A lot of the time I am not sure that things will change.
Can we ever overcome the history that shapes the ignorance, hate, and violence
of today? If I have learned anything from all this, it is that there is a lot
of work and that it keeps evolving. As Urvashi Vaid says in her essay “What
Brown Can Do For You” is that there needs to be new voices, new energy and an affinity
instead of tolerance because identities and issues are changing. The past advocacy of equality and tolerance
for the LGBTQ community has been somewhat fruitless and not addressing large
systems that oppress and perpetuate exclusion. Queer justice is not and cannot be
just about marriage equality.
Queer justice is an all-encompassing
issue. It covers many aspects of the lives of LGBTQ in our country. This means
everyone in the community and beyond, that there is a need for individuals to
look beyond what mainstream advocacy see as the issues; it is all aspects of
gender, race, and classes. If there are parts of these communities that are
criminalized, brutalized, or discriminated against those injustices spill into
other areas of social structures. The norms can no longer be what they have
long been- binaries and privilege that limit access to quality of life for
those outside those structures. Queer
justice would acknowledge the exclusion and limits while actively fighting to
reform and create allies and advocates, to see needs that have been overlooked
by the normative cultures.
Queer was once used as derogatory slang representations
of homosexuals, but now it was been reclaimed both by some members of the LGBTQ
community and academia to redefine the term. It now can open up the term, to
help define an ever evolving understanding of sexuality and identity in the
LGBTQ groups. Theorist Annamarie Jagose in her book Queer Theory: An
Introduction cites Alexander Doty explaining why the term is appealing in
current contexts, “…finds it attractive in so far as he also wants ‘to find a
term with ambiguity, a term that would describe a wide range of impulses and
cultural expressions, including space for describing and expressing bisexual,
transsexual, and straight queerness (97).” This idea of the term goes beyond
the hetero and homonormatives that have long established the understanding of
who is queer and what their needs are.
The statement allows for many representations to be enveloped in the
queer community. These representations are definitely lacking in the public eye
and media of today, but as theory progresses it allows for broader and wider ranges
of these representations, which would mean wider representation of the varying
issues within the population.
This clip below from The Sociological Cinema website of a Slate magazine piece
shows a narrow increase of this representation on television. While it is a
slight improvement, it still does not represent all aspects nor the injustices
that are continually faced.
As the videos states the inclusion of LGBTQ characters in
television isn’t enough, but it is important how they are portrayed. It speaks
of how today there are representations of such characters having romantic and
sexual lives and relationships, but these representations of characters and
relationships can still be damaging. Often it has only been the white gay man
or the white femme lesbian in these representations, which leads to believe
that these are the norm. While these representations speak to the young
impressionable queer community that this is the norm with only certain justice
issues, such as gay marriage at stake, it leaves out the problematic structural
issues that are enforced. In Michael Warner’s book The Trouble with Normal:
Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life he blames sexual shame on the
discrimination of sex acts and sexual identities. “Again and again, we have
seen that people want to put sex in its place, both for themselves and for
others. And the consequence, as we have seen, is not only that they create
contradictions for themselves, but also that they create damaging hierarchies
of shame and elaborate mechanisms that enforce these hierarchies (195).” By
making sex abnormal in every sense society demonizes people such as women,
minorities, and LGBTQ persons. In doing so this affects their representation in
culture as being abnormal as well. These groups are underprivileged and under-served; often the victims of structural oppression and violence, the
authors of Queer (In) Justice give the history and examples of the
issues of queers in the legal systems. The book gives a history of colonization
and how that has not only oppressed marginalized groups, but criminalized
sexual acts therefore criminalizing groups of people, often people of color in
the LGBTQ population.
Justice for these populations would fight these
structures that allow demeaning archetypes, criminalization, and unwarranted
violence (especially from law enforcement). Sure, for some marriage equality
was an accomplishment of rights, and it addresses many issues for couples that
face medical and estate complications, but there are still other glaring issues
that often are overlooked by some advocacy groups. There is a false underlying perception
that labels those outside the gender and sex binaries as deviant which allows
labeling them as criminals. Mogul, Ritchie, and Whitlock explain in Queer
(In) Justice, “While it may be comforting to believe that evenhanded
enforcement of criminal laws will ultimately produce safety and justice, such
beliefs are not grounded in current or historical realities. The very definition of crime is socially constructed, the result of inherently political processes
that reflect consensus only among those who control or wield significant
influence (xvi).” As the quote states there are powers of hierarchy at play
within the criminal justice system, and those that may need the most help or
protection aren’t always treated in just ways. The book illustrates many cases
where victims were shamed or accused and penalized for crimes after they had
been victims of violence. This kind of treatment is abhorrent and part of
bigger justice issues that need to be addressed.
I admit I am part of the privilege and social norms, but I
have had an awakening with this course of study that I hope to share with
others around me so that I can become a true ally and not an apathetic
bystander. In a search to try to find out more current information and maybe
even more concretely what queer justice should and would look like I came
across a Buzzfeed list which covered
some of the issues that seem to escape the mainstream media and social issue
radar. I found these images on a Buzzfeed post 7 LGBT Issues That Matter More Than Marriage.
The list seemed to be a queer justice list that
represented the intersectionality of the issues that go beyond marriage
equality. It cited the seven issues as “Queer and Trans Youth Homelessness, Violence
Against Queer and Trans People, Racial Justice, Immigrant Justice, Heath,
Economic Justice, and Trans Justice.” This is the kind of list of issues that I now know to be true parts of what change needs to be happening. These are the issues, voices, and identities that now make up queer culture. Queer justice would see these seven issues and others that connect and move beyond rhetoric of tolerance and equality to addressing the history and structures that uphold values of hierarchy that obstruct true justice.
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