Global Social Movements

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Global Social Movements
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Week 7A. Case Study I. Gay/Lesbian/Queer The
Politics of Sexuality.
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I. Introduction

• 1. Focus on emergence of the modern gay and
  lesbian movement.
• 2. An example of politics of identity/ culture/
  oppression.
• 3. Readings on gay/ lesbian/ queer politics
• M. Blasius S. Phelan (1997) We Are Everywhere
  (Routledge)
• A. Jagose, Queer Theory (1996) (Melb. UP)

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Homophile Activism 1850-1950

• 1. The limits of liberal toleration
• (i) Liberal rights as abstract/ formal
• (ii) Originally rights of male, property-owning
  Protestants
• (iii) No rights for women
• (iv) No rights for homosexual people

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2. Homophile activism 1850-1950

• (i) against religious moralism homosexuality
  not a sin
• (ii) for scientific understanding not a
  disease
• (iii) for legal toleration not a crime

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3. Some pioneering individuals campaigners,
writers, artists
J. A. Symonds
Magnus Hirschfeld
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4. Campaigning organisations

• Germany Scientific-humanitarian Committee
  (1897-1933)
• USA Mattachine Society, (1951)
• Sisters of Bilitis (USA from 1955)

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5. Conservatism of homophile politics
(increasing over time)

• (i) low profile and respectable
• (ii) discreet persuasion of the elite
• (iii) not a mass movement
• (iv) philanthropic and apologetic rather than
  assertive

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III. The Politics of Gay Liberation after
Stonewall (1969)
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1. Historical context and influence

• (i) Black civil rights movement from oppression
  to pride
• (ii) New Left and opposition to Vietnam War
  liberation
• (iii) counter-culture sexual openness

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2. The ideology of gay liberation

• (i) radical transformation of individual and
  society cf. revolutionary Marxism
• (ii) homophobia as cultural oppression cf.
  Black power
• (iii) role of gender and patriarchy cf.
  second-wave feminism
• (iv) against family and marriage
• (v) liberation of polymorphous perversity cf.
  Freud, Essays on Sexuality

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3. Politics of identity and language

• (i) against homosexual and (then) derogatory
  terms like queer
• (ii) positive identity of gay, lesbian as an
  aspect of pride
• (iii) strategic and transitional identity, not
  essentialist

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4. Political practice of gay liberation

• (i) coming out openness about sexuality
• (ii) consciousness raising towards pride
• (iii) (mostly) non-violent direct action
• demonstrations, publicity, education, mutual-help
• (iv) symbolic challenge
• (v) Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

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IV. Emergence of Gay and Lesbian as Ethnic
Identities
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1. Emergence of radical lesbianism as an
identity

• (i) gay male dominance
• (ii) feminist homophobia (1970s).
• (iii) i.e. cross-cutting forms of oppression/
  doubly oppressed.

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2. Shift to ethnic politics of identity

• (i) identities bisexual, transvestite,
  transsexual, intermediate sex GLBTQ
• (ii) permanent or essential (not strategic)
  communities and identities
• (iii) legal reforms rather than sexual revolution
• (iv) integration, acceptance, rights and equality
  as goals

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V. Queer Theory and Politics after AIDS
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1. Queer theory influenced by Foucault and
poststructuralism

• (i) critique of the subject and identity
• (ii) social construction of sexuality and
  sexualities
• (iii) queer as
• less an identity than a critique of identity
  (Jagose, p. 131)

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2. Themes of queer theory and politics

• (i) suspicion of identity as fixed or essential
  category
• (ii) no natural sexuality but socially
  constructed
• (iii) neither revolutionary transformation nor
  reformism
• (iv) politics of radical transgression

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3. Criticisms and limitations of queer politics

• (i) false gender neutrality as renewal of male
  dominance?
• (ii) rocking the boat of ethnic identity
  politics?
• (iii) retreat from politics to discursive or
  theoretical contestation?