Adding Letters in, Kicking Gays Out
The Neoliberal Management, Policing, and Banning of Gays
ESSAY 3: [updated 8/26/2021, 7/31/2022]
This essay is better understood after you read Essay 1. Only an extremely brief recap of Essay 1 is going to be mentioned here.
As more and more letters get added into the Alphabet Soup, I have noticed also another trend in which individuals are thrown out of Pride or denounced as pariahs in the Alphabet Soup.
White gay men, police officers, leather men, drag queens, gays that are into physical fitness, gays who don’t want to have sexual relations with transmen, and others are routinely denounced.
The whole idea of the rainbow flag was that Lesbians and Gays were everywhere reflecting the diversity of society and you would run into Gays and Lesbians from all occupations, backgrounds, etc. in the general society. The slogan was “We are everywhere,” in response to homophobic individuals thinking there were no engineers who were Gay or there was one or more occupations or communities where gay people didn’t exist.
The flag was to represent all the diversity and to communicate a message that out of this diversity there was one community. It was to try to pull together these diverse elements together despite the tremendous amount of difference. The addition of a black and brown strip to the gay flag recently was a corrective since the ideals of the gay flag have failed to be realized sufficiently to incorporate all racial groups.
This ideal of inclusion in the Rainbow Flag has been replaced by process of throwing different Gay people out of the Alphabet Soup because they or their views don’t align with certain agendas. This process derives from the politics of “queer” identity and the construction of an Alphabet Soup grouping.
Briefly recapping from the essay about “queer.”
The Gay community is lumped together with the rest of the Alphabet Soup and comes under the label of “queer,” an identity that is basically means not-straight and hence stares into straightness. Gays along with others are lumped together into an Alphabet Soup where they become individuals of one of many psychological types who are variants from straightness. Gays are not located as members of a community with its own social customs and institutions It becomes a collection of individuals, an Alphabet Soup to be defined and managed by psychologists, social workers directed by academics. It is only in this way the grouping together of radically different groups such as Gays and Lesbians with transgender and they with persons who are asexual or born with some degree of biological characteristics of both sexes makes sense. These persons facing widely different life choices, widely different social practices and support institutions are flattened into “queer,” not straight and as not straights grouped together.
The next three essays will deal with some of the multiple consequences of this community negation and atomization. What order they should be and how I should divide up the subjects is challenging.
This essay will discuss how Drag Queens are being kicked out of Gay Day parades (Pride Day parades), but will leave how the leather community is being kicked out to the discussion of same-sex marriage since it is more closely linked to respectability politics which the issue of which same-sex marriage is a part.
This essay is going to focus on how once a politics centered on a Gay community is replaced by one that is conceptualized as a neoliberal agenda item people start getting kicked out and how the Gay community is lectured and policed as to how they define themselves and what their agenda should be.
With “queer” and the Alphabet Soup lumping together of disparate groups, the social and political life of communities is replaced by the agenda of that of a neoliberal interest group with a politics fitting into a neoliberal portfolio. Gays and Lesbians find that they are displaced by the agenda of “Pride,” the agenda of the neoliberal Alphabet Soup.
The social and political advocacy of a community becomes replaced by neoliberal politics.
Those items which don’t fit into a neoliberal agenda or are inconvenient or embarrassing are excluded or attempted to be excluded. This would be such things as gays throwing condoms at “Pride” parades, or gays showing up dressed in leather at ‘Pride” parades, both which have been banned or suggested to be banned. This will be discussed in the Essay focused on same-sex marriage and assimilation.
When there is no Gay community focused politics, and instead there is just a partisan political agenda, two things result. One is that there will be those individuals and groups within the Gay community who don’t fit or are in opposition to neoliberalism and the effort will be to exclude them.
Before discussing the number two item, a digression needs to be made. One of the immediate consequences of making sexual minority concerns a neoliberal political partisan movement is that those who aren’t neoliberals are excluded, such as Gay conservatives and Gay republicans, but also other persons whose politics isn’t in alignment with the neoliberal ideology. Given that the conservatives and Republicans are mostly anti-Gay this may seem to be sensible. The author of this essay has sometimes felt this. The excuses and rationalizations sometimes made by gay conservatives to support homophobic politicians can be really irritating. Gay members of these movements can often have internalized homophobia, have a lot of negative attitudes to Gays who they feel endanger their standing, respectability, with straight conservatives and sometimes be indifferent to the welfare of the Gay community as a whole. In this last thing they can, like the neoliberals, put their political agenda over the welfare of the Gay community.
However, as much as Gay conservatives are problematic or when they are an outright problem for the welfare of the Gay community, it shouldn’t be overlooked that their exclusion is a political gain for the neoliberals, there is a self-interest involved. Also, with their exclusion, a voice which might point out when neoliberals are subordinating the welfare of the Gay community to the larger neoliberal agenda is eliminated. The Gay community gains an advantage when different groups contest for their support.
Later in the essay I will discuss how other anti-Gay groups with very active agendas are not excluded and how this exclusion can be selective. It illustrates how exclusion is perhaps more motivated by a political agenda than the welfare of the Gay community.
Two, as a partisan political agenda, the direction of the Alphabet Soup will be contested between political factions which will be neoliberals versus liberal/left/radicals each desiring to employ the Alphabet Soup in support of their agendas.
Both factions will have those they want to exclude and agendas of who should be excluded become part of the factional fighting between neoliberals and liberal/left/radicals. Who gets to be excluded and is who is not excluded is aligned with the ideology of those who would want to exclude and not in regards to what might serve Gay group cohesiveness and the general welfare of the Gay community.
“Pride” has become a politics of exclusion. Rather than have different groups within “Pride,” where there is an ongoing discussion of issues, there are groups of people thrown out of “Pride” and dissent is shut down. It needs to be considered that if a group of people is thrown out of pride where do they go? What concern is there for their welfare? Also, does the issue disappear or just go underground or become the agenda of some reactionary formation, perhaps with Gay members.
Consider the efforts to exclude floats by corporations from ‘Pride’ parades. Of course, the corporations are participating in the parades for their own benefits. They perhaps hope to sell products to the communities and individuals making up the Alphabet Soup. They wish to be considered as desirable places to work which would aid in their recruiting of employees. They wish to enhance their image with the general public. This can be done by corporations which perhaps have other agendas not considered good for the public by some political factions.
However, the participation by corporations is tremendously positive regarding the very real material issue of employment for everyone in the Alphabet Soup. When the corporation participates in the parade it sends a message to the managers in that corporation where the company stands regarding sexual minorities and sends a message that the text in the personnel handbook regarding non-discrimination is taken seriously by upper management. It sends a message to the corporation’s vendors and contractors. When it is a particularly prestigious corporation it sends a message to the general community and businesses what is considered credible business practice. It also sends a message that discriminatory attitudes and practices are not credible and cast organizations and businesses which are discriminatory as not being mainstream and not credible.
Now this issue of corporate participation is clouded and confused by some other issues. To get corporations to participate, some persons might adopt repressive policies for the parades to attract corporate participation so respectability politics can be involved. Also, there can be a tendency to want the parade to be a non-radical space to make corporations comfortable and the parade to be more an apolitical holiday with the narratives to be some general vague sentimental statements.
However, there is a call to exclude corporations based on the fact that they are corporations and part of the capitalist system. Gay socialists can certainly not like corporations, but it needs to be understood that their antipathy to corporate participation in ‘Pride’ parades is in service to their anti-Capitalist agenda and a larger socialist movement outside the Gay community, not in service of the Gay community. Though it might be perceived that the left/liberal/radical agenda in the Gay community exists as an opposition to the neoliberal agenda, it is actually just a conflict over what agenda for which the Alphabet Soup will be used to support. The neoliberals and the left/liberal/radicals can have their particular agendas, but they are just that, their agendas, and they aren’t necessarily that of the Gay community as a whole. For radicals it is often has been the depressing spectacle of them try to prove their worth to the larger movement composed of mostly straight people. Though it is perhaps depressing since the author expects more of radicals, Democrats and neoliberals do the equivalent.
This doesn’t preclude all calls to exclude a corporation. There might be a corporation with a specific anti-Gay agenda and specifically harmful to the Gay community and they should not be allowed to be duplicitous. That that is a different case entirely.
Police
Consider the efforts to exclude police officers from the “Pride” events. The agenda is the Alphabet Soup left/liberal/radicals contesting control of the Alphabet Soup from the Democrats and neoliberals.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/01/us/pride-parades-ban-police-officers-debate-trnd/index.html
This exclusion of the police is based on the idea that all police in all departments are bad and are moral pariahs. Given that we don’t want police departments be hostile to the LGBT community and we do want police departments to take vigorous actions against anti-LGBT violence having LGBT police in the Pride Parade is a good thing. Also, it is a potentially progressive influence in police departments. Rejecting police officers from Pride parades is pushing them to the right wing and a step to building Gay reactionary movement. Engagement in the parade is the beginning of an ongoing dialogue with the police. Violence against LGBT is a serious issue and having police vigorously act against anti-LGBT violence is a real material concern for the safety of the LGBT. This serious issue is being thrown overboard for a generic anti-police ideology and the shutdown of any developing process or dialog with the police in service of a certain political faction.
Is this really serving the LGBT, or is it really a faction of LGBT wanting to display their radical bona fides? Are police in general inherently inimical to the LGBT? Probably if police officers want to march in the LGBT parade, that city’s police department is likely not to be inherently inimical to the LGBT. It may need improvement relative to the LGBT, but there has been some progress at this point. It is a situation much better than if the police department was hostile to participation.
At this time 2015 to 2021, a lot of the concern over LGBT police has been in regards to the issue of African Americans being abused or killed by police officers, so some radicals have thought excluding LGBT from ‘Pride’ parades supports changing police behavior regarding this issue through the mechanism of asserting that the police are pariahs and intolerable to be in the ‘Pride’ parade.
However, this stance involves giving no value or importance to the needs of the LGBT community, they are held to be nothing versus Black Lives Matter and it also positions the two communities needs in opposition to each other. They could instead be seen in alignment as a part of an ongoing change in police departments which haven’t gone far enough.
Also, would a police department from which all LGBT resigned from be improved? Would it be less likely to have aggressions against African Americans? Probably it would be worse since it would be now having a shifted composition with fewer progressive elements.
It could be that some left/liberal/radicals are dealing with some unfriendly left/liberal/radicals in the larger movements outside the Gay community and are trying to prove something, maybe not. It wouldn’t be the first time though that this was a driving element of some left/liberal/radical Gays or Lesbians.
However, discussing these issues regarding LGBT police officers should not distract from the primary issue. LGBT are everywhere and group cohesion of the Lesbian and Gay community demands that we not throw out groups.
One of the questions that needs to be asked is where does this stop. What other occupations will be considered unacceptable? Will LGBT bankers be banned, LGBT members of the Arm Forces be banned, or LGBT veterans? What about LGBT real estate workers who have sold houses in gentrifying areas, LGBT workers in the defense industries, LGBT workers who sell unhealthy food? Where does it stop?
We can have internal debates within the community, but we don’t have to throw out people. Once we start throwing out one group, we will then move on to throw out others, we will be letting the factional fights divide the Gay community and inevitably a rhetoric develops to throw out others.
Drag Queens
Police officers aren’t the only ones to be excluded. Recently Drag Queens have been excluded. These are some article about Drag Queens being banned from the Glasgow Alternative Pride event.
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/07/20/pride-event-bans-drag-queens-in-case-they-are-offensive/
This is an article by a trans person, Lisa Wade, denouncing Drag Queens. This person is a professor at Tulane Univ. and has had an article in the Harvard Business Review. This person is not marginal and has influence.
The following got deleted by the journal.
https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/07/28/are-drag-queens-doing-girlface/
It is still listed as an article in the publication, but the article was deleted.
https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/07/31/this-month-in-socimages-july-2015/
It is at this link on the Internet Archive.
Another university decided to ban drag queens.
What facilitates this attack on Drag Queens is that Lesbians and Gays are lumped into the Alphabet Soup, not recognized as different communities, but instead a group of individual non-straights thrown together, and all the events that originated with the Gay and Lesbian communities are appropriated by the Alphabet Soup. So trans people, persons external to the Lesbian and Gay communities are enabled to dictate to the Lesbian and Gay communities their behavior and how things should be done at events they originated.
This has largely died out since there was a tremendous backlash and the Alphabet Soup establishment risked being tossed out of leadership.
However, trans people are still writing really hostile and vicious articles against Drag Queens on Medium. This is an article from 2021.
https://medium.com/prismnpen/drag-queens-and-me-26be77eebdc1
The neoliberal agenda is that they are an Alphabet Soup and it is okay to police the behavior who might be seen as offensive to others in the Alphabet Soup.
Update 7/31/2022
Attack on drag queens by famous trans personality. Also, link to article about how perhaps she was not honest about this. Even Pink News didn’t supporter her since they realized this would get Gays to finally reject the Alphabet Soup.
This article reports that her stance is less than honest.
Who is a gay man?
Routinely Gay men are denounced because they don’t see transmen who claim to be Gay men as possible sex partners or see them as gay men. A transman who still might be having periods and has a vagina is supposed to be accepted as a Gay man by the Gay community, a group defined as those with same-sex orientation. Since Gays are lumped into the Alphabet Soup it isn’t seen as transmen appropriating the Gay community and dictating to them who they are or what their identity is. Instead, it becomes the province of classes of social workers, psychologists and academics to dictate to the Gay community what the Gay community is, how their identity is constructed, and who is a member of the Gay community.
The neoliberal agenda is hindered when there is debate within the Alphabet Soup or members start to assert a community consciousness that isn’t the Alphabet Soup agenda. So Gays that disagree with transmen are banned and kicked out.
Who isn’t thrown out.
Also, these decisions about who needs to be thrown out is selective choosing groups in which can be targeted in the Gay community.
For example, the Roman Catholic Church has persecuted Gays for centuries. The very slang word, “faggot,” for homosexual men, comes from the Roman Catholic Church supporting Gay people being burned alive. The Roman Catholic Church still thinks being Gay is a sin. The Roman Catholic Church in the United States still campaigns against human rights for the members of the Alphabet Soup.
However, if someone said that Dignity, the organization of Lesbian and Gay Catholics shouldn’t be allowed to participate in the ‘Pride’ parade, there would be a tremendous backlash. The police officers’ associations in the United States do not have an anti-Gay agenda and do not have an official policy against Gays, the Roman Catholic Church does. Yet, the calls are for the police officers to be banned from the “Pride” parade, but there isn’t any statement by anyone that Gay Catholics should be banned.
One reason at the selective policy of exclusion is that it isn’t in the neoliberal agenda to publicly be against any major religious group in the United States. They want every vote they can get. So, Gays who are members of anti-Gay religious denominations are welcome to be at ‘Pride’ parades as religious groups. [The author isn’t asking that these groups be banned either.]
Excluding Whites
There are those who have decided that white gays and gays born as men are inherently invalid. The following is a typical conversation which I had with someone on Facebook.
I had a Facebook trangender friend who mocked gay rights and rejected an opposition view point as follows.
Notice how gay rights is spelling in a mocking way “gAy RiGhTs!” The person disagrees with this other person’s opinion, but doesn’t give any argument as to why but he does mock “gAy RiGhTs.”
So I asked whether this person’s opinion was wrong or his identity was wrong. The reply was this.
The “cis white guy” might have had a totally stupid opinion, but I don’t know what the opinion is and why it is stupid, because the person just rejected the person’s opinion based on his identity, specifically race and being born a man. My former Facebook friend made it clear that white gays that disagreed with him were inherently wrong based on their race. He says “Of course a presumably white cis gender man,” as if this entire class of individuals is a class of undesirables.
If an opinion was stupid, it should be easy to explain why it is stupid. What the transgender person here is doing is constructing non-transgender gay white men as a pariah class. He still doesn’t reject this person’s argument based on the issues at hand, or give reasons, but simply rejects it based on the person’s identity. Further he decides that this class of individuals have no right to an opinion.
Also, it should be noted how this idea that there is a single Alphabet Soup community, which subsumes the gay community, allows this transgender to kick non-transgender gay white men out, and out of the gay community which has been pulled into the Alphabet Soup. A trans individual is defining who in the gay community has a right to speak.
The following is another article in which it is claimed that white gay men are supporting racism by working out at the gym and dieting. It is at Medium, the home of Alphabet Soup insanity. The title is, “White Gay Men, Anti-Racism, and Diet Culture: If white gay men want to be anti-racist, they need to dismantle diet culture.”
https://jeffry-iovannone.medium.com/white-gay-men-anti-racism-and-diet-culture-fdbaabab22f7
In this article below, “White Gay Men Are Hindering Our Progress as a Queer Community: You had your time – now, we have other things to fight for,” at the other abode of insanity, Them, they are asserting that non-transgender gays don’t have a role to play in the future of the Alphabet Soup except to take orders.
https://www.them.us/story/white-gay-men-are-hindering-our-progress
There are problems of racism in the Gay community. I have organized picket lines in two different cities over Gay bars that discriminate.
However, having people outside the community lecturing the Gay community on this isn’t acceptable. No racial minority tolerates that, Gays shouldn’t either. And Alphabet Soup people, if you aren’t Gay, you aren’t in my community. Nor is it right to deny an entire class of individuals a voice.
The definition of prejudice derives from the word “prejudge.” We are excluding an entire class of individuals based on their identities. Hardly a rainbow flag thing, hardly inclusion.
Note also that the usual syrupy language of the Alphabet Soup regarding exclusion isn’t used when various groups are being attacked. You won’t hear the comments that the calls for the exclusion of police or drag queens is hurtful or demeaning or triggering or phobic something. The self-worth of groups in the Gay community is dependent on the Alphabet Soup agenda.
Also, you have an axe to grind against someone in the Gay community it seems to be a practice in the Alphabet soup to assert it is a racial issue. Given that white gays are a major racial group in the gay community this is an effort to silence a large fraction of Gays. If a white Gay person has a stupid opinion, it would seem reasonable that you could explain why it is stupid opinion fairly easily.
Once a Gay community movement that has as its goals to include as much of the Gay community as possible and has as its concerns the welfare of the entire Gay community is replaced with a political partisan agenda of either neoliberals or left/liberal/radicals you will find that those in the Gay community who don’t fit the agenda are cast out as well as a Gay community agenda.
What needs to be done for Gays is to leave the Alphabet Soup and stop being exploited for partisan political agendas. Drop the letters and bring in Gay community members into our Gay community agenda.
Link to Essay 2:
Link to Essay 4:
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For all the Internet Gay Partisan Sites and IDs.
Gay Partisan/Gay Centric Resources.