Chapter Zero, the introduction to the book.
Six basic points for a Gay-centric movement. Rejecting the neoliberal management of desire.
The following is the introduction. I likely will be re-writing it, and I am just throwing it up here with not a lot of proof reading. It is still in flux. I even added a point while putting it up in Substack here. You can see that I am rejecting the modern neoliberal management of desire.
INTRODUCTION
What is being Gay? What are the possibilities and opportunities in existing as a Gay person? What do we think about our place in the universe? How do we value being Gay? What should be our basis in thinking about these questions?
I think that these are important questions. Without considering these questions a Gay person could miss out on the great possibilities in Gay life and avoid adopting anti-Gay ideas and their self-destructive consequences. Also, without considering these questions we can’t effectively defend the Gay community from anti-Gay forces and ideas, develop and advance policies and programs that benefit the Gay community and meet its needs and avoid destructive bad policies.
The answers to the questions asked in the introduction are as follows
1. Being Gay is a central element in defining who we are and through its manifestations and its unfolding impacts makes us different than others.
2. Gay people those men with same-sex attraction.
3. We have the potential to live our lives in many ways other than that in imitation of straight people. The unfortunate focus has been, however, on enabling Gays to live in imitation of straight people rather than to explore what possible different ways, perhaps radically different ways, we might live.
4. We are part of the creation of the universe. We have a fundamental right to exist and to pursue our lives as Gays. All beliefs, ideologies, movements, religions that deny our place in the universe need to either correct themselves or be understood to be trash.
5. We should consider that it is a great and good fortune to be Gay.
6. We should have a philosophy and value system thought out by ourselves, for ourselves. We should judge values and beliefs relative to the needs of ourselves and the Gay community. Straight people and their beliefs should not be our standards. There are just more of them.
For our security, happiness, and self-realization as Gay people we need an inner temple of thought for ourselves and away from the pressures and propaganda of society and the discord of anti-Gay noise where we can contemplate living as Gay people.
The dominating ideology of the LGBTQ+ media is opposite. Gays are like everyone else and their difference is just a private one with different mechanics but, essentially, they are the same and the goal of social justice for Gays is assimilation.
Being Gay in the dominate neoliberal ideology is not same-sex attraction of men, but between any two individuals who claim to be men.
Much of the political program of the LGBT is to plead with religions, political movements, ideological movements, and other belief systems that LGBT are good Christians, or good Marxists, of Buddhists, or conservatives or Democrats, etc., often arguing that their belief system isn’t truly anti-LGBT, to get acceptance and earn favor with the straight people in these movements.
The author of this essay feels that he has won the lottery, has had the great good fortune to be Gay, since it isn’t something that you can choose.
However, the foundation stone of the modern LGBTQ+ movement is that they shouldn’t be persecuted because it isn’t a choice, they can’t help it, they can’t change, conversion therapy doesn’t work. The author of this essay would endure painful treatments daily to continue to be Gay.
The goal of the current LGBTQ+ neoliberal movement is to get all these letters to assimilate so we can be just like the straight people and seek the good judgement of straight people through respectability politics.
The neoliberal management of desire also doesn’t see the different letters, the full initialism is now LGGBBTTQQIAAPP for Lesbian, Gay, genderqueer, bisexual, bigender, transgender, trans, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, agender, pansexual, and polyamorous. (There are others, I just chose one of them.) Since being Gay is reduced to individualistic private practice and essentially just another sexual minority to be lumped in with these others, the idea of a Gay-centric philosophy, a Gay consciousness movement is made to be nonsensical. There is no need to have an inner temple for interior reflection on being Gay, just assimilate.
Unlike other minorities where they have organizations separate and autonomous groups, there aren’t Gay-centric organizations to focus on the interests of Gays. The are organizations of LGBTQ+ who are parts of various movements, such as Stonewall Democrats, etc.
The dominate neoliberal ideology is oriented to serve the agendas of others and not so much the Gays. The goal of this book is to bring down this ideology.