International Socialists

The history of oppression is lengthy and extremely varied in form, style, and content. That much is clear. Our understanding of oppression in our everyday lives, and where this comes from, is perhaps less obvious to many. Consider the experience of "queer" individuals in contemporary Aotearoa. I give it the qualification "queer" because the word needs be recognised for what it is: a random identity, a created term. We could equally easily speak of gay, or same gender oriented persons, to use any one of several prejudiced and inadequate ruling class labels. Identity politics are problematic precisely because they make sexuality a person's primary social affiliation, rather than asking the questions of what you do, where you do it, and who tells you to do it (if anyone).

 

This isn't to suggest that sex is apolitical, but rather that the situations surrounding it are much more complex. As revolutionaries involved in the fight against hatred we see the liberation movement as central to the wider political struggle. More importantly, ours is a significant and increasingly vocal element, both as activists and as ex-victims. Queers have been stigmatised, marginalised, and more often than not made the victims of violence, whether it's committed directly, or indirectly through the socialised language of aggressive capitalist ideology.

 

What constitutes this process? In the first place, it's derived from the sense of isolation capitalism engenders and thrives on. As theory, it's summed up nicely in Marx's understanding of alienation which states that organised capital oppresses communities and individuals by separating them from direct ownership of the means of production. In practice, the atomisation and competition that results from this sets people at each other's throats, in all kinds of different ways (just take a good look around you next time you're downtown).

 

At the same time, the exploitative nature of the system means people are evaluated only according to their productive potential, or labour value. In terms of sex and gender, this makes you cannon fodder, or cheap labour, or a captive market of consumers, and probably all three. In other words, who you fuck (and how you do it) is an important issue for the capitalist class, because it's a tangible, material matter that's going to affect profit margins, sooner or later.

 

How do they control the wildcard of human sexuality? By demonising sexuality through religion and through the conscious promotion of images of "appropriate" gender-determined behaviour, or by giving us preordained images of "queerness" - the camp, weak, pet-gay of women's shows or the "butch" mannish lesbian. These are false and insulting stereotypes, and are only a few of the more common methods of social manipulation. Sounding self-indulgent? Well, not really - the way in which similar aspects of capitalist ideology have been used to specifically oppress women has been observed and fought against since the first days of the revolutionary socialist movement.

 

Its significance for queers is perhaps more recent, which is partly due to the relatively low profile of the liberation struggle. At the same time, a truly materialist critique that explains the nature of this oppression doesn't feature prominently in contemporary queer activism. Tendencies to "assimilate" (whatever that means) can't really tackle the subject, because in the end they don't ask the right questions, and they too readily accept the existing order as basically valid. The assumption made is that homophobia simply rises out of a cultural perspective (whatever one of those looks like) and fails to describe social conditions and the manner in which environment determines consciousness.

 

As for my ability to co-exist in any legal sense (coming down to property!) - so what if a bunch of asset-mining, blandly reformist liberals can draft a piece of legislation (to be passed and protected by racist, sexist institutions like Parliament and the courts) informing us of our right to love whoever we choose (and congratulate themselves about it?) Who the fuck are they to claim to guard my freedom while in the same breath upholding the right of corporations to screw over workers, rape the environment, and lust for American dollars? It takes an essentially vicious State to bring about one of the highest incidents of youth suicide in the world. This kind of harvest isn't an accident, and it isn't a situation that your local white male in Parliament is capable of solving. It's going to take a lot more to end the violence and the sadness perpetuated by the obscenity that is capitalism.

 

"Tolerance" campaigns and staying silent for a day have clearly failed miserably as tactics in the struggle to liberate Aotearoa's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered communities. Despite the ability of "Will & Grace" types to live ostensibly "liberated" - and fucking privileged - lifestyles, for the rest of us day-to-day life as a queer in Aotearoa still means bashings, harassment and bigotry.

 

We're not going to convince an intolerant society to tolerate us by being politely silent, politely passive. It's time for us to bash back. The next time the Christian Right try to spread their vicious anti-queer trash in our city we're going to be there, closing their meeting down. And as socialists, we don't think it's good enough for only our queer members to be involved in the struggle against homophobia. We in the International Socialists expect all our members, queer or straight, women or men, to get militant and angry in the campaign to eradicate homophobia from the face of the earth!

 

History has shown that we're at our most effective when all people oppressed by the capitalist class have come together, be they workers, women, queers, or people who are a combination of all three. For instance, in 1978 the first Gay Pride march in Sydney was attacked by police outside a building site. The builders' labourers rushed to the defence of the queers by turning the hoses used for concrete pours onto the police. Builders' labourers are not a group that most people would expect to have liberal attitudes towards homosexuality, but in New South Wales in the 1970s they were riding a wave of militancy that had turned them from people popularly presented as stupid into a well paid and powerful section of workers. They had won improved conditions for themselves and had gained the confidence to exert their new found industrial strength over broader social questions.

 

To rebuild this kind of attitude today demands a true understanding of the nature of the struggle and society, and requires us all to recognise that in the end there's really only one solution - the self emancipation of all oppressed workers, and the creation of a truly classless world. To end the persecution, we need to make the homophobes afraid. Don't get hurt, get organised!