I do not think there has ever been a greater disdain in my heart than for Western LGBTQ+ people who decided -- for whatever reason -- to join the United States Armed Forces.
There is much to be said about how the community in the United States has been co-opted to forward the aims of Western hegemony and imperialist interventionism; the justification of the crimes of the parasite through such craven opportunism; suppressing voices of liberation in the community, reinforcing the Western constructs of racism and exclusionism and marginalization in all quarters; putting its voice, through collaborationist elements, at the service of the genocidaires and plunderers of the United States, or France, or Britain, of the Zionist Entity. Many better people on this site and beyond have already said it better than me! And may many more continue to do so still!
There has always been that key question. What does the Western queer community expect us in the Third World to do, now? Bow our heads? Follow your lead, and silence ourselves because you are unwilling to speak for us, and because you are so willing to compromise with the murderers of our nations? Is solidarity in the face of the oppressor a one-way street? Is it enough for us to come to your defense, to try to understand your circumstances, but then for us to be abandoned as a campaign concern in the conventions and caucuses of the West's liberal parties?
What should we do now, to free ourselves? Tolerate the American yoke, the American military bases, the American dehumanization, the American occupations, the American maneuverings, while we wait for you to come to a decision? Does it even meaningfully matter to such people in the United States, and in the rest of the Western world, that queer people are starving, underemployed, underpaid, and still being beaten and killed because of the foulness which still persists in the Philippines and in other nations? Does it even matter that queer people are being butchered, too, in Palestine and in Yemen? Or in the thousand other battlefields on which America attempts to save its dying empire?
Or can our suffering wait? That is what it feels like. That is what it has always felt like. To wait on the word of the White liberal for an end to our suffering. There is no solidarity in this, there is no joining of hands with your friends abroad who are still dying -- just a more "decent" form of enslavement. Please, if you wish to talk about solidarity, don't leave us to die.
Or worse yet, participate in our oppression. I suppose I had to transition back to that somehow.
You may wash your hands like Pontius Pilate and say you do not participate in the work of occupation. That you have not touched a soul. That you train to fight, or put your hands to paperwork or to repair. That you had no choice if you wanted your benefits and scholarships. That you are somehow part of a structure and yet are not responsible for its consequences. But what is the ultimate aim of all the logistical, political, and material dedication to the U.S. military which America has directed? You know by now that it is not to help anyone but America itself. There is little assistance rendered in the American levelling of cities, and the occupation of countries, and Western imposition on nations trying to find their way in the world. That is not what they are there for -- why do you think you guard so many corporate installations, why local infrastructure is made so reliant on American services, why the "bringers of civilization" are Western investors and the glory of finance capital on poor nations. But what bearing does that have on queer people?
You tell me. You tell me why the rhetoric of Loud and Proud has been spread to service in the U.S. military. You tell me why you think it is a valid path. You tell me why you think, too, that America is your best chance for recognition or prosperity.
But do you think a military responsible for enforcing the structural oppression we face here liberates us?
Do you think an army of men like that responsible for the death of women like Jennifer Laude -- a Filipina trans woman murdered by an American serviceman who solicited her services as a sex worker, who faced little consequences and utilized that gay panic defense they love so much -- is interested in our rights for anything else but recruitment, and the American image of the false Burgfrieden nationalist social-peace?
Do you think a military and its requisite military-industrial complex, that renders training and assistance to the armies of the genocidal Zionist Entity and a myriad right-authoritarian governments, that slaughter thousands for you and also enforce pogroms and discrimination against us, is helping the world's queer community!?
This is your armed forces. This is quite literally what you signed up for. Do not be fools. Do not prevaricate. And do not even for a second think that we will forgive you for that.
Why did you join the army of the Occupier? Did you expect us to embrace you without reservation, when you have murdered and assisted in the murder of so many of our kin, and so many innocents across the world?
I thank the comrades who, in the imperial core and the colonized world, have exposed this boundless soullessness. I am not confident enough in my knowledge of, say, theory or circumstance to say anything more -- for now.
I have far simpler things to say. To ask. To shout. As a Filipina, as a transgender woman, whatever.
These apologists are not helping us.
You are killing us.
May we all realize that before it is too late, if not the Americans. Our liberation comes from our own struggle.
Forward, queer people of the colonized world, of oppressed peoples, and of the international working class.
America will not save us. It has already told us time and time again than it would rather butcher us than free us -- and that is still our truth.
