On the links between LGBT and women's oppression

ISUL Forum Speech, Barbaste 2005

Introduction of myself: I’ve been working with gender and sexuality politics for about 4 years. First in the Socialist Youth Front and for the last 2 years I’ve been working with the queer group of the Red-Green Alliance.

To quote the FI resolution on LGBT liberation from 2003:

“The link between the oppression of LGBT people and women’s oppression is key to our understanding, and the struggles for liberation are consequently linked.”

I will spend the next 10 minutes of your time trying to explain why and how.

The link between LGBT and women’s oppression can be characterised as the mutual dependency between patriarchy and heterosexism. With patriarchy I mean the social and material structures that privilege men above women and place more value in so-called masculine qualities than in feminine qualities. It’s the ideology that subordinates women to men and naturalise the heterosexual relation.

First I prepared a theoretical speech on the subject of gender, sexuality, patriarchy and heterosexism. But I don’t think a theoretical form is very fruitful in a forum situation. So instead I’ll give a practical example of how women’s and LGBT oppression can be linked and how it can be questioned.

In the queer group in Denmark we made a happening this fall that challenged both the social and economic relation between genders and between sexualities. The happening was called Dyke Attack and it took place in a traditional straight disco in Copenhagen.

The background of the happening was an episode where I got kicked out of the disco for kissing another woman.

The kissing in itself was not a problem but the way we did it and where we did it was apparently a problem. In Denmark it’s very fashionable in straight discos for girls to kiss each other in front of guys to turn them on. But it was pretty obvious that my female friend and I were kissing for our own pleasure, not giving a shit about the men who were there.

And for this crime we were kicked out.

So, in the queer group we organised in secrecy a happening were women of all genders and sexualities were invited to come to this place, on what the disco called “Girls Night.” The concept of “Girls Night” in this disco was that women got free bar for 7 Euros while men had to pay 40 Euros. It’s obvious, especially when reading the reviews of the disco on the internet, that the point of this concept is to provide the money-delivering men with drunk and easy women.

So our political objective with the happening was also to point out this capitalist gender inequality.

 

This is what we did: Around midnight 20-30 women activists met at the disco. From the minute we stepped in we started our first mission – emptying the bar. After one hour of straight-acting, at precisely 1 a.m. we started kissing each other at the dance floor.

So, by turning Girls Night (which rather should be called male chauvinist night) into Dyke Night we ruined the meaning and the economic advantage of the concept, even if for just one night.

And by organising the kissing on the dance floor we made visible both our own desire and the heterosexual norm.

When heterosexuality is no longer an unquestionable majority, the norm becomes visible on other premises than its own.

Our statement that was published on flyers was this:

“Up yours, we’ll kiss whoever we want, whenever we want, and we can use your stupid heterosexist women oppressive concept for our own purpose. We can undermine the profit you get from the material and social inequalities and have fun doing it.”

Of course, this statement was not popular with most of the employees and the usual guests at the disco.

But it was very empowering for the people involved in the happening. And we got it published on national radio because we had a journalist with us.

 

And despite the negative reactions from the employees and the guests it’s possible that our presence made them think.

At least for the people participating – who came from all kinds of feminist backgrounds, both separatist and non-separatist, the happening served as an example of the connection between our struggle against women’s and LGBT oppression and it showed the connection between social and material hierarchisation.

A very important point of the happening is that it was a fun way of challenging the capitalist heterosexist system and challenging our own boundaries for socially acceptable behaviour.

To quote again the resolution:

“In opposing oppressive limited conceptions of masculinity, femininity and sexuality, we work towards a society in which gender will no longer be a central category for the organisation of social life, and in which the concepts of “heterosexuality” and “homosexuality” to the extend they exist, will not have any legal or economic consequences.”

 

This will not follow automatically as a consequence of the overthrow of capitalism, but it will never happen without it. Just as the dream of a free socialist society will never come true as long as gender and sexuality are structured by concepts of norm and deviance.