It seems like there’s two frameworks for what the queer community is and how it functions: the oppression model and the possibility model.
The oppression model says people are queer because they are oppressed for certain behaviors and that oppression takes a certain form. It says that the queer community was formed specifically to respond to a certain form of oppression. The activism in this model tends to focus on specific actions to benefit specific groups, which means that priorities must be made for who is prioritized over whom.
Under this model, you need receipts to prove that you belong. There is gatekeeping because the main function is to separate the oppressed from the oppressors and give the oppressed resources to fight the oppressors, as well as to provide spaces entirely free of out-group members. It empowers those who are best represented to act as gatekeepers, deciding who does and doesn’t belong. This provides what I am sure is a profound sense of safety to in-group members. It also means that those who cannot produce those receipts – including many gnc, m-spec, and a-spec people – are entirely excluded.
The possibility model says that people are queer because they embrace gender and interpersonal structures that run counter to the mainstream. Under this model, the boundaries of the community are nebulous and include people who aren’t necessarily directly harmed but who feel a disconnect and conflict between their internal sense of who they are and what society dictates as proper self-expression and behavior.
Under this model, receipts are not required, just a sense that your personal identity runs counter to what the mainstream accepts and acknowledges. There is activism under this model, but the activism tends to focus on changing the culture to make room for all possibilities, not on championing for one specific group or another. Gatekeeping cannot coexist with this model, because of the nebulous and ever-changing nature of self-definition.
Clearly, I favor the latter model. But the point of this post isn’t to raise one above another. It’s to point out that the fracturing of the queer community seems to come down to which model an individual has accepted. Which is why arguments on one side often fall on deaf ears on the other side. We literally don’t want the same things.
I honestly don’t know how to bridge this divide, but I imagine it has to do with pulling back from these intra-community flights to figure out what we are actually trying to accomplish. If your goal is to make a safe place for lesbians, for example, it makes sense to exclude non-lesbians. And it may also make sense to define what a lesbian is, so that it is easier to make that determination. But if you’re looking to actually achieve cultural acceptance for non-straight individuals, I cannot understand how it benefits anyone to keep throwing different groups under the bus.
I’m trans. During the gay marriage fight, I was told time and time again that this had to come first, before the community addressed my issues. Well, we have gay marriage now. And what did it do for the trans community? It redirected queerphobes’ energy onto us, in the form of bathroom bills. Conservatives know they can’t challenge gay marriage anymore, so they’re going after more vulnerable parts of the community.
Except that these groups hate all queer people, not just trans people. And when gay people tacitly allow the rest of the community to be demonized, that is creating space to maintain hatred for the whole community. Because queerphobes don’t care how someone identifies. They hate anyone that is non-straight. So saying that it’s ok to hate certain parts of the community is really just maintaining hatred for the whole of the community.
So what are you trying to accomplish? A temporary sense of safety that only encompasses those who can and will provide receipts for others – information nobody should ever have to divulge – or a true cultural change that will make the world safer for everyone, not just those who belong to the in-group?
This is an important time. We need to come together to push for full equality – and maybe it’s just me, but I don’t know how we can do that when we’re still distracted by who is and is not allowed to belong.
Because I’ve known a lot of straight people. Even some who could claim queerness if they wanted to. But guess what? People don’t do that. Maybe online, because you can be anyone online, but not in the real world. Who is going to increase their chances of death if they don’t have to?
So maybe we can shift our energy from hypothetical out-group members infiltrating our groups – as if allies weren’t allowed anyway – and focus on, you know, not dying.
[ And no, I will not stop using “queer”. I’ve been using it for two decades without issue and I’m not going to stop just because it’s suddenly considered a slur. If you don’t like that word, there are many many extensions out there to prevent you from ever seeing it. ]
