LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back

On Resistance

In the context of rising Christian Nationalist fascism in this country with queer people as primary political targets, I wish I could say that LGBTQIA+ liberation is guaranteed to prevail. In the long run—the very long run—I suppose that I do believe that our liberation will occur. But within the scope of years, that isn’t something I am prepared to assert. They are coming for our rights, even though we have not yet secured them. They are coming for our health even though our flourishing is no threat to their own. And I can not assert that they will not succeed in doing us great harm. They may prove to be the more powerful. There are more of them after all.

But I can guarantee that we will not go down quietly. We will resist each step of way down. It is in the interest of our oppressors for us to quietly acquiesce to the erosion of our rights and the diminishment of our dignity; oppressors hate for their cruelty to look like oppression. They will want to frame their attacks on queer liberation as “common sense” as defense of some group or other that they will falsely frame as somehow disadvantaged by our liberation. We will not let them. We will—we must—go toe-to-toe with each attempt to chip away at us.

We will make each attack on our rights into a fight—a slog—first because each and every one of our rights is deserving of our full effort in its defense. Every right of every queer person is basic and human and its loss represents a loss of the degree to which we will be able to exist as full persons in society. Each diminished right (whether not yet guaranteed or once affirmed and now denied) is a statement to the world that our existence is less valid than is the existence of our allosexual, cisgender, or straight siblings, sisters, and brothers and such a statement is, of necessity, intolerable to any decent mind.

And second, we will make each attack on our rights into a fight because each attack must become an indelible mark in our nation’s consciousness. Our oppressors will want to take away our rights on one day and have the majority of this country wake up the next without knowing that anything has changed. We cannot allow that. We must learn to bleed more publicly, more loudly. We will make this country take note of every time they come for us so that with each step against us an unsettled public with think more urgently “why can’t they just let those queer people alone?”.

You see what is, one one level, a great political weakness of our community is, on another level one of our greatest political strengths: we are everywhere. It is in the nature of queerness that we are born into families that are often not otherwise queer. For that reason it is harder for us to find and develop communities of solidarity and we are too often not raised with any clear understanding of the ways that our society has built itself in opposition to our existence. Certainly this is a political weakness relative to some other marginalized communities. But it is a weakness we are beginning to account and correct for through awareness building campaigns, affinity groups like gender and sexuality alliances, and through the development of online communities which allow for communities which are diasporic in origin to find, nurture, and collaborate with one another.

And at the same time this dispersed and diasporic nature of our community existence is a political strength. Despite our lower numbers, many many straight, cis, and allo people know us simply because we are their children, their siblings, their schoolmates. We are born into their families and raised alongside them. Some of them are our children and our grandchildren, our nieces, niblings, and nephews. It is therefore harder for them to ignore us, to be ignorant of what is happening to us, or to convince themselves that our concerns are anything but real. We have their attention because we are already part of their communities. And a truth that we must hold on to is that, at the end of the day, nobody wants to think of themself as a villain.

Whatever attacks on us our future may hold what we have power over is the intensity of resistance we will put up against each and every attack on our rights, on our dignity, on our humanity. And we will resist, and we will be loud. We will not go down quietly. We will not go back. When the hit us we will block; when they leave an opening, we will push back; when they cut us, we will bleed on them. We will not go back.

So what can you do?

• Frist, today, now, whether you are queer or straight, contact your congressperson and your senators and tell that that you will absolutely not tolerate any backpedaling on LGBTQIA+ issues and that if they fail to stand up against attacks on LGBTQIA+ rights then you will take your vote elsewhere in the next election either by working to primary them, by refusing to vote for them, or by supporting a third-party challenger. You can use this search function to quickly identify and contact your representatives.

• Second, look for every opportunity to show up. Don’t let a queerphobic regime take any action without your opposition. Whether your representative is a republican or a democrat or an independent, they shouldn’t be able to cut a ribbon or accept an award or announce a policy without being asked what they are doing to protect queer rights.

• Third, “bleed loudly” and amplify the sound of queer suffering. As they work to hurt us in silence and pressure the media to acquiesce, use every platform you have to overwhelm the public’s awareness with the harm that is being done to queer people. Follow queer folx on social media and make a particular point to follow queer journalists. Assigned Media, Erin in the Morning, and Translash Media are three places to start but there are many many more. If you are able, support them financially but make a point to follow them and to share their stories as they document the attacks on queer rights and queer lives.

• Fourth connect to a queer community or organization and contribute your time, energy, and other resources to protecting and learning from the queer people in your immediate area.

This essay is one of many that share it’s title which will be posted today as a part of Julia Serano’s Campaign in support of queer rights moving forward. You can find here original essay including a fuller list or resources and recommendations there.

LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back