LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back
Human liberation means, in necessary part, liberation from gendered hierarchies of men over women, from the iron shackles of gender roles and behavior, and from the surveillance state of rigid heterosexuality. To be free is to be free to explore and experiment with gender even in defiance of expectations. It is to be free to do gender by your own lights and fancy. It is to be free to be fluid in your gender, or to be no gender at all, or—just as important—to be comfortable in an old-fashioned notion of gender.
To be free is to learn and know and inhabit our unique sexual selves. It is to be free from fear that whom and how we fuck will be used as a weapon against us. It is to be free to love those we love and be loved in return, to form and tend the romantic bonds we choose. It is to feel at home and at peace in our sexualities.
To be free is to be free from the oppression and inequalities of a patriarchy that hordes resources, privileges, and immunities for straight, cis men and exploits the reproductive, sexual, and care labor of women. It is to be free from punishments for defying the rules of the patriarchy: for being gay, for acting queer, for transitioning, for not being manly enough, for taking a man’s job, for refusing to marry or date or give birth, for calling out rape and abuse, or for expecting and accepting payment for sexual services.
Gender and sexual freedom is for everyone. Gender cuts across racial, ethnic, and class lines and shamelessly crosses international borders. Trans people have existed in all times and all places. Sexual and gender liberation is not a distraction from the class struggle because workers are lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and trans. Abortion is not a mere culture war issue, because the freedom to control when, where, and whether to have children profoundly shapes not only your long term economic prospects, but your day-to-day bottom line. Rape is a weapon of war in foreign policy and in domestic criminal justice. The wagon-circling defense of rapists is an economic moat for the patriarchy.
Gender and sexual freedom is for everyone. If you are cis and straight as an arrow, was that your destiny, or could a more liberal culture have allowed you to try out other options? Are you really free in cis heterosexuality when the threat of coercion and stigma pervade society? Do you know for certain you will always be straight? Sexuality can evolve over a lifetime. Is your spouse or partner free to be themselves or who they could be? Who our sons and daughters will be is out of our control. Shouldn’t they be free? Isn’t our own well-being is intimately bound to their freedom and flourishing? When we fight for gender and sexual freedom we fight for our own options and our own families, whether we know it or not.
If we care about freedom, we must care about gender and sexual freedom. If we abandon gender and sexual freedom, we never cared about freedom in the first place.
Democrats are trying to pick up the pieces after their devastating defeat at the hands of Trump and MAGA. An all-too-predictable suggestion has been to leave LGBTQ people, especially trans people, to their own devices. Defending gender and sexual minorities plays into the reactionary centrist narrative that Democrats are fixated on wokeness, and the MAGA narrative that LGBTQ people are a threat to society.
But all fascist movements start with easy targets. They require vulnerable communities that the broader society is willing to sacrifice without putting up a fight. The fight for democracy occurs in the trenches of LGBTQ rights and freedoms. There are many theaters in this war, but LGBTQ lives and bodies are one front line. If we abandon LGBTQ communities, we were never serious about freedom or democracy.
LGBTQ+ freedom is at the heart of the global struggle against rightwing authoritarianism. There’s a strong case that fundamental shifts in rich world economies that have increased opportunities for women have led to male anxiety and resentment about relative status decline—real and perceived—and that this has opened the door to reactionary movements across the world. Resentment breeds reaction, and reaction reasserts traditional authority, hierarchies, and boundaries. The fight for gender and sexual freedom is inseparable from the fight for liberal democracy.
LGBTQ+ people are not going back. We are not going back.
You bandy the word "freedom" around throughout the column, but I searched in vain for any clarification at to exactly what, in practice, you would want this "freedom" to mean. Would it include the freedom of athletic facility owners to say, "Sorry, but if you have a penis, you're not allowed in the women's changing rooms or showers, no matter what gender you identify as."?