Posgrado de medicina

Political scientist Stephen Engel suggests that during the 1990s, the U.S. based LGBTQ movement began to fall “victim to a misguided notion of its success”, facing “the peculiar situation at this historical juncture of a disconnect between cultural and

political achievements.”108 The growing acceptance of some, especially “white middle-

class gay [men] or [lesbians] with a secure job and home” meant that “inequalities somehow [did] not seem as readily apparent as they once were” and this had a tremendous impact on the politics and functioning of the LGBTQ community in the

108 _{Stephen Engel The Unfinished Revolution: Social Movement Theory and the Gay and Lesbian Movement}

U.S.109 Because of the historical importance and prevalence of the community in the United States, changes that take place in the States often predict trends that are picked up in the rest of the world, making it worthwhile to discuss this change at some length.

The limited success of the 1990s allowed new, more conservative voices to claim to speak on behalf of the ‘silent majority’ of gay men and lesbians who felt no affinity with the radical politics of the past. Lisa Duggan describes the ideology of this new wing of the “gay movement” as the “New Homonormativity”, a movement that has adopted and perverted the meanings of the mobilizing language of LGBTQ history:

“equality” becomes narrow, formal access to a few conservatizing institutions, “freedom” becomes impunity for bigotry and vast inequalities in commercial life and civil society, the “right to privacy” becomes domestic confinement, and democratic politics itself becomes something to be escaped.110

Duggan connects this new line of gay politics with neoliberal ideology, arguing that “the new neoliberal sexual politics…does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in

domesticity and consumption.”111 The proponents of this ideology sought to neuter the

political efficacy of the community and transform it into a consumption community. One major proponent of this new ideology, Bruce Bawer, argued that gay men and lesbians should stop aligning themselves “with workers and other victim groups against the capitalist oppressor,” since “much of gay America’s hope resides not in working-class revolt but in its exact opposite – a trickling down of gay-positive

109_{Ibid, xviii.}

110 _{Lisa Duggan, “The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism,” in Materializing Democracy:}

Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, ed. Russ Castronovo and Dana D. Nelson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 190. The phrase “gay movement” is used intentionally here, as many of these thinkers speak only on behalf of gay men and (sometimes) lesbians, excluding the rest of the LGBTQ community from consideration.

sentiments from elite corporate boardrooms into shops, farms, and factories.”112 Bawer unashamedly uses the language of neoliberal politics to argue that the homosexual community should willingly insert itself into a neoliberal hierarchy of privileges. Unlike previous generations of activists and thinkers, who saw that the struggle for sexual liberation is part of a larger struggle for liberation from all kinds of hegemonic

oppression, Bawer suggests that we stop critiquing those who benefit from these systems of oppression and privilege, and instead ask them politely to allow some of their rights to leak out onto us. As with the economic policy from which he borrows his terminology, this policy is unlikely to bring about equality for the entire LGBTQ community and instead to confine its benefits to those at the ‘top’ – the white, middle class, cis-gendered gay men and lesbians who are already the most privileged within the community.

This new brand of U.S. gay and lesbian politics assumed that all that was needed for gay men and lesbians to achieve equality was to change the legal codes and allow homosexuals access to the same rights and institutions as heterosexuals. Andrew Sullivan, who Duggan points out “is probably the single most influential writer among the neoliberal gang of gays”113 argues that the changes requested by this ‘new politics’, namely the legalization of same-sex marriage and the lifting of the ban on homosexuals in the military, “are simple, direct, and require no change in heterosexual behavior and no sacrifice from heterosexuals.”114 This neoliberal sexual politics ignores the link between oppression and privilege in the same way that the new leftists discussed at the beginning of this study ignore the inherent connections between poverty and wealth. Sullivan

112 _{Bruce Bawer, “Up (with) the Establishment,” Advocate, January 23, 1996, 112, quoted in Duggan, “The New}

Homonormativity,” 183.

113 _{Duggan, “The New Homonormativity,” 189.}

114 _{Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An argument about homosexuality (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: 1995),}

claimed that these changes would somehow both “[tackle] the heart of prejudice against

homosexuals” while simultaneously “leaving bigots their freedom.”115 Sullivan sees the

rights of bigots as unassailable and sees no need to “legislate private tolerance” – a position that would make good, conservative sense in a world without bigotry, but borders on insane in a world in which unchecked bigotry and intolerance lead directly to

depression, deprivation, discrimination and, disturbingly often, death.116

Herein lies the fundamental flaw in this paradigm. Sullivan and his cohort suggest that the state should exist as essentially neutral and fundamentally blind, unable to

differentiate between, and therefore discriminate against, groups of people. In a perfect, non-discriminatory world, this would be an ideal political situation. In the real world, however, in which important differences do exist, in which discrimination is a daily fact of life for many groups, in which laws and norms are tailored to fit a homogenous minority and haphazardly applied to a heterogeneous totality, there is no neutral position for the state to adopt. By standing in the middle and applying equal pressure to all sides of a lopsided system of rights and privileges, the state implicitly supports the privilege of

the privileged and the oppression of the oppressed. Neutrality can’t exist as long as

privilege does. By focusing only on the legal aspects of discrimination and attempting to

move the state to a ‘neutral’ position that neither discriminates against nor advocates for the LGBTQ community, these neoliberal ideologues offer allegiance to the

discriminatory status quo and impede the progress of change that attempts to right the fundamental imbalances that give birth to discriminatory legislation.

115_{Ibid., 185-186.} 116_{Ibid., 186.}

Suzanne Lenon connects this homonormative politics with the neoliberal ideals of personal “autonomy and entrepreneurship,” in which individuals are separated “away from more social understandings of the world”, each person becoming the “proprietor of her/his differences (such as race, gender, religion, nationality, sexuality), experiencing them as attributes one ‘owns’ and exercises rights over.”117 She goes on to explain that this ideology recreates individuals as “neoliberal citizen[s]” who are “intimately tied to

notions of privacy, property, autonomy, and freedom of choice.”118 According to this

neoliberal idea of the self, fundamental identities become nothing more than attributes that a person can manipulate and manage as they please – in other words, if systematic oppression, sexism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia exist (a supposition that neoliberals are likely to question outright) they are to be surmounted by individuals, not by societies. Sullivan argues against legislating tolerance and Lenon shows the natural consequence of his argument – each oppressed person must overcome their own oppression. This is where neoliberal economic and social policies align. Neoliberal economics leave the poor to fend for themselves by ignoring the political and social realities that produce poverty just as neoliberal social policies leave the oppressed to fend for themselves by ignoring the political and social realities that lead to their oppression. By choosing ‘neutrality’ and offering neoliberal notions of ‘equality’ the state sides with the oppressor and often increases the oppression of the already oppressed.

This notion is incredibly important in understanding the apparent paradox between LGBTQ rights advances and the persistence of homophobia. By changing the

question from ‘Should homosexuals be allowed to get married?’ to ‘Should good citizens

117 _{Suzanne Lenon, “‘Why is our love an issue?’: same-sex marriage and the racial politics of the ordinary,” Social}

Identities 17, no. 3 (May 2011): 358-359.

be excluded from marriage?’ LGBTQ activists challenge legal discrimination and leave

the underlying homophobia unchallenged.119 Homophobes are still able to find a target

for their hate (by aiming it towards what Michael Warner refers to as the “Bad Queer, the kind who has sex, who talks about it, and who builds with other queers a way of life that

ordinary folk do not understand or control”120), assimilationist homosexuals earn the

respectability of marriage (a designation that further distances them from the ‘radical queers’ and the ‘degenerates’ who refuse to give up the fight for sexual liberation), and progressive politicians are able to point at their work as a sign of their open-mindedness and tolerance (regardless of why they supported the legislation or how bigoted they had been or still are). Everybody wins. Everybody, that is, except for the ‘bad queers’ who are unwilling or unable to divorce sexuality from identity. They are excluded from progress and, as a result, their oppression is often increased as a “hierarchy of

respectability” is reinforced that benefits those who are the most privileged.121 It is too early to tell what the long-term effects of Argentina’s two-year old marriage law or one- year old gender identity law will be, but from these authors we can begin to get an idea of what consequences could be coming, and in the next section I look at some of the limited research that is available on this subject.122 Because the underlying bigotry that validate

119 _{For more on this subject, see, Rosemary Auchmuty, “Same-Sex Marriage Revived: Feminist Critique and Legal}

Strategy,” Feminism & Psychology 14, no. 101 (2004): 111.

120 _{Michael Warner, The Trouble with NORMAL: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (New York: The Free Press,}

1999), 40.

121_{Ibid., 49.}

122 _{As of right now, there is very little research done on the impact of the legalization of same-sex marriage or other}

advances in LGBTQ rights on the LGBTQ community. What little research does exist tends to focus on the impact on heterosexuals and heterosexual institutions, presumably to dismiss fears about the corrupting influence of opening up these institutions to homosexuals (see, for example, M. V. Lee Badgett, When Gay People Get Married: What Happens When Societies Legalize Same-Sex Marriage (New York: New York University Press, 2009). The research done on the affects to the LGBTQ community itself is incredibly small: Tracy Ross-Perkins, “The impact of same-sex marriage legitimation in Massachusetts on the lives of lesbian women” (dissertation, Brandeis University, 2009); Beccy Shipman and Carol Smart, “‘It's Made a Huge Difference’: Recognition Rights and Personal Significance of Civil

Partnership,” Sociological Research Online 12, no. 1 (February 2007). Some research that looks at the effects of rights campaigns is discussed in the next section.

discriminatory policies and practices are sidestepped in neoliberal sexual politics, we can expect to see a continuation of bigotry and hatred into the future.