Queers Against Queers

 My longtime friend recently complained recently, "Anti-gay gays.  I'm so sick of them."  Both he and I, and of course many others, are aware that sometimes it is our own people who are our worst enemies, are those very ones who are damaging and destroying our lives in multiple ways.

And right now in the United States we are in the midst of a counterrevolution orchestrated by many anti-gay gays and carried out naively by many anti-gay gays who have been molded into being footservants of this counterrevolution. 

 

  Peter Thiel

In the background, in the halls of power, there have been the Allan Blooms, the Roy Cohns, the many Straussian cult closet cases, and now we have had also Larry Craig, Peter Thiel, and new products of counterrevolutionary conspiracy such as "Gays Against Groomers".  

Of course, there are also the arguably millions of closet cases who choose to tell lies, deliver anti-gay abuse, and hide in fear while letting the rest of us take all of the sexual assault levelled at us constantly.  This self-serving social cadre obviously has a significant impact on society, perpetuating its lies and  attendant abuses. 

What should we do when our own are the ones damaging and destroying our lives?

When I think of this question, and I have thought of it for some time now out of necessity, I think of the revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre during Year II  (1793-1794) of the French Revolution.  Robespierre, evidently homosexual himself despite bizarre yet typical heterosexist interpretations of he man, became ill around February of 1794, during what would be the final winter of his life, and during a time when the French Revolution was at full speed, with the left in full power. 

When Robespierre returned to health and to active participation in the revolutionary government, he came to realize that his former personal friends and close fellow compatriots were working against the Revolution and would bring it down if they were not stopped.  Robespierre was greatly consternated over this matter, and reluctant to accuse his former friends, including his high school friend Camille Desmoulins.  Robespierre delayed and dithered until the danger seemed too great and the evidence too convincing to ignore the problem.

Beginning in March 1794, the accusation of many of Robespierre's former friends and allies began, with Saint-Just, also very evidently gay, expressing in his work Fragments of Republican Institutions the pain and regret and despair of the situation. 

This look at Robespierre and his dilemma is relevant to today because the unity of the LGBT community, like the unity of the French Revolutionaries, has been broken. The question around this break is largely a question of whether or not the gay community is revolutionary or counterrevolutionary, though it is not often framed in these terms, since the sabotage of an accurate narrative of what is happening in our LGBT/Queer community has been perpetrated by the counterrevolutionaries themselves and has obfuscated a revolutionary discourse.

For a long time I, as a revolutionary queer, held the position that unity was above all, and that we could not afford to go after our own, work against them, or see them as enemies.   I pondered this situation with disappointment and much angst, with uncertainty,  and with true pain in my heart.  I discussed the situation with many. In some of these discussions my boyfriend at the time would consistently tell me that we were going to have to go after the anti-gay gays; that otherwise, they could and would destroy us by lying and maligning our identities, freedoms, social position, and life possibilities. 

                                                                                   Maximilien Robespierre

Like Robespierre, I anguished over this dilemma, but finally changed my thinking about it, realizing that self-loathing gays were extremely dangerous to queer freedom and well-being, and that yes, we would have to go after them, stop them, and punish them, or we would stand to lose everything, as we indeed now do.

Much of what it means to be out and queer is due to the democratization of queer life, to the gay liberation movement, which had as a both a premise and goal that homosexuality and bisexuality and the then as yet unnamed as such trans identity were equalizing and unifying.  The fight for queer liberation was fought with an idea of equality in the ranks but also with an idea of the outcome being one of democratic freedom for LGBTQ persons.  

Some of the anti-gay gays are against this democratic form of queerness, working against queer liberation because they do not believe in equality.  

Some are against the movement because of self-loathing- because of the tendency for queers to turn outward hostility against us into inward hostility - hostility to ourselves and all of the perverse lies and interpretations such self-loathing must manufacture. 

It should not be surprising that such an element should exist, since the entirety of the Judaic religions, for example, as well as other religions such as Sikhism, are founded  in psychological problems having to do with sex and sexuality.  The cornerstone of the Judaic cults (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) is psychological mental illness having to do with sex and sexuality, which led these cults to problematize femaleness and promote a pinched, unwell, and pathological form of male power. 

Yet some anti-gay gays desire such power; some are overtly misogynistic.  And of course, many fall under the penumbra of Judaic religion, as adherents to a greater or lesser degree, despite the incompatibility of Judaic religion with queerness.  These types then have mixed loyalties, such as for example loyalty to Catholicism, which cause them to act against themselves and against their community. 

We all know denial - pretending to oneself that one is not what one actually is.  Some anti-gay gays can never accept reality. This non-acceptance can have different reasons.  Sometimes it is the unwillingness to accept the massive loss of social power that coming out brings along with it.  Sometimes it is the great fear of of abuse, denigration, and ill regard that coming out brings along with it.  Usually these two occur together, with the denial being rewarded with a lack of sexual abuse and a retention of power in the establishment, anti-gay social structure. 

But, a typology and psychological accounting of who these anti-gay gays are is not the main goal here, though it might be necessary and valuable.  

My aim here is to present a basic question of strategy in the war against queers. 

What do we do about anti-gay  gays and the massive damage they do to us and out movement? 

The practice of outing has been one element of a response to this question.  To out or not to out?

Attempts to counter what are seen as elitist behaviors within the gay community and its organizations, for example the elitism of white male gays as over, for example, trans persons of color, are another type of response to this question.

Yet another response has been to attempt understanding of those mostly closeted anti-gay gays, and to continue to attempt to include them in the conversation.  

Do we need a unified and clear strategy for dealing with anti-gay gays?  

One could argue, after all, that their actions are no different than those of straight anti-gay persons. 

However, the viciousness and depth of the actions of anti-gay gays can seem greater than that of straight persons who are against us, though a measure of such could be difficult. 

We at least need a basic attitude towards anti-gay gays, even before we or as we make strategy. 

My political experience has led me on a journey.  It is a journey that brought me eventually to the question at the center of this post:  the question of what position to take on anti-gay gays. 

The position that I was brought to was the political position of Robespierre in the middle of Year II of the French Revolution (about March 1794), and that of one camp of the community, and that is the position of treating anti-gay gays like enemies and not like part of us.  

I think that the word 'political' is important here.

At this stage of the movement, of history, of where queers are, I think that the queer community must act against anti-gay gays as a political expediency.  I think that we cannot afford to do otherwise - that anti-gay gays are too destructive and too dangerous. 

We can discuss who these anti-gay gays are, try to understand them, try to mitigate the social forces that create them, but we are in immediate and long-term political danger - ultimately of being annihilated in multiple ways.

This annihilation is and will be created and supported significantly by anti-gay gays, and they are leading the way to redefining queers out of existence. 

As a basic political position for building strategy, we must consider them our enemies.  

A gay man, an LGBT person, is not and cannot be a person who stands against themself on the basis of fear and lies while trying to destroy others of us.  Gay means something more than just the orientation as perhaps expressed privately.  'Gay' has a primary political  dimension, and we have defined ourselves democratically and honestly within the political realm. We cannot ignore that dimension. Anti-gay gays, anti-queer queers, anti-trans queers, are a serious danger to our community, to our well-being, and to our survival.  

 Modus Operandi

I just finished reading the book My Policeman by Bethan Roberts, the story, retold, of the homosexual relationship between E.M. Forster and a British policeman in the 1950's. In the story, the policeman is married to a woman while also being the lover of Forster, who was older, homosexual, and not married. The wife of the policeman is aware of her husband's other significant other fairly soon into the marriage and, as those who 'discover' homosexuality hidden behind compulsory heterosexuality will, she then reflects on past incidents and words and, with the truth known, these finally make more sense. 

After the policeman and Forster take a trip to Italy without the wife and come back dreamy and happy and talking about how magical the trip was, the wife of the policeman writes a letter to a superior of Forster, or the character that is like Forster, telling the supervisor that Forster is 'an invert' who has performed indecent acts and, of course, bringing children into the mix (don't they always?) accusing Forster of being indecent in front of children.  

This letter ultimately results in the ruination of the Forster character's life: the loss of his job, of his apartment, in his imprisonment, and in his forcibly being 'treated' by quacks.  

Later in life, after Forster is released, he suffers several strokes, and ends up being cared for by the wife and the policeman in their home. The wife who brought the ruination of Forster does most of his caretaking, spoon feeding him and changing his undergarments and such, thus doing a nice turn by Forster and the policeman.  In the story she claims to also genuinely like the Forster character, and to feel remorse.  

And isn't that the way it always is?  The exact way that heterosexuals always attack us? By doing something vicious and nasty and then turning around and doing something nice?  These two turns often occur in rapid succession, as when a vocal attack is made, followed by a compliment, or when money is given to an anti-gay religion, and then charity is given to queers.  They do not always occur in this order, though, with sometimes the kind or polite or benevolent act preceding, and the nasty attack following. 

It is actually unusual for heterosexuals to attack without some act of respect or kindness rolled in to the attack, assault, abuse, harassment, before, during, or after. 

That's it. The standard modus operandi of the heterosexual in its war on homosexual and all queer persons. A kind turn and a nasty turn.  

I write this because I do not know how many queers recognize this.  

It is not that I want to delve into or study the heterosexual mind - this is not something I advocate, since it would be an exercise in falsity and would be present the minutiae of something already itself both extremely minute and false, when considered as a part of reality. 

I write this as an intelligence brief in the service of a strategy to take down the heterosexual political regime.  

It should be remembered though that we are not fighting the same war as heterosexuals are fighting against us.  Our war and strategy had nothing to do with theirs, as far as our understanding and our goals. 

In that sense, understanding a modus operandi is a small part of the larger project, but a necessary one. 

Can You Help Me Find Tina?  

What is crystal methamphetamine (aka Tina) to the queer community?  

It is part of our reality.

This is an invitation to you, my brothers and sisters and those identified in trans- or non-gendered terms, to be real - to tell the truth about your lives to one another, relentlessly, and also to relentlessly refuse the trap and dead end of their lies - the trap of their mendacious discourse about our lives - the discourse that always tells the same story - the story that heterosexual life is to be emulated, that we should want marriage and families and ridiculous and creepy styles of self-presentation and all of their sad baggage. 

I need for you to tell the truth, and this telling the truth is essential to revolution.  The name of this essay is not in vain nor is it merely stylistic.  Finding Tina is finding the truth.  Your gay brothers are dying slowly, are checked out from reality because of their pain, or respoinding to it with desperate attempts to go somewhere else, because heterosexist life does not offer enough or the right things and offers a surfeit of the wrong ones. They are dying from H.I.V. infection because their methamphetamine use prevents them from taking care of themselves; they are wandering the streets and wandering through the interstices and alleys of our society, brain-damaged,  with speech impediments and cognitive impairment and diminution of attention due to the effects of methamphetamine.  They are the living dead whose mark is the capital T.

They are not to be cast aside.

They are us.

The addicts, the many methamphetamine addicts that comprise a significant part of us, they are an essential part of the truth of our lives and of our reality.  And yet, the regime and its queer adherents and rah rahs bury this and other essential and important elements of our reality by disfiguring them with delusions.  The ongoing crystal methamphetamine "Tina" epidemic among us, I will venture to say, is our real life. Tina is the truth.  Marriage is a lie.

 Our real lives and desires do not have much of anything to do with theirs, and this is the hard truth, the revolutionary truth.  I want to ask you to stop supporting those who demean us by their very existence and who want us to validate their mechanisms of abuse and control, mechanisms like marriage and the end of public sex and public sexual spaces.  Your queer comrades need you. The revolution needs you.   I need you to tell the truth of our existence.  I need your help.  Let me state again, and risk misinterpretation, that the truth of our lives is in many ways addiction to methamphetamine more than it is heteronormative desires like marriage or family, yet every day our reality, our discourse, our lives are being thoroughly buried by the regime, and this is why we must work to unbury our lives, to know them, to build from our reality from the truth.   

This seeking and finding and uncovering of the reality of queer lives is itself a type of revolutionary work, and it takes unity and concert.

Let’s work together.         

So, I ask again.  

Can you help me find Tina? 

 

 

 

From the Concepts Series

On the Colonization of Concepts:

Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, attempts to replace all democracy, including its superior forms, with liberal democracy, and she does this by building up a poor argument that has become a typical one, that the Nazi regime and the 'Stalin regime' can be grouped together as 'totalitarian', as despotic and dictatorial.

This argument is, among other things, subjectible to skepticism from those who feel the oppressions and falsities of liberal democracy.

Notwithstanding its pomposity and success, Arendt's theory of 'totalitarianism' with regard to the Soviet Union is really a reaction to Stalin's rightly saying 'no' to Zionism. One thing we can say is that, ironically, the reactions to Stalin's saying 'no' to Zionism have now themselves become the forces undermining liberal democracy from the anti-democratic direction. But that is another story.

And, Arendt's conflation of regime types and her anti-Stalinism are beside the point of the real narrative of a detrimental totality anyway.

I say 'detrimental' totality because totality itself is not necessarily detrimental but can actually be necessary and valuable to liberation and justice.

If we stick for a moment to the idea of a detrimental totality however, that is, to the idea of a detrimental totalitarianism, we should implicate much more correctly than the 'mass man' of totalitarian theory the heterosexual political regime and its adherents, and thereby perhaps rescue the term from its origins in Carl Schmitt, himself an anti-liberal loved by liberals, and thusly help bring the term 'totalitarianism' into a more correct and less mendacious narrative.

Why should right-wing heterosexuals like Arendt and Schmitt have anything to do with the idea of totalitarianism when they have so little to do with reality?

These fatuous oafs of heteronormativity who portray themselves as clever neologists sail along in boats that are false concepts riding over seas of false discourses.

However much this is the case, and all LGBT/Queer recognize the falsity of dominant discourses, the term 'totalitarianism' is valid in the heterosexual discourse at least in its abstraction and neutralization, in its general idea of something all-encompassing.

We can rescue, co-opt, and colonize the term and idea however, by first merely bringing it from irreality and misdescription into reality, into the reality of the totalizing nature of heteronormative desire.

Heterosexist desire is founded on the obviously false importance, false centrality, false necessity, and absurd valuation of heterosexual desire. This desire however, is as totalizing as it is false: it demands and commands that all of reality, and certainly all of desire, be forced into its falsity. All queers know this absurdity, the absurdity of living under something both falsely valued and total.

Even, however, if heteronormative desire is total, its forms and styles are not constant. Heterosexuals can jump on the bandwagons of 'free love' or 'marriage and family' as forms of heterosexuality without changing at all the totalizing nature of the regime of falsity that heterosexuality is.

Although Stalin did not "fabricate a structureless mass" as Arendt falsely claims (he merely stood up to Zionism, and this was outrageous to Zionists), the heterosexual regime, an actual structureless mass, keeps its power over, above, and beyond all of its specific iterations ("gay friendliness", "the extended family", "swinging", "a man and a woman"), and thus more properly fits the ideas of totality and totalitarianism. Its structurelessness lies in its total nature.

Heterosexual desire is total.

Under its totalitarian regime, queerness can only serve as its amusement, appendage, annoyance, or sometimes, when heterosexuals get either bored or charitable, as its neutralized challenge.

Totalitarianism is, as a concept, falsely conceived and falsely taught in universities far and wide in its Arendtian description. Its reality is buried in the actual and current totality itself, the totality that is the heterosexual political regime (of force, abuse, rule over, fraud, and other traditional political forms).

This is not an apology for Stalin, despite its having recently come to light that Stalin was involved in homosexual love triangles and in cross-dressing. It is rather more that we make outrageous demands of the heteroesexual regime.  These demands are not actually outrageous, but only seem so, because they, like everything else, are comprehended within a false reality of understanding.  

With that all in mind,  I demand that 'totalitarianism' be used henceforth in its proper form, as a description of the political regime that enforces heterosexual desire.

 

Thanks to Shifty, Lefty, and Scheistée De Leon for their comments and input on this blog entry.