By J. S. Gupta
The slogan of the day is “Trans Rights are Human Rights”.
It is a slogan spoken in support of trans liberation and in condemnation of institutionalised transphobia that infests our present society. It’s a very simple and effective phrase and, to me, it says two things simultaneously:
Trans people are Humans and thus, are as deserving of rights as any other human.
Trans people receiving the rights they are owed is a benefit to all of humanity.
I wish to present a new slogan, in the same vein:
“Queer Liberation is Human Liberation”.
Queer
The term ‘Queer’ is a contentious one for many reasons, but in academic circles remains a useful analytical category.
We can define ‘Queer’ in several ways:
A word meaning ‘strange’ or ‘unusual’ (archaic).
A derogatory term for all those who do not conform to allo-cis-het-ism/allocishetism.
A reclaimed slur, used as a catch all for those who do not conform to allocishetism (the LGBT+ community). Also used as a term to denote the academic studies of non-allocishet peoples.
A term used to distinguish those within the LGBT+ community who do not conform to rigid and ‘typical’ identities such as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender.
We can see cross over and similarities with many of these definitions, the common denominator being this notion of queerness as an abnormality. It’s a term that ‘others’ people for their lack of conformity to perceived cultural normalities.
Even within the LGBT+ community to which the more narrowly defined Queer community belong, they are the ‘other’, within the ‘other’ that is the LGBT. The acronym, of course, often being expanded to LGBTQ+ and LGBTQIA+, the ‘Q’ and ‘+’ for everyone who doesn’t fit in with the other letters[1].
‘Queer’ includes all those who are generally gender non-conforming (GNC) or otherwise do not fit into the gender binary, and includes anyone who has a sexuality that isn’t heterosexual, as well as many other people who do not conform to ‘traditional’ conceptions of relationships and gender roles.
All four of these definitions inform the conception of Queer Liberation being presented here:
Liberation for those ostracised by society for no fault of their own other than being ‘strange’.
Liberation for people who are denounced by the cult of allocishetism for not conforming to their ideology.
Liberation for people who have rejected allocishetism and fight to express their gender and sexuality on their own terms.
Liberation for people who have been alienated or feel marginalised within the LGBT+ community itself, due to not conforming to any rigid definition of the other four letters.
Allo-Cis-Het-ism (Allocishetism)
Allocishetism is an ideology that advocates for restrictions to how humans organise themselves socially. More specifically, it restricts the ways that humans are allowed to engage in relationships and social roles.
Allocishetists zealously promote three interlinked ideals:
a) The ideal of sexual and romantic relationships as being central to the lives of humans.
b) The ideal that aforementioned relationships should be between two people of opposite ‘biological sex’[2].
c) The ideal that all humans should conform to gender roles that, in turn, conform to a ‘biological sex’, as determined by their doctor and/or parents.
Allocishetists have worked in collation with various ruling classes to assert this highly ideological form of social organisation as the only permissible form of social organisation and thus the only ‘normal’ form of social organisation, thus gaining a monopoly over the concepts of ‘normalcy’ and ‘normality’. Everything outside of this supposed ‘normal’ and ‘mainstream’ has been dismissed as ‘queer’, and has been marginalised.
It has been a tireless process for the allocishets, one for which they have strived for, for over 5,000 years. Through systems of organised religion, supposed ‘traditionalism’ and colonialism, they have near-successfully delegitimised social behaviours that may be deemed queer, on a global scale.
They have also worked in coalition with the patriarchy. Tied with their anti-queer agenda is a push for a marginalisation and oppression of anything deemed non-male or non-masculine (unless it serves the patriarchy, i.e. male gaze). Those individuals and organisations who claim animosity with the patriarchy, in truth, serve it, if they do not also stand with the totality of queer people.
Allocishetism is a repression of natural human behaviours and natural human instincts. This repression has countless detriments to the health and wellbeing of the mass of humanity. Where is the man who has not felt anxiety over their masculinity or lack thereof? Where is the woman who has not, at one time, felt alienated due their relation to ‘femininity’? Where are the humans who have not struggled with feeling attracted to other people in the ‘correct’ way? And where is the person who has not feared being ostracised, or else, has been ostracised, for their relationship to the concepts of gender and sexuality? Allocishetism reduces humanity, reduces our ability to express ourselves freely without sacrificing our place in the social hierarchy.
Even those who are sure in their identity as ‘cisgender’ will face struggles with cis-normative notions of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’. And those who are believe themselves to be heterosexual or heteroromantic will struggle with heteronormative conceptions of social behaviour in their relationship with others and any sexual or romantic feelings they have in their daily lives. A similar struggle will of course be faced by those who are allosexual or alloromantic.
Allocishetism thrives on narrow social definitions. Such definitions also infest the LGBT+ community.
For instance, among transgender people, there are those elitist, reactionary elements who condemn trans people who do not conform to a ‘perfect’ conception of ‘transgenderness’/’transness’. Namely those who are often dubbed ‘transmedicalists’, for insisting that an individual isn’t a ‘real’ trans person until they have undergone some form of surgery or medical procedures to ‘make them trans’. There also those who are firm in an identity as ‘trans male’ or ‘trans female’ who disparage those who are gender non-binary, genderqueer, genderfluid, agender, demigender or GNC in some other way. Individuals who are GNC, often find ostracization from certain spaces within the broader trans community (though will be embraced by other sections of it). This reaction is a product of allocishetism and its reduction of gender to a fixed binary defined arbitrarily by those in the upper strata of society, rather than gender be something self-determined and personal to the individual.
Similarly, there is bigotry in MLM and WLW[3] spaces. A ‘gatekeeping’ and rejection of those who do not conform to a perfect gay or lesbian identity. The ‘gold star lesbian’, is a good example, the notion of a lesbian woman who is of a supposedly high standard due to their lack of relationships with men. This can be linked, in turn, to the biphobia that is faced by bisexual people and anyone who enjoys/engages in sexual and romantic relationships with people of multiple genders. They may face rejection and marginalisation by those who only engage in sexual relationships with one gender or another. Transphobia is also present in these spaces, faced by those who do not conform to idealised notions of ‘male’ and ‘female’. This is, again, a product of allocishetism. Idealised conceptions of what constitutes ‘maleness’ and ‘femaleness’ and a promotion of adverseness to femaleness and maleness.
Allocisthetism claims a monopoly on science and logic, its attitudes towards queer people as grounded purely in ‘reason’. This is a fallacy. The allocishetist claims expertise in sociology and biology to justify their ideology being the correct state of humanity. They talk of ‘natural human urges’ and talk endlessly of things they have no understanding of such as hormones and divergence and human anatomy. The place humanity’s ‘natural’ social role in a little box, not based on empiricism or reason, but in idealism – idealistic notions of ‘purity’, encouraged by theocratic carryovers from previous epochs. And we can look to no better example than the notions of human biology. These idealists create in their minds a conception of a ‘correct female body’ or ‘correct male body’ and denigrate those who don’t conform to either conception. Such idealism ignores the great diversity and divergence present humanity, in our anatomy and our physicality. All human anxieties about having the ‘correct’ body stem from the allocishetists and their ideology.
We see, therefore, how allocishetism works to weaken us a species, to make us question our being, to doubt ourselves and further cannibalise each other. As an ideology, as a status quo, it cannot be allowed to be maintained, to persist. It must be eliminated and replaced instead by a queer ideology, a queer status quo, a queer hegemony.
Liberation
Queer liberation is the process by which queer humanity emancipates themselves from the allocishets, overturning the allocishet social order, and establishing an era of queer supremacy.
The allocishets have failed in their mission of totality, failed to truly eliminate queer humanity despite their designs on global allocishetism. And now queer humanity will strike back.
Queer supremacy is unlike the proletariat supremacy fought for by Marxists[4]. The concept of ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ seeks for the displacement from power of the bourgeois class and replacement by a proletariat class, Queer supremacy is not the replacement of one group of people by another, but a cultural revolution, displacing the reactionary socio-cultural order that is allocishetism with queer hegemony.
Queer hegemony does not mean an abject banning of relationships or behaviours once deemed allonormative, cisnormative or heteronormative. Nor does it mean the banning of genders, sexualities and romantic identities deemed non-queer, or even a marginalisation or ‘othering’ of any of these people.
Queer hegemony, simply put, is a point in time where queerness is no longer queer. Where the notion of being ‘queer’ no longer serves as a useful analytical category as there is no othering of gender, nor sexuality, nor romantic identity, and thus none of these that can be reasonably designated ‘queer’. At this hypothetical point in time, Queer is supreme. Much like how, under the allocishetist hegemony, the average allosexual/alloromantic, cisgender or heterosexual/heteroromantic person does not recognise themselves as living under allocishetism as it is instead designated as ‘normality’ or ‘normalcy’.
Under queer hegemony, there is no need for the individual to categorise or define their gender, their sexuality or their romantic identity. How they engage with relationships and with social roles is truly self-determined and personal to the individual. A person may present themselves how they wish, without concern for how it reflects, or does not reflect, their identity. The simple and narrow categorisations of gender and sexuality and romantic identity, of the present, would also serve little use under queer hegemony. [5]
Queer liberation is the process by which we achieve this. It is not, however, simple to achieve, not a switch to be flipped. It cannot, for instance be achieved tomorrow, or even the day after. It would take years of cultural revolution, led by educated and committed queer activists in order to achieve. And it also necessitates several pre-requisites from other emancipatory/liberatory struggles. Queer liberation goes hand in hand with the class liberation of the communist movement, the gender liberation of the feminist movement and the racial liberation of the various anti-racist and anti-colonialist movements. It is closely linked with feminist movement and its struggle against patriarchy, the life-long ally of allocishetism. Queer Liberation is Human Liberation, you cannot have one without the other. You cannot liberate humanity without liberating queer humanity and you cannot liberate queer humanity without also working to liberate humanity as a whole.
So what steps can we take toward queer liberation in the present then? Here are three proposed directives.
Partnering the queer movement with the proletarian movement
Educating people on Queer theory and challenging allocishetist thought
Being open and unwavering in the face of rampant allocishetism
Allocishetism is ideology pushed by the current elite classes. The displacement of these classes and the establishment of an order led, instead, by the proletariat (or working class), the victims of the current elite classes, would be preferential. Though it is crucial that the proletariat do not simply propagate the ideologies of their former oppressors. Therefore, the queer liberation movement must close ranks with the class liberation movement, in order to establish a new social order where we are both liberated.
Allocisthetist thought runs rampant and has come to be seen as ‘common sense’, ‘science’ and ‘logic’. This must be challenged. People must learn to reject the fallacies of allocishetism, as they learned to challenge the fallacies of superstition that were considered ‘common sense’ in earlier epochs. Those who seek queer liberation must first educate themselves on queer thought and theory then work to educate others. The more educated we can make the population, the more true allies we will have in our struggle. It is not enough to simply wave the rainbow flag, we have to know what the flag means, what it stands for and what it stands against.
The final directive is a tricky one. Being open in your stance against allocishetism is to be open to violence and harassment. It’s not an option available to all as much as we may like it to be. Everyone’s circumstances are not the same. In parts of the world where violence, or even death, is guaranteed, it becomes necessary to be closeted. For those who being open may mean the deprivation of the means of subsistence, another form of violence, it is also prudent to be closeted. But for those willing to take the risk, or those who are less endangered, it is very necessary to be ‘loud and proud’ as it were. To assert the presence of queer people. To make queer existence known. The numbers must grow so the allocisthetists know that queerness not just a trend, not just a minority, but the ever-encroaching end to their status quo.
Allocishetism has eroded and reduced the human experience. The Queer liberation movement means the elimination of allocishetism and will mean humanity can once again breathe freely, not worrying how they conform to ridiculously arbitrary notions of ‘proper’ behaviour.
It is no longer enough to simply state “We’re here, we’re queer, get over it”. It has instead become necessary to declare: “We’re here, we’re queer, this world is ours.”
By J. S. Gupta
Footnotes
[1] And of course, also ‘Questioning’ people, who may still be clinging to some perceived sense of allocishetism that keeps them from truly embracing one of the other letters. [2] ‘Biological sex’ of course being a poorly defined concept, often focused on the genitalia of a given person. [3] MLM – man loving man, WLW – woman loving woman [4] Though the two must, necessarily, be fought for together, as the true emancipation of the queer population of earth cannot be achieved without the abolishment of class hierarchy and the end of exploitation of class by class. [5] Though these categorisations are relevant in the present socio-cultural epoch as we begin to bring the hammer down on allocishetism. The path to a society that does not perceive gender, or at least as something that doesn’t matter, is paved by the declarations of numerous ‘new’ genders. And the same can be said of sexualities. The declaration of any gender other than cis male/cis female, or any sexuality other than allosexual and heterosexual, is a statement against the inhuman cult that is allocishetism.
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