so i saw this picture on my facebook, and it reminded me of something i’ve been thinking about a lot lately
i get really sick of pro-LGBT rhetoric that’s along the lines of “i don’t care who anybody sleeps with/i don’t care what people do behind closed doors”
i really don’t understand why “straight allies” feel the need to profess how they “don’t care” what we do behind closed doors
i really don’t understand why mainstream queer whiteness slobbers all over this as if its a positive affirmation
is the reduction of a really complex queer politic to a hyper-sexualized notion of allocating rights based on FINALLY being “comfortable” with with happens “behind closed doors” really all that positive?
yes i get that in theory nobody is going to be banging down your bedroom door slapping the anti-sodomy cuffs on you
and in that sense its a victory
but there are so many larger reasons why queers advocate for our rights in the first place, gay marriage being one of many on a list
and how can i really see you as an “ally” when you reduce the complexities of my socio-political struggle to what you’re comfortable with “behind closed doors”?
{i use the term loosely not because i believe in the notion of allies, but because ads like the one above and rhetoric like that are supposed to lead me to believe whoever says this is an ally or a safe person}
i also can’t help but think about how this rhetoric fails from an intersectional standpoint
because could a straight white person really be that comfortable with what a queer black person does “behind closed doors” to the extent that you grant me my civil liberties as a queer person
given the ways in which white supremacy and its advocates/complacent folk constantly expresses and reinforces discomfort when black people of any sexual orientation and gender identity express anything short of “respectable, puritanical behaviour
what part of me are you then giving that affirmation to? the queer side of me?
certainly not the black side of me who, from a white supremacist standpoint, is the direct descendent of jezebel and sapphire. has the blood of impurity and sexual deviance running through her veins long before i danced under a rainbow for the first time.
its pictures like this that not only remind me why i have a hate/loathe relationship with mainstream LGBT politics, but why i am tired of people discussing my civil rights and the sexual manifestations of myself as if they have anything to do with each other.
