PRIDE: Invitation for Deeper Solidarity (Part 3/3)

Confronting Pride is ugly.

Do not sterilize Pride with happy celebrations of a veiled history, though – our liberation depends on it.

Not even two weeks after the Uvalde school shooting, Texas Representative Bryan Slaton could have moved to pass the legislation that would protect Texas students. Instead, he introduced a bill to ban youth from attending drag shows in an effort to allegedly protect children from “perverted adults [who] are obsessed with sexualizing young children.” He said, “As a father of two young children, I would ever take my children to a drag show…and my colleagues wouldn’t either”. 

Please do not mistake this action or statement as something that’s separate from the recent hateful bills introduced by legislators to prevent Trans youth from participating in sports or utilizing bathrooms or seeking facilities that best correspond with their identities. These aren’t events in a silo or singular instances. These are a culmination of histories that deliberately police and exclude Queer and Trans folks.

I know this to be true.

Our homophobic & transphobic systems are not broken; they do precisely what they are designed to do. And they have since these systems were created.

It is necessary for us to study our history to better understand how we got here, then to change the trajectory of the world we live through:

Our society & culture weren’t always this way.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Moving forward, there is a way for all of us to be given our fullest humanity and thrive and be safe from targeted attacks on our identities.

Queer, Trans, and Intersex people are not a recent invention of humanity; we have been here from the beginning of time – and we weren’t always dehumanized or oppressed or targeted like we are now.

For most of human history,  Queer, Trans and Intersex people (or the people who we would now recognize as Queer/Trans/Intersex) were welcomed into kinship models & cherished for their individuality. Some anthropological hypotheses claim homosexuality was fundamentally critical to homo sapien survival because queer homo sapiens contributed to the survival of a relative’s offspring by being a source of additional resources: materially, emotionally, and beyond. Our capacity for mutualism advanced the development of “civilization.” Queer people were, and can again be, widely regarded as crucial facets of our society & culture.

Many Indigenous communities have traditionally respected & revered Queer/Trans/Intersex and 2Spirit people as the divine. Many groups of people have recognized multiple genders & sexualities (reflected in the deities of worship) pre-colonization. Trans and Intersex and 2Spirit people were, and can again be, widely regarded as people deserving of praise, honor, and celebration.

I also think that many people would find it surprising to learn that “heterosexuality” was used to describe the pathologized sexual behaviors that weren’t intended for procreation. “Heterosexuality” was initially defined as an “abnormal or perverted appetite towards the opposite sex” and a “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex.” In the 19th century, Puritanical culture was hyper-focused on establishing civility and the “natural” order of the world, so the invention of heterosexuality took place to control & police people’s behaviors. Sex that was not for procreation became taboo. However, the newly-coined term “heterosexuality” wasn’t adopted & accepted by scholars or the general public until its binary pair was constructed: homosexuality. This binary concept was created in 1869. 

[Michele Foucault, Power/Knowledge, and History of Sexuality] 

After our Industrialization Era, heterosexuality was reinforced to create more subjects for labor. This reduced heterosexuality’s pathology and taboo. It became accepted & used as a standard for compliance. At the same time, homosexuality became pathologized because it didn’t produce human capital for labor and served no proper function in making wealth. The existence of effeminate men and masculine women threatened the hegemony of heterosexuality. Queerness also questioned religious “purity” & wealth creation for the ruling class. People who refused to comply with toxic gender norms were subject to state-sanctioned violence: imprisonment & institutionalization. Violence against Queer and Trans people became more & more normalized since Industrialization.

State-sanctioned violence was integrated into the study of medicine & psychology. Homosexuality remained in psychologists’ Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) until 1973, when it was declassified as a mental disorder. It was demoted, yet it remained in the DSM as a significant cause of mental distress. Not until 2013, in the DSM5, was homosexuality removed entirely from the manual. 

“But D, what does this have to do with banning drag queens in Texas and gender violence advocacy?” you ask.

Well…everything.

History – and I mean “history” as what our people have truly done throughout time, not the veiled history that is watered-down, whitewashed, and given to us like piecemeal – shows us:

Queer/Trans/Intersex people have been core to human advancement & society, living with wholeness & without stigma until: colonization, the spread of constructed purity standards, and the contemporary lawmaking that legislators use to try re-writing sexuality & gender away from our society & culture.  

The toxic (and relatively new) narrative that Queer & Trans people are sexually perverse or threatening to the future of humanity by morally corrupting children is a narrative that doesn’t allow us to A) be real about our history, which in turn makes us powerless in our present & future, and b) to return back – or to forge a new path – to a world where all of us are benefited by the many contributions of Queer, Trans humanity or thriving or safety.

Queer & Trans people deserve to be authentically empowered; Queer & Trans people deserve to live lives through a world that honors who they are & how they show up. We deserve these things now, and we know that because we have been deserving these things. We deserve these things now, and we know that because used to be inherently granted these things like our cis, straight counterparts are now.

Urgency is a pillar of white supremacy, but goddamn, I hope all of this is rectified & I hope justice prevails soon. This is not our legacy, this is not the way our story ends, and this is not going to get any better if we aren’t connecting the dots with accountability or action.

We must reclaim Pride Month from hollow celebrations & continued erasures of our roots.

My beloved Queer, Trans, Intersex, and 2Spirit siblings depend on this. I depend on this. Those who came before us, and those who come after us, depend on this.

You can not truly have your wholeness or reach your highest potential or end violence without us. 

With bitter and resentful Pride, 

D

Written by D, a visionary changemaker & caretaker who works with the Idaho Coalition as a Bilingual Social Change Associate. If you’d like to read Part 1 of this series, please check out our “Past eNewsletters” section to the right on this page.

If you’d like to get in contact with D, their email is dalton@engagingvoices.org & their specialities include: Community Organizing, Internal Development, and Youth Engagement.