When you go to LA Pride or whichever Pride this year please take a moment to remember the noncompliance, entrapment, hate crimes and police brutality that the gay liberation movement faced in the 50's and 60's and 70's and 80's out on through today. remember that before there was a 'gay rights' movement that catered to the political bottom line (a middle class ascribing white gay moderately conservative male) there were queers and drag and liberation and rejection of assimilation in favor of radically altering the hegemonic social institutions that capture us, assign us genders, police our sexualities and assimilate us to stop being queer so we can be good workers for capitalism!
Please remember it's not all about CORPORATIONS making money off of your struggle by treating you like the rest of their consumer/customers. Please remember it's not about that sheriff recruitment booth, and think of how many POC and queers are uncomfortable by the spectacle that has become Pride because of the constant thread of forced assimilation or celebration.
What have we become?! when do marginalized communities have enough people together or space to actually talk or even do something about the issues/oppressions they face? well i'll tell you, when we do have enough people to actually talk about the issues that face us we're drowned out by music, or programme, or symbolic marches. We're told to celebrate our tokens. As if there is not yet work to be done! as if our genders and sexualities aren't being policed! as if we don't continuously exclude TRANS folk from our spaces by erasing their struggle with all kinds of normativity! as if forced assimilation and the narrative of 'equality' really applies to ALL of us!
Please remember that 'rights' are only privileges when they can be selectively granted and taken away by the governmental and even social institutions that dominate our lives. and that privileges are not YOURS to hold onto, but a system to betray!
Some of us don't want to keep begging for the rights given out by this system built by white property owning puritan males; it wasn't written for us. it doesn't represent us. and we can never be represented by another, we want to determine our own lives!. we don't want tokenized space facilitated by friendly faced cops, we don't want what humynity people care to grant us with a vote or forced smiles and less gay bashing! we want to take it, to bash back! remember this as you celebrate, that we exist. that this conversation is unfolding and will continue to unfold. and just maybe, understand that these spaces will not go unagitated for long. LIBERATION NOT ASSIMILATION. Solidarity with all those who resist the commodification of our dissent and the rendering of our ongoing struggles into symbolism and consumerism.
