By Samson Audino
Searching around the internet, I see such hate speech being spewed all the time. It’s simply not enough to accept gay people into your inner circle and think that makes you progressive and forward-thinking enough. Oh, you’re Republican and friends with a cis white male who happens to be gay? I don’t care. You support oppressive capitalist structures in our society, built by the patriarchy over the course of thousands of years. By accepting gay people, you are still in the realm of problematic thinking that there is something to accept. Your agenda is the capitalist heteropatriarchy; your friendship with a gay male is merely a convenience to justify your oppressive desires. You cannot fathom the idea of any other gender outside the patriarchal gender binary of male and female. By exclusively approving gay white men, you are falling into the vicious trap of homonormativity.
Look at that couple. Even if you think you are truly progressive, this is all just a conspiracy set up by the oppressors, and the liberals eat it up. This is what the patriarchy wants you to accept. Two white men, wearing conventional, appropriate clothes. These sickos probably are comfortably married, have a dog, maybe even adopted a little white girl. They’re white male shitlords just like the straight ones, and by accepting them are equally problematic. This makes you no better than Rick Santorum.
When you start accepting obese, black, trans demisexuals, then maybe we can start talking. But wait, there’s nothing you need to accept in the first place! They don’t need your approval to be themselves. In fact, you need to check your privilege built up systematically by the patriarchy for millennia, and just shut up. It’s time to let others speak. They don’t need your approval. The best thing you can do is step aside, and allow others to proudly express themselves as the beautiful, unique snowflakes that you are, not bound to any of your patriarchal definitions of male, female, gay, white, black.
Even among liberal groups on Facebook, I see “liberals” not understanding that genders and sexualities exist outside male, female, gay, bisexual, and straight. Even on a Bernie Sanders fan group page, a supposedly forward-thinking progressive site, I witnessed members referring to a trans individual as “her” when ze explicitly requested being referred to by the pronouns “ze / zem / zebra.” I mean, what the fuck? What are we living in, the Stone Ages? Bernie Sanders and his fans, supposedly the most progressive and forward-thinking social movement in our lifetime, refuses to recognize genders outside the heteronormative patriarchy? We have a lot of work to do.
Speaking of gender and mainstream liberals, I am sick of hearing about “a woman’s right to choose” on abortion, or saying “men have no right to speak on women’s health issues.” As a trans lesbian woman and Person of Color, I am frankly offended. I am just as much a woman as any woman that happens to have a uterus, and to assume that one is a woman simply because one has a uterus is painfully regressive. I am a woman, and have no capability of being pregnant. My fourth partner in our polyamorous relationship is pregnant with his second child. Are you saying that I have a right to choose what he does with his own body? Does he have no right to take control of his own health issues? Even if you don’t realize it and believe you’re being progressive by being a white cis male shitlord and proclaiming “women should be able to control their own bodies!” you are still promoting the agenda of the capitalist heteropatriarchy.
In short, you are not forward-thinking. Even if you accept those with sexualities different from your own, you are still falling into the heteronormative trap of believing that there is something there to accept. Even among liberals, there’s complete disregard for anything outside the gender binary. Yay, let’s be progressive, as long as they still fit my oppressive notions of gender, sexuality, marriage, religion, capitalism… NO! Next time you hear someone say they support gay marriage, see if they support the destruction of gender. I bet they don’t. They only accept what fits within their own heteronormative views of the world, and are merely expanding their oppressive societal structures by a hair for brownie points to be considered progressive. Don’t stand for it. Fight back, destroy the heteropatriarchy. If you are an ally, great. But now is the time to step aside and let others do the talking.