Price, Alana Yu-lan. “The Transformative Promise of Queer Politics.
” Tikkun Magazine
25, No. 4 (2010): 52-72
Historical Trends in LGBT Activism
BACK IN 2000, RESPECTED HISTORIAN JOHN D'EMILIO, WHO also served as founding director of
the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in the mid-1990s, wrote an essay
that sought to characterize, in broad strokes, the historical shifts in the core outlook and strategic
approach of the gay and lesbian movement from the early 1950s to the start of the twenty-first
century. Of course this schematic overview of history unavoidably glosses over many
complexities, but it still offers a useful vision of the broad dynamics of gay and lesbian organizing.
The piece, "Cycles of Change, Questions of Strategy," identifies the following phases, which I have
summarized and combined with information on trans organizing drawn from scholar Susan
Stryker s research
* Give Us a Hearing (1950s through mid-to-late 1960s): Activists facing homophobia and
invisibility in laws, institutions, and social life, struggle "to break the consensus that viewed
homosexuality as dangerous, deviant, and wrong." Transgender people and cross-dressers
contend with ordinances against cross-dressing, which cities started passing in the 1840s. The
first organized transgender group, the Society for Equality in Dress, is founded in 1952.
* Here We Are (early 1970s through mid-to-late 1980s): In an attempt to constitute a gay and
lesbian collectivity following the energizing June 1969 Stonewall Riots against police violence--in
which drag queens and trans people of color played a major role--activists emphasize the
importance of coming out of the closet in their efforts to build community and establish a solid
movement constituency through the creation of gay bookstores, hotlines, health clinics, churches,
synagogues, etc. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual people organize pride parades and work to repeal
sodomy statutes, win protections against discrimination, and counter police harassment in order
to make openly gay identity possible. Trans people organize support groups, newsletters, and
health centers, often facing hostility from the gay community. The Combahee River Collective, a
black feminist lesbian group in Boston, releases its influential statement on the interlocking
systems of "racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression" and develops a form of integrated
analysis and practice that continues to inspire radical activists today.
* AIDS Activism (mid-1980s to early 1990s): AIDS tears through gay communities in the United
States. More than 41,000 known U.S. AIDS deaths occur in 1993 alone. Gays and lesbians work
together in desperation, engaging in "spirited public advocacy to combat the epidemic and the
discrimination entwined with it." ACT UP uses confrontational direct action tactics. A diverse
array of AIDS activist groups accomplish a ban on discrimination against people with HIV, make
medications more affordable, and counter prejudice and misinformation through public
education. A coalition of trans and gay activists gradually strengthens. Transgender Nation, an
activist group in San Francisco, forces local queer groups to respond to trans concerns and
organizes a demonstration at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association to
protest the pathologization of transgender identity.
* Let Us In (starting in the early 1990s): Efforts shift toward a demand for inclusion in
mainstream society and the institutions associated with family, school, and work. Lesbian and
gay adoption and co-parenting rights, gay marriage, the creation of safe spaces in schools,
inclusion in the military, and national antidiscrimination legislation all rise to the fore. As Stryker
notes, another "let us in" occurs as well: a push by transgender activists for recognition of the
contributions they have been making all along, and a call for gay activists to pay more attention
to trans issues. During this period some intersex activists also begin to seek recognition and
inclusion in the LGBT movement. In 1993 the Intersex Society of North America is founded to
support and advocate for people with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't fit the
typical parameters of female or male, particularly seeking to prevent unwanted and invasive
sexual surgeries. Though intersex activists sometimes have found it useful to coalition with queer
and trans groups, the "LGBTI" lumping does not always make sense, because many intersex
people see intersex issues as a medical condition rather than an identity category.
Phelan, Shane. “The Shape of Queer: Assimilation and Articulation.” Women & Politics 18,
No. 2 (1997): 55-73
… this is the current path of much queer politics: away from state-centered strategies and
toward the social focus that was central to gay liberation and lesbian-feminism. Premature
entry into political and legal structures or the forced construction of our concerns into the
shape mandated by those structures shuts out the possibility of real cultural change and leaves
us forced to choose between assimilation and marginalization. It is precisely this choice that
has been refused by queer cultural actions. Queers have responded to the limitations of
“mainstream” politics largely by ceding the field of electoral and legal politics to the “gays”
(both male and female) and focusing instead on “cultural politics,” the transformation of
public sensibilities and the creation of safe spaces within larger social formations.
This approach may at first seem to represent an abandonment of politics, but that
evaluation would be mistaken. Queer cultural politics aims at the construction of new
social spaces, and these new spaces are essential if we are to truly change other political
apparatuses. These spaces, labeled “free spaces” by Sara Evans and Hany Boyte (1992),
offer bases for self-recognition and self-fashioning, and collective identification, and
group action, processes that are essential for political activity.
As an example of the disruption of hegemonic cultural texts and the construction of new
spaces, consider the strategies of Queer Nation and its relatives and descendants. As an
outgrowth of ACT-UP, Queer Nation focused on direct actions rather than negotiations
and on cultural rather than legislative/legal politics. Actions such as the Queer Shopping
Network in New York and the Suburban Homosexual Outreach Program (SHOP) in San
Francisco focus on forcibly interrupting the invisibility of queers by simple actions such
as holding hands while shopping. They work to directly confront the revulsion and fear
of heterosexuals not by saying “we’re just like you,” but by acting just like themselves.
The inevitable responses, “I believe in equal rights, but they should keep their sexuality
private,” then become tools for political education and discussion as heterosexuals find
that, in fact, they are not asking for equal privacy but claiming a monopoly on public
expression of sexuality. Such actions penetrate the veneer of equality at work in “liberal”
legal strategies.
These strategies do not work to prepare the ground for “better communication”
between queers and non-queers, as liberals would have it. In claiming equal rights to
visibility and intimacy, queers are not asking to be understood (which almost inevitably
means, to be understood as heterosexuals “with a twist”) but are demanding that their
differences and specificities be recognized even as they challenge heterosexual
understandings. Understanding may be an ultimate goal, without which politics
degenerates into violence; however, this understanding must be the product of
confrontation rather than an alternative to it.
In its current formulations, queer politics and theory challenges all of our boundaries:
not only the frontiers between heterosexual and homosexual, but also those between
political and social, public and private, natural and unnatural, like and unlike, The
energy and excitement of queer politics and theory lie not in their answers, but in the
questions they raise. As we unravel these questions, we will find a whole new political
universe.
