Building the LGBT movement

Building the LGBT movement

In Denmark we have a queer group within the Red-Green Alliance. It works autonomously, which means that everybody with a socialist point of view can join the group – you don’t have to be a member of the Red-Green Alliance. The primary focus of the speech will be: The experience of this queer group in aspect of building a social and political alternative to the traditional often non-political and commercial LGBT environment and also the importance of linking the LGBT struggle with the struggle for a socialist society.

In the queer group we try to offer a different perspective than the traditional LGBT perspective. Our goal is not just to be accepted on the premises of the existing norms. The queer perspective has revolutionary potential because it attacks the norms in themselves and the limiting categorization of people in terms of gender, sexuality, and social structure.

As Sarah explained on the Forum speech Sunday about the women’s space, the capitalist society relies on structures that favours and idealizes living in a nuclear family. Furthermore capitalism relies on the ability of the market to divide people in recognisable consumer groups. I will get back to this later.

In aspect of the family structure, the traditional LGBT struggle is the fight for equal rights for everybody regardless of gender and sexual orientation. An example of this is the right for LGBTs to get married. This fight for equal rights is important, because the capitalist society favours this family structure of two adults, maybe with children, both economically, socially and legally. And the favouring of one structure implies the discrimination of alternatives. Along with this struggle for equality what we also want to do is to ask the question: Why do we have this norm that marginalize all alternatives? Why are we not free to organize our private lives in various ways? In reality, people do organise their families in various ways – single parenting, mixed families, collectives – but the ideal and favouring of the nuclear family remains. So, along within the LGBT movement we should fight for equal rights, but at the same time question what these rights are about. It means making the norms more including AND question and deconstruct at the same time.

Now, in aspect of capitalism relying on dividing people in consumer groups: there is a strong tendency within the LGBT environment to accept the commercialization of the LGBT identity. Some call this the Pink Market. An example of this tendency is the Danish Pride Parade. This has more or less developed into a big parade of commercials for gay and lesbian bars and it is almost free of any political statement on sexuality and gender. One of the problems with the Pink Market is that it stereotypes homosexual identity. The consumer is white, male, young, rich. This is not a way of liberation for LGBTs.

What we try to do in the Danish queer group is to provide people with an alternative to this commercialization by activities that politicize the question of gender and sexuality. And also to create a non-profit non-commercial social space.

So, now I’ll speak some about our activities in the queer group so far and the purpose and perspective of these activities.

1. We function as a political and theoretical support base for the politicians of the Red-Green Alliance in the parliament – primarily the spokesperson on queer subjects. Political debates and law proposals often either come from or create a public debate. A queer political spokesperson with an active support base provides opportunities for the queer group and other organizations to get trough in the public with a queer perspective. And it provides opportunities to radicalize gender and sexuality debates in the parliament – and hopefully to affect the laws in a progressive way.
2. We try to develop strategies to get through in the mainstream media. We’ve established a “red alert” group on the internet with people who can react quickly on current debates and events. The perspective of this is to put a queer perspective on the debates without theoretizising it. This way we hope to spread the queer thinking to “ordinary” people and get them to question the norms and reflect on the things they take for granted.
3. We make parties as a political and social alternative to the commercial LGBT environment. In the spring we made a party called A Queer Night. It started with a theoretical intervention on the Drag King phenomenon and a Drag King and S/M performance. Afterwards the party developed with DJ’s and cheap bar. We make the parties with cheap bar and no entrance, so that everybody has the chance of participating, regardless of economical position. The perspective of this kind of party is that by mixing politics and partying we show people that as representatives of alternative sexualities, we have more in common than consuming.
4. Some of us are working together with a separatist organization on doing some workshops on the Danish Social Forum. Other people in the queer group are also active in other LGBT organizations that aren’t necessarily queer or socialist. Even though we might not agree with these organizations on everything, it still makes sense to work together on the things we do agree on.

Our strategy has been to first and foremost organize ourselves from a socialist point of view. From that we hope to be able to build resources to cooperate with and radicalize the broader movements and thereby spread the socialist queer perspective to the rest of the society.