in order for political communities to maintain any sort of presence. But there are obviously problems with the articulation of any sort of fixed identity" (p. 38).

This essay first summarizes several especially valuable recent efforts to understand the necessity and ill-effects of stable gay/lesbian identities produced for consumption in the public sphere. We proceed to describe the standard explanation for the production of conflict over identity, review controversy over the claims for rhetorical power of various constructions of identity, and conclude by suggesting alternative paths beyond the many variants in essentialist/constructionist debate, stressing the need to challenge the nature of civil rights discourse and the concept of the public sphere.

In the now standard chronicle, the homophile movement of the 50's and 60's created lesbian/gay consciousness because homophile activists "had not only to mobilize a constituency; first they had to create one" (D'Emilio, 1983, p. 4)...

There seems to be general assent to Phelan's (1989) axiom that identity formation is a matter "not only of ontology but also of strategy"...

With respect to individuals, Sullivan (1995) asserts that, for most gays, "the condition of homosexuality is as involuntary as heterosexuality is for heterosexuals. Such an orientation is evident from the very beginning of the formation of a person’s emotional identity" (p. 17). Within the public sphere, as Gross (1993) argues, "whatever the status of the theoretical and empirical debates waged by researchers and theoreticians, the public discourse concerning sexuality and sexual orientation is overwhelmingly essentialist"...

The common ground that links gays/lesbians to other groups "can be found at a higher level of generality: social subordination and stigmatization subject gay men and lesbians--like other subordinated groups--to systematic exclusion and disadvantage at the hands of other dominant groups" (p. 298). To escape from the equivalents’ frame, a discourse demanding social justice for gays/lesbians must reject a view of "civil rights laws as static and monolithic," projecting instead a challenge which frames "civil rights laws as fluid social constructs that may legitimately be directed at very different kinds of social subordination and stigmatization" (p. 312).

[bluedawg12]

2. In thinking about how the right plays identity politics

the development of a religious identity movement, that bridges race, ethnicity and relgious tradition, the so called fundy coalition of "The People of the Book."

Members of this coalition, it seems to me, then become the foot soldiers in their cultural wars. That's why we see an amalgamation of Catholics and Mormons anda broad coalition of various races and ethnic groups, unite in these so called fight for "values."

Nixon played the identity politics card:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Although the phrase "Southern strategy" is often attributed to Richard Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips, he did not originate it,<1> but merely popularized it.<2> In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, he touched on its essence:

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.<3>
While Phillips was concerned with polarizing ethnic voting in general, and not just with winning the white South, this was by far the biggest prize yielded by his approach. Its success began at the presidential level, gradually trickling down to statewide offices, the Senate and House, as legacy segregationist Democrats retired or switched to the GOP.

When asked about the southern strategy that used race as an issue to build GOP dominance in the once Democratic South, Mehlman replied, "Republican candidates often have prospered by ignoring black voters and even by exploiting racial tensions," and, "y the '70s and into the '80s and '90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African-American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out. Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."

So they switched the southern strategy from the race card to the values card and cultural wars.

[yardwork]

3. Interesting links - I will read later. Thanks!

[bluedawg12]

4. thank you yardwork

I am trying very hard to understand the historic politics surrounding all of this,and have a lot to learn, but it is never to late to start.

Look forward to any insights!

[yardwork]

5. I have a lot to learn, too.

:toast:

[Psyop Samurai]

6. Some thoughts...

This is not an academic view, but just my perspective...

You say:

When people tell us: to go slow, it maybe because they subconsciously admit the pervasiveness of homophobia in the nation at large, they are saying what we know - but come to a different conclusion.

I can tell you that some quite consciously admit the pervasiveness of homophobia, and quite legitimately, in their view, say "go slow", so as not to incur counter-productive backlash or repercussions far beyond LGBT issues.

This includes gay people.

Many of these people are far more sympathetic than it appears. But they are not on the front lines of progress, though some of them may have been at one time. Various life demands and callings come to supersede a sense of urgency, and people come to live with "as good as we could expect", who never dreamed certain things, or that they might expect more.

Time marches on.

There are moments and circumstances that can awaken people to a new reality. I believe we may be experiencing one of those presently. The circumstances under which prop 8 in particular occurred, will not escape notice. It's a "holy shit!" moment. And the context has changed. We are not "asking for permission" for inalienable rights, already hard-won and acknowledged by the courts.

I think people are having an impact. I am here educating myself. People like me have friends. As impatient as you all would be with us, we are not impervious. We must and WILL frame this as a civil rights issue. I do not conclude that outreach is exhausted. Did you see marmar's thread and tale of conversion? I think progress can be made in every direction. I know it is not fast enough. We can at least take comfort in the demographic advantage: younger people = more supportive. I am not a legal scholar, but it looks like people are on the case. There's a bunch of stuff I should read.

I can't say how much focus I'll devote to identity politics going forward. The very idea has been anathema to me for years. And I have no sweeping statement or proposal to make about it. But, in a broader sense, "where we are" is the sum of all of our experiences. There is much to share and learn, and perhaps a stronger identity and cohesion is to be found just in doing so. That is what I find interesting about this forum.

I don't always have time to hang at DU, and other forums may resume priority as well. But I'm getting my talking points in order. There is a train coming - get on board, or get out of the way!

[bluedawg12]

7. Thank you that was a thoughtful and thought provoking reply.

About the speed of progress. There are two aspects that I see, the role of the individual and the role of a political movement.

Individually we go at the rate we must or at the best rate we are able. As GLBTQ we live across a wide expanse of the US from urban centers to small rural towns. The inter net gives the illusion of a great big public square and to be sure, it is a “virtual” public square but our own lives are private and our first duty to ourselves and our families is: security, safety, foo, shelter, a job/career, income to survive. So the rate of individual activism is probably going to be defined by our real lives and everyone will contribute as they are able. For some it will be funding and donations, for others peaceful protest, and so on.

As a political movement, you said it well: >> It's a "holy shit!" moment.<<

With the best person in office, today’s problems are in good hands. There is nothing in the way at this time that needs us to set aside our quest for rights in deference to the greater good.

Putting PropHate8 on the ballot was dropping the gauntlet, the fact that it actually passed went way beyond that - it was a fire alarm. The idea that human rights, once granted, can be taken away in the United States, is far wore than simply rw groups opposing same sex marriage. One then naturally wonders just how much they really want to take away?

>>I can't say how much focus I'll devote to identity politics going forward. The very idea has been anathema to me for years. <<

This is interesting because I don’t know for sure what identity politics is. That’s why I looked it up, I just started to include the term in my vocabulary yesterday. I see that you have a strong feeling about it.


The way I understand it is just the obvious: groups form around an identity, develop a strategy to achieve their goals and use certain tactics like out reach, boycotts, protests, the inter net for building coalition, etc.

That seems to make good sense when a movement is in the early stages of achieving it’s aims or, when it runs up against insurmountable resistence.

The good parts, as I understand it, is that it builds group identity, cohesion, and often goes through phases: polite petition, identity, pride, activism, power, separatism are some of the phases that I recall that other movements went through.

The down side is that it means the possibility of creating an ever narrowing circle of followers, rather than expanding.

The down side could also mean isolation from other groups or movements that are equally important to the members.

The most noticeable to me is the possibility of factionalism within a larger group, for example as a hypothetical: within the Democratic part environmentalists might say they have greater need for access to power than say those concerned about poverty, or vice versa.

Like you, I am getting my talking points in order and my thought process in order and trying to play catch up in understanding many decades of prior political rights movements so as not to re-invent the wheel.

That’s why I posted this, for discussion.

This may not be the most artful, when I wrote it in the Op, but I managed to at least articulate my best shot at a vision for what I am trying to do and whom I support and why - for today.

“It is time to regroup, work within our community in terms of educating ourselves about who we are, bolstering our pride, forming efficient strategy and while outreach should continue and we should build political coalitions, and while peaceful protests serve a purpose we do not need to go begging, cajoling and debating people into understanding what their bigotry implies in terms of our humanity.”

In the best of all worlds, we should never have to explain to people who we love, to defend it, and to fight really damaging anti-gay rhetoric and slurs that seep into everyone’s subconscious, even our own. Hence the focus on pride and the concept that focus on unity is the way to get there.

Anyway, your posts are always bright and articulate, so even if you wander off to other forums, I hope you wander back from time to time.

For me, I had a real reality kick in another forum (non DU) where after we eight years as a member, when Prop8 and the whole gay debate came up, I was stunned by the hurtful ignorance of people who were completely insensitive to the fact that declaring another human being’s life as immoral might be a tad harsh. Ya’ know?

So, any insights into the down side of identity politics is welcome, or if I even understood it properly.

p.s.

I am not trying to get you to have a busmen's holiday and have to educate me when you are off work--well, maybe just a little. :evilgrin:

peace-

bd12

[Psyop Samurai]

9. I don't have any special knowledge...

Identity politics is simply the term I have used to describe identity-based awareness and action, which you've articulated as well as I could. I'm no theorist or organizer, but have muddled along like everyone else. I don't know that there is a set formula, or the full implications of successive steps. At this stage of life, I'm beginning to suspect that the "final" step may be "rinse and repeat". ;)

The downside is becoming closed off from the larger society and political concerns, i.e. ghettoization, which occurs in many forms, but a certain concentration or separateness allows for a higher level of self-definition and articulation of culture, and advancement of specific aims. Individually, we cope with whatever continuum of separateness/assimilation exists at a given time, according to our own needs and temperament. I would describe myself as assimilated in a progressive milieu, and comfortably so.
_____

We may be thinking along parallel lines. I sense a need to develop more inner strength and integrity - not coming so much from "neediness". "Forming efficient strategy"...yep. "Educating ourselves about who we are"... absolutely.

I don't know when the term "consciousness raising" disappeared from the vernacular, but I sense that its reintroduction, or a modern variant, might not be a bad thing. It seems like people used to tell stories, and find commonality and strength in them. I feel that too much of that has been lost. Spend too much time chasing trolls, real or imagined, and the campfire's gone out - that which sustains us. Do we even know who we are? Do we know our potential, or seek to improve it?

I am not outside this petri dish, and am experiencing my own growth. My lack of focus on GLBT issues derives from many sources. That aside, circumstances on the ground lead to shifts. There are times for making noise, and this is clearly one of them. I struggle because I do not share the same sensibilities and perspective as many in this forum. Nonetheless, in strident calls of bigotry, I hear echoes of "we're here, we're queer, get used to it!", and this may cut through complacency.

IMO, with regards to gay marriage, there are perception gaps to overcome, and this would seem to be a watershed moment. I think the context shift from "gay marriage" to "denial of civil rights" has immense power, but it must be framed properly. People DO need to be educated on concepts like "separate but equal", and "separation of church and state". People DO have to be educated to the real term consequences to your humanity. Of course, I don't expect the whore media to be much help in this regard, as they love to milk "hot-button" issues.
_____

I don't remember who posted, but there was a great flaming call-out of SF voters before we realized the vote count was incomplete. The poster concluded more or less to the effect, "sorry that wasn't 'queer' enough for you"! Ouch! lol!

That is, to some extent, me on the receiving end. How many faces we acquire in our struggles for identity. There are different and ever-shifting paradigms. The expectation gap revealed in this "call-out" parallels, in my view, the whole gay/black divide, and how underlying resentments and feelings of betrayal can surface. Once these are properly examined, we get over ourselves, and proceed on a more unified course. Unexpectedly, I have become a part of that process. I think the term "expectation gap" is going to become a lasting part of my vocabulary.

Those reality kicks are something, aren't they? I think a lot of us set life up as a cocoon, so as not to expose ourselves to them. That is largely what I have done. But I am plenty calloused too, and not easily hurt by anti-gay sentiment. These factors, however, while serving well, can lead to estrangement.

Thank you for welcoming me to this forum. People have reason to distrust, as I have previously dismissed their concerns, and even characterized them as an "attack mob". But, as I've said before, things are not always as they appear. When we come to recognize ourselves in the other there are new vistas. I am hoping as well that hurdles once insurmountable can be overcome.

[bluedawg12]

8. The idea that the gay rights movement is one of privileged and affluent

people is, apparently, an old idea:

>>Anarchist communist political theorist Daniel Guérin, who was himself bisexual, pointed out that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the "original" anarchist thinker, was a sexual puritan<42> who condemned homosexuality as a bourgeois and not a working class phenomenon.<<

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_and_LGBT_rights

It does fail to take into account the lives of gays and lesbians who struggle to earn their daily bread in a homophobic society.

[Psyop Samurai]

10. See, that's what bugs me...

...this construction of "privilege and affluence".

I don't see myself in that at all, but it seems that's how we're represented. Supposedly, our rights are inherently opposed to the working class. We ARE working class. Some of us went from intolerant working class to "servant" class just trying to survive.

[bluedawg12]

11. I can conceptualize two ways to look at this

The first is the idea that there are greater problems in the world then gay issues and focusing on gay rights takes away focus from other problems.

Maybe.

This has come up in our discussions here on DU GLBT about "that" ( not to re-stir that) letter that claimed that gay marriage was an affluent person's problem and some how diverted resources from other issues that were poverty related.

I don't see it that way, especially in light of PHate8, because in that instance the only thing people had to do was vote "no." Nothing else. Yes, willing donors did give money to support same sex marriage, but it was not the case that the gay movement took away from societal/govt money such as tax dollars.

The second way, which occurred to me as I was reading some of our threads about the huge money some private individual donors gave in support of PH8, to the tune of $300,000 and 1 million dollars- and it was stunning that many people gave so much money ( $10,000 and $20,000 was not uncommon) to one cause, one political position, namely Prop8. It just puzzled the hell out of me. I mean there are wealthy bigots who hate gays, but geez, don't people love their money more?

That's when I started to wonder about terms like the ruling elite and the term ruling class. The small very select group of people that move in the same circle, who move in and out of the private sector and government and then back again. There was a really good documentary film about this a few weeks ago ( name escapes me) but it was a classic and it looked at just who the ruling class is. Usually they are Ivy league, many in the Council on Foreign Relations , in and out of private enterprise and govt., guys like Jim Baker, Robert taft of Ohio and Bill Bradley were mentioned.

Before I digress way too much, the idea clicked: people don't give $1 million dollars to a cause because they give a damn about gay marriage, but if they are powerful, conservative, in charge and they want to maintain the status quo, then maybe?

In summary:

The gay movement does not take away from other issues and limited finite government funds. The gay movement is not a top down oppressive movement.

On the other hand, if there is such a thing as the ruling elite/ruling class and they see gay rights as some intrinsic threat to the entire system, then, the whole ProHate8 movement was top down oppression against gays and the foot soldiers were the religiously motivated activists, bell ringers, canvassers, and even voters who were manipulated from even higher up. It's certain that the people at the top who gave large amounts of money weren't out there ringing door bells with Pro Hate 8 scripts in hand.

I hope this makes sense, I am still working this out.

[Psyop Samurai]

12. Not only makes sense, I think it's dead on...

Whether gay rights is an intrinsic threat, I don't know, but a people united sure is, and they use every trick in the book to prevent it.

Honestly, I think this "meta-narrative" was, to some extent, behind some of the attempts to, um..., "steer" the conversation last week, but folks stepped in it big time. Even an old "appeaser" like myself WILL NOT be bashed, and WILL come to the defense of others. We have our own issues to work out, in our own time, on our own terms.

While I've advocated nuance regarding heavily propagandized voters, half of whom don't know their ass from a hole in the ground, I'm not down with this pity party for donors, or concerned that it will "alienate". They are perpetrators. "Oh, they're just tools", people say. Christ, Bush himself is just a tool. Does that mean he shouldn't be prosecuted?

In the end there is only one war... the class war. Lack of transparency and plausible deniability are their allies. Deceptive framing and playing victim. Notice how they're conflating boycotts with racist attacks. Hell, for all we know, there could be paid provocateurs at work. Regardless, we see their game. Not this time!

[bluedawg12]

13. A little reminiscent of the "awakening the sleeping giant" metaphor

or, the more intellectual way to say it is: they unleashed a big can of whoop ass on themselves. :rofl:

Sunday night, winding down, work week looms and need focus.

But, my commitment remains unwaivering. I appreciate the dialogue.

This is why we fight:

Just saw this post (link below) from someone at UMASS and the mention of a super ugly editorial and how upset "one of ours" was at reading it. I declined to read the hate OP, for today, but tried instead to focus on the affect of such speech on a young person attending school and reading such an OP ED in a major university paper.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=221x93410

This is why we fight - because they don't simply disagree with us politically, or theologically, or biologically or psychologically, they simply exhibit blind hatred and attempt to dehumanize us.

Those of us with a few grey furs around the old muzzle, a little life experience, can help those who for the first time have their idealism shattered in the most hurtful ways, to see that they are not alone and our opponents use a lot of words but it is all hollow, discredited rhetoric.

So glad you still hang out at this forum... have a great Monday! :hi:

[Ex Lurker]

14. "freedom from hate language"

what do you mean by that, and how does it square with the 1st amendment? Just curious.

[bluedawg12]

15. Here's the whole context of my quote:

>>Marriage is certainly a part of it. So is freedom from fear, freedom from hate language, freedom from institutionalized oppression, freedom from violence against our persons psychological and physical." bd 12

Freedom from the toxic burden of hate language that is spewed at gays through change.

By educating people and hopefully changing attitudes.

How does that square with the first amendment and free speech? Like this, people have the right to spew vile and hate, and we have the right to speak up about it, with the ultimate goal being freedom from hate speech, as people change and learn.

[Ex Lurker]

16. thanks for the explanation n/t

[bluedawg12]

17. You are welcome.

peace-

bd12