Against Legitimism!
The Marxist position is one of delegitimism. By this I mean we cannot care about the legal protections the state has given us. Because the community has already forgotten its history, they have forgotten that police and legal oppression are very new innovations in the repression of the queer minority. Advocating for legal rights has brought our communities under the eyes and regulation of the law.
This was the precondition for government protection, but it also became the precondition for our regulation and may allow for our obliteration. Alliances made in this progress, particularly with members of the Democratic Party, are being betrayed, and will continue to be betrayed. All the while, our community organizations have ignored the threats building from the rise of the New Right, the exploitation of our community for private gain, and the abuse of its members via the postindustrial capitalist economy.
How do we argue that we should delegitimize ourselves? When we brought ourselves into mainstream society, we allowed that (heteronormative, cis, and predominantly white) society to dictate the terms of our acceptance. The legitimists decided it was a worthwhile trade to accept limits on our resistance to oppression and our expression in order to obtain political rights. For this reason, many queer advocacy organizations pushed hard with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for provisions for gay marriage. Yet the Obergefell v. Hodges decision and the recent law protecting gay marriage are unsustainable. Regardless, support for the issue is a highly conservative matter.
And yet, our communities still come under attack. Our organizations and events are the targets of constant hate crimes, and states seek to ban our attempts to teach about sexuality and gender in schools. How does the community propose to fight these bans? It seeks to beg the pardon of lawmakers that frankly don’t care about us. Legitimist politics in the queer community are largely ineffective except in establishing the most meaningless paper protections.
Legitimism emerges from a history based upon the ideals of Michel Foucault. To dispute the historical nature of our struggle is to forget that homophobia is both a present and a historic event. It cannot be separated from history, and when that history is done extremely poorly, we cannot rely upon it for organizing. Sexuality was never an individualized diagnosis. It was a means of exclusion for people associated with certain groups of people.
Michel Foucault’s study of sexuality misunderstood that the individual condition is a product, not of psychology, but of the wage-labor-apparatus of industrial capitalism. Now that the United States has transitioned to a largely cultural economy, the idea of individualism has seeped into the entire society, forcing wedges between people in vulnerable communities. For this reason, our communities seem to be dissolving. Our technology of communication has also contributed to this; internal marketing on platforms like Facebook and Twitter have isolated these communities. This strategy of media targeting has also led to a disconnect among members of oppressed groups.
Our problem is a world-historical problem. Our discontents are world-historical discontents. To treat them as anything but another part of the dominant social order is misguided, and ignores the interconnectedness of the forces of repression and control.
