A few days ago, I stumbled upon a video by Habibitch (in French). Even though I agree mostly with their point of view, it triggered me for a simple reason: I’ve never had a gay/pan/queer enough passing to be accepted in those communities, and basically, this video is just putting forward the idea (through an interpretation of political materialism that I don’t share) that because of that, I shouldn’t claim those identities for myself.
I am a very privileged person. I am a man, white, cisgender, relatively rich (because I can work in domains that provides a good salary), I have a good health and no handicap, I am slim and neither old or young. I have founded a family with a cisgender woman, with whom I have a young child. We live the 3 of us in Ireland after having emigrated from Belgium. Sometimes I paint my nails and even if my gender passing was the source of light « gay » bullying during teenage, it’s barely ever noticed today. I don’t suffer any consequences from queer oppression. But even so, I sometimes introduce myself as such, as an easy umbrella term.
Because I am radical. I am so angry at the state of the world, the fascism that has taken hold in our « democratic » societies, with the support of the so-called left (and the right of course, as it has always done), the violence it inflicts on the most vulnerable, on the minorities, on about everyone in fact, except the most dominants (like myself). From my experience, I am more radical than the average queer person, fuelled by an inner rage that has always been part of me (some suggested that it could stem from undiagnosed ASD, another association that needs to be treaded carefully). I educate myself through reading (such as Abolir la Famille, Trou Noir, works from Paul B. Preciado, Manifeste contre la normalisation gay, works from Valerie Rey-Robert,…). I avoid feeding any feud that fractures the LGBT+ community, because it’s often not my place to « choose a side ». But also because I believe sorority/fraternity/adelphity is key in building strong movements, and what’s lacking in current LGBT+ movements (in big part because of its political recuperation by the far-right).
This text isn’t really a rebuttal of Habibitch video. But a reflexion on the emotions it can generate on a part of the LGBT+ people who feel they don’t belong in the community. And often, it’s just based on how you look, on your passing. It’s particularly strong on people outside the binary, whether on sexual orientation or gender. Often, those identifying as such don’t look like queer people, they might have a nested relationship that looks heterosexual and they often dress, talk, walk like cis people. Therefore they definitely benefit of privileges from the heteropatriarchy. It might be a good enough reason to exclude them from the political field of queer militantism. But in doing so, you can’t expect that the persons within that nested relationship don’t feel like they are excluded not only from their political organization but also from their identity.
You could argue that it’s a price we should be ready to pay in order to protect the political action of queer groups. But unfortunately – and here I take the risk to rely on a « slippery slope » fallacy – I do feel that those exclusions can only lead to a more fractured and less powerful queer movement in the end. We see it happening, for example in the trans* community, with transmedicalism. From my basic understanding, some trans* people who have undergone medical treatment to transition argue that people who haven’t transitioned don’t experience the same discrimination they do (which is definitely true) and shouldn’t be allowed to invade the trans* identity, therefore requesting to recognize the separation between « transexual » from « transgender ». This is again targeting a lot of genderfluid/non-binary trans* people. In that case, it is easy to see how much damage it can make to marginalized people within the community and be received as a violent attack on their identity. It’s also possible to link this to how transidentity has been approached in the past by cis people: being trans meant living with very strong gender dysphoria for a prolonged period, making huge effort to fit into the other gender identity (passing in a way that cis people were judging the right way) and willing to go through very invasive medical treatment. If you weren’t as such, you weren’t trans. It’s quite easy to argue that transmedicalism is importing the cishet view on transidentiy within the community, which might not be desirable.
It is, however, very similar to the argument Habibitch makes in their video. If you don’t experience the same material discrimination as other queer couple, you shouldn’t take up the identity for yourself. And if you do, we will move out of that identity. In the end, they might be right. And to be honest, I don’t mind. I would even be very supportive of that approach if it was really helping building a stronger political movement for the rights of the LGBT+ people. On a more personal level though, it hurts. I don’t really use « queer » to define myself. I’ve never been welcomed in the « gay » community (even when I was functionally gay), I can deal with not being welcomed in the queer community. But don’t expect me or many other non-aligned queer people to not have feelings about it and to understand it the way it is: we’re not queer enough for you.