Queer/Trans K’s

A2: State Solves

There can be no improvement in the lives of queers without an explicit queering of politics- oppression becomes more subversive, not less deadly.

Copland, 2016

(May 16, Simon, Journalist for the Guardian, “Attacks Against Queer People Have a long History. It’s time we changed our Defence”, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/17/attacks-against-queer-people-have-a-long-history-its-time-we-changed-our-defence - KSA)

Looking back at this time last year, when it came to gay politics, it would have been easy to be complacent. Ireland and the US supreme court were both about to vote yes on marriage equality and in Australia it looked inevitable that we would do the same too. Other issues were finally entering the debate, whether it was trans* rights, or recognition for other non-traditional relationship styles. The march for progress was unstoppable. What difference a year can make. Held on 17 May every year, the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (#Idahot) is an opportunity to reflect on where queer people have come in our fight for liberation, and to strengthen our resolve to continue on. And we’ll need strength to fight what has been a largely unexpected swing against queer communities in the past year. Momentum on marriage equality in Australia has stalled, with hostility on the issue intensifying in recent months. Rightwing forces have also opened up new fronts. The attacks on Safe Schools for example, felt like they came out of nowhere, but were swift and effective. This pattern can be seen globally. In the US, conservatives have passed “religious freedom bills” in a number of states, and last year the city of Houston rejected an ordinance that would have added protections to queer people in housing and employment. This year, North Carolina passed a “bathroom bill”, mandating that people use the bathroom that matches their gender assigned at birth. These attacks have surprised many in the queer communities. This Idahot it is worth reflecting on why this has happened, and what we can do about it. To do so, it is important to understand the historical context of these shifts. While these attacks may look shocking, they follow a pattern that has been occurring for hundreds of years. Go back to the 1890s for example, and you can see a similar explosion of sexual desire as to what has happened recently. The “gay nineties” were known for decadent art such as that from Aubrey Beardsley and the scandalous plays of Oscar Wilde. The era also saw the birth of the suffragette movement. But just as the exuberance of the decade hit its stride, so did the conservative backlash. Wilde was sentenced to hard labour, while the suffragettes faced the full wrath of the police. This pattern is common. A similar sexual revolution occurred in the swinging 1920s and 30s. This was a time when gay rights became even more prominent with sexologists such as the German Magnus Hirschfeld actively campaigning for the rights of gay and trans* people. Again, the backlash was swift. Hirshfeld’s centre was burnt down by the Nazis, while in the Anglosphere these new sexual ideas were crushed in the post-war boom, as our society focused on the ideal of “traditional marriage”. The sexual exuberance of the 1960s and 70s came with a similar backlash, particular as the HIV/Aids crisis hit in the 80s. Instead of dealing with HIV/Aids as a medical issue, governments around the world used it as an opportunity to scaremonger about queer people, raising fears of the spread of the “gay cancer”. In each of these moments, the sexual exuberance of the time made change look inevitable. Progress to true liberation and equality was on an unstoppable march, so it seemed. Yet in each moment, rightwing forces responded in kind. They have been extremely successful in doing so. Of course times today are different, primarily in that we are a much moresocially liberal society, but we can still see similar themes today from the rightwing attacks of the past. Our history is potted with conservatives trying to paint queers as “dangerous”, both to the family unit and broader capitalist society. Responses to the HIV/Aids crisis for example painted gay men as dangerous disease spreaders – making queers a threat to the entire community. That is exactly what’s happened in the past year. While most people in our community reject the premise that gays and lesbians are out to destroy the family (primarily because we gays and lesbians have given up on doing so), these attacks are still trying to paint LGBTI people as dangerous to the rest of society. This time however the focus is on two groups: kids and trans* people. Instead of destroying the family, we are now sexualising children (ie Safe Schools) and providing a threat to the ideals of gender and in turn people’s safety (ie trans people in public toilets). Of course these attacks are not new, but they have become the focus of a new attempt to make LGBTI people a dangerous group that should be rejected. It is in understanding this history that we can see the weakness of some of the responses of the LGBTI community. While protests against the attacks on Safe Schools were great, we have engaged in this debate through narrow and conservative frames. Responses were framed around the concept of “safety”, speaking in depth about the threat of “deaths of queer kids”. While obviously important, it is notable that no one was willing to open the debate on the need to teach kids about sexuality and sexual desire. The LGBTI community’s response bought into the frame of the debate. We’ve once again tried to convince people that we’re not challenging any of the tenets of modern society, and instead that we just want to “live our lives”. This becomes a problem when we actually do want to challenge social institutions. It becomes an issue when we do talk about the need to teach kids about sexuality, or to challenge the dominance of the gender binary. Here is the threat of these attacks from conservatives. While they may seem weak now, if they can frame us as dangerous in this way they could have real success. They probably won’t kick us out of society, or even marriage, but they may be able to stop further progress for queer people. The fact that we’ve seen legislation and regulation that has taken us backwards for the first time in over a decade is a good symbol of this regression. This is the challenge. Instead of being defensive, it is time we change the frame of the debate. We need to overthrow the very idea that teaching kids about sexuality, or that changing how we deal with gender, are bad things. We need to accept that we are dangerous to parts of society, but to embrace that fact, and make the argument as to why it is necessary. The attacks queer people face today have a long history. For centuries, conservatives have been extremely successful in painting queer people as a threat to our society. This year, and this International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, it is up to us to change that frame. Only through destroying the very premise of that argument will we be able to break the cycle of repression.

Current political strategies fail in relation to the Queer community

Thiel 14 (“LGBT Politics, Queer Theory, and International Relations http://www.e-ir.info/2014/10/31/lgbt-politics-queer-theory-and-international-relations/ 10/31/14) Markus Thiel is assistant professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Florida International University, Miami & research associate at Miami-FIU’s EU Center of Excellence. He has published several articles in the Journal of European Integration, International Studies Encyclopedia, Perspectives on European Politics & Society, and others.

In reference to the practice of LGBT politics, the emergence of numerous Western-organized NGOs, but also locally hybridized LGBT movements with the significant publicity they generate – be it positive or negative – pluralizes transnational politics to a previously unknown degree, and chips away at the centrality of the state in regulating and protecting its citizens. In the same vein, the inclusion of LGBT individuals not as abject minorities, but as human rights carriers with inherent dignity and individual rights of expression, may transform the relationship between a minoritized citizenry and governmental authority. But queer theory, which contests many extant socio-political institutions such as mainstream liberalism, neoliberal capitalism, or regulatory citizenship, does not always align comfortably with the predominant political strategies advanced in transnational LGBT rights advocacy. The latter are viewed as conforming, heteronormative, stereotyping, and even (homo)nationalistic in their particular value-laden Western overtones. While queer tactics subvert assimilationist heteronormative policies, LGBT advocacy is aimed at inclusion within existing forms of representation, rather than the appreciation of difference, and thus often appears ‘de-queered’ for political purposes:¶ the anti-assimilationist character of queer activism and its breaking down of pre-existing categories would present a perhaps insurmountable challenge to human rights discourse, which requires stable categories and, given opposition to anything perceived as a claim for ‘special rights’, an emphasis on the similarities between people regardless of their sexuality and the ‘normality’ of LGBT people (Sheill 2009, 56).¶ Tensions between assimilationist-inclusive and transgressive queer approaches in the international policy domain should, however, not be suppressed, as they reflect a pluralist social reality and signify the need to rethink simplistic IR epistemologies and analytical approaches. Political tensions in the ‘real world’ should prompt the queer IR theorist to question established conceptions of governance. To illustrate, in my own work I use the EU’s justification of sexual non-discrimination on neoliberal market policies to highlight the ambiguous positioning of the EU when advocating limited equality provisions in its complex multi-level governance system (Thiel, in Picq & Thiel 2015). I argue that the dominance of neoliberalism as the EU’s raison d’etre limits the rights attainment of LGBT individuals because it restricts alternative critical views contending that rights are accorded only partially in the absence of universal social justice and broader human and social rights. It also problematizes the implicit cooptation of NGO’s by the EU when accepting funds and cooperating with a supranational system that is at least partially responsible for the retrenchment of national welfare policies – and this is based on supposed technocratic policies that are shielded from political accountability. Such commodification of rights in itself is problematic, yet cannot be politicized in a system in which socio-economic policy is protected by its supposed non-political regulatory nature reminiscent of Foucault’s power-knowledge linkage. The feminist contribution to IR highlights uneven gendered power relations, but a critical IPE that merges concerns with structural injustice with the thoughtful critique of Queer Theory’s view on state-economy relations and civil society adds profound insights. And this is not only in the application of critical theory, but also of queer theoretical tenets such as taking seriously the distinct positionality of actors, the inherent normative content of supposed technocratic politics, and the ambiguous outcomes of political action.¶ Possible Futures for LGBT Perspectives and Queer IR Scholarship¶ The recent increase in IR scholarship infused with queer thinking evidences that more rigorous interrogations of the impact of LGBT issues in international politics have begun to be successfully answered. Reflecting on the possible futures of LGBT advocacy and queer research, there are various critical aspects to consider: the progress of such strategic politics is mainly limited to the West, and evokes domestic hetero- and homonormative and international (homo)colonialist contentions. This becomes particularly apparent when powerful transnational NGOs, such as the International Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) or international organizations such as the UN, the World Bank, and the EU, advocate reforms in countries while not realizing that their explicit LGBT support accentuates the politicization of those minorities. LGBT politics and queer IR research can inspire and parallel each other as long as sexual advocacy politics does not fall prey to overly assimilationist or patronizing politics. If predominantly gay and lesbian rights such as marriage and adoption equality are aimed for, while transgender individuals are still lacking healthcare access or protection from hate-crimes, can one speak of true equality? And if the ‘normalization’ of sexualities into consuming, depoliticized constituencies leads to a weakening of alternative, critical models of socio-political coexistence and appreciation of difference, what effects does this have on LGBT emancipation?