Physician, know thy own queer history
Iāve come to suspect that a lot of LGBTQ+ discourse these days is conservative Protestantism with a gay hat because itās pushed by people who literally are conservative gay Protestants whose worldview hasnāt been broadened beyond ānow you can have 2.5 kids in a house in the suburbsā¦ with a spouse of the same gender.ā
My girlfriend Marna has been a queer activist since the late 80s. Sheās told me about the incredible deliberation and debates LGBTQ+ activists had, in the late 90s and early 00s as the community began to see past the AIDS crisis and immediate goals of āsurviving a plagueā and āburying our dead.ā There were a lot of things we wanted to achieve, but we had to decide how to allocate our scarce reserves of money, labour, publicity, and public goodwiil. Those were the discussions that decided the next big goals weād pursue were same-sex marriage equality and legal recognition of medical gender transition.
From hearing her tell it, it seems like it was actually a wrenching decision, because it absolutely left a lot of people in the dust. A lot of people, her included, had broad agendas based on sexual freedom and the rights of people to do whatever they wanted with their bodies and consenting partnersāand they agreed to put their broader concerns aside and drill down, very specifically, onto the rights of cis gays and lesbians to marry, and the ability to legally change your sex and gender.
As a political tactic it was terrifically effective. In less than two decades, public opinion in many countries has totally reversed on gay marriage, and weāve won some truly enormous legal landmarks. Gender transition has entered public consciousness and the first landmark battles allowing people to define their own gender have been won. Marriage equality means that husbands and wives are protected from being banned from their dying spouseās bedside, being forcibly separated from their children, or not being recognized as an important part of their spouseās life.
The LGBTQ+ community knew they were taking a gamble, focusing so exclusively on marriage equality, and trans activists knew that they wouldnāt be able to achieve anything else until theyād gotten basic medical transition recognized. By and large, prioritizing things this way paid off. But they knew going in that there would be costsāand weāre reaping them.
Activists of 20 years ago chose to sideline and diminish efforts to blur and abolish the gender binary. Efforts to promote alternative family structures, including polyamorous families and non-sexual bonds between non-related adults. Efforts to fight the Christian cultural message that sex is dirty, sinful, bad, and in need of containment. Efforts to promote sexual pleasure as a positive good.
Those efforts have been going on for the last 20 years, but theyāre marginalizedāactivists who had to decide where their finite time, money, publicity, and social capital went literally sat in committee meetings and said, āMarriage equality is our top priority. Legal gender transition is our top priority. Everything else will have to wait.ā
This happened especially because sex education, sex positivity, and youth outreach were incredibly dangerous areas. Our enemies have been saying for years that all LGBTQ+ people are pedophiles, perverts, seeking to corrupt and recruit children to our cause; anyone trying to teach children basic facts about how to avoid disease, whatās happening to their own bodies, or what possibilities they have for identity and orientation, risks having their name, career, and life ruined. As a sex educator in the 90s, Marna had to tell teenagers, āI canāt answer your questions about safe sex now. Come back when you turn 18.ā
So kids who grew up being told that girls and boys are different and ought to lead different lives, and sex is dangerous and sinful and gross, and you definitely shouldnāt want sex UNTIL you get married to your One True Love, only had that message tweaked a little bit. Now you can cross the floor from the Girl Side to the Boy Side or vice-versa. Now your One True Love doesnāt have to be a different gender from you. But those kids could survive with the rest of their worldview relatively intact. And I think thatās what weāre seeing in fandom, with an emphasis on āpureā OTP ships, on only including LGBT+ identities that use crisp, clear gender binaries and result in nuclear family life. The rest of those cultural messages about sex and love remain: menās and womenās worlds are and should be different, āimpureā sex degrades and defiles you, sexual urges that do not contribute to your One True Love and family life should be repressed, shamed, or destroyed, and sexual thoughts are every bit as bad as acting on them.
This isnāt because kids today are bad or stupid. Itās because as a community, we had to decide where our effort was going, and now we need to pay down the debt weāve racked up over years of prioritizing marriage equality and legal trans recognition over sex positivity, sex education, and deconstructing gender.
TERFs, SWERFs, exclusionists, and transmedicalists have stolen a march over liberal queers because theyāre doing the work to educate youth. While liberal queers have been staging protests and lobbying politicians, half a dozen of my undergraduate professors were radical feminists. Communities of exclusionists and anti-sex activists have honed their expertise at engaging teenagers with their ideas and theories. Theyāre the ones writing the FAQs, answering the asks, and doing the groundwork of saying, āHere is a basic framework of sexual ethics for you to follow.ā
If we want to win back the culture wars, we have to step up our own efforts. Go back to the sex educators and gender activists whose good work has been ignored or underfunded for all this time and support them. Let major LGBTQ+ activist organizations know that their work so far is very nice, but itās time to renew our focus on youth outreach and mentoring young activists. Brainstorm a way to help angry, isolated, disenfranchised young people form communities based around positive action and a sense of belonging. Get into mentorship or education yourself. Help us pivot as a community, to reach out to the kids who have obviously been underserved.
People doing the good work who need our support:
San Francisco Sex Information
Sex & U
Scarleteen
Sexplanations
Making Queer History
We won a few battles. Thatās nice. But now it doesnāt serve us to whine that theyāre not all won. Weāve still got work to do.
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