On the links between LGBT and women's oppression - teoretisk version

ISUL Forum Speech 2005

As the FI resolution on LGBT liberation from 2003 says: “The link between the oppression of LGBT people and women’s oppression is key to our understanding and the struggles for liberation are consequently closely linked.” I will spend the next ten minutes of your time trying to explain why and how.

The link between LGBT and women’s oppression is in other words the mutual dependency between heterosexism and patriarchy. With patriarchy I’m thinking of the social and material structures that privilege men above women and place more value in so-called masculine qualities than in feminine qualities. And as the concept of masculine and feminine qualities suggests, being positioned as a man or a woman includes much more than the definition of your genitals. When being placed in a gendered position you’re being placed in a system of expectations, connotations – what it means when you do like this and dress like that and so on, and most importantly: a system of power relations – meaning both the power relation between the two conventional gender categories and the privileges that follow with acting your gender correctly. This of course also implies that there are penalties if you do not act your gender correctly. For example if you are positioned as a woman and you speak your mind and are able make decisions you can be called a bitch by your surroundings, and thereby be excluded from social privileges such as accept and respect. Or if you are positioned as a man and dress feminine you can get bashed (down) on the street. But you all know this, because you’re socialist with an eye for and indignation about inequalities and because you live your life in a world where these structures have consequences every day. Sometimes the consequences are subtle and sometimes they are very visible. For example, the oppression of women can be expressed in many ways: when different salaries are paid for the same work; when job sectors dominated by women have less prestige than job sectors dominated by men; when women are ignored in political discussions; when women are asked what they were wearing the night they were raped.

So patriarchy means that masculinity has more prestige than femininity and people who are positioned as men therefore enjoy social and economical privileges because of their gender. These privileges entail that women are the legitimate object of male desire. And therefore they are supposed to be subordinated and available to men. This system of course only makes sense, if there is a clear division between the two positions – man and woman. Now, this system is questioned when people refuse to conform to the gender categories. These categories implie how to dress, how to act and whom to sleep with. To put it squarely the gender norm prescribes that men dress and act masculine and be dominating and that women dress and act feminine and be dominated. In order to maintain these structures the correct sexuality has to be heterosexuality. Because dominance is not only in the public sphere but also in the private, which is why we need to make the private public and political as feminists have been saying since forever it seems. In this system of normative gender and sexuality, the concept of heterosexuality does not only imply a biological man having sex with biological woman. For example in Mexico a man can have sex with another man and keep his identity and position as a heterosexual – provided that he is the dominant subject in the sexual act. The dominated man fails to live up to the gender norm that is connoted to his genitals and is thereby stigmatised as a gay man and thereby not a “real” man. Which also goes for women – if you want to be the dominant one in a sexual relation, you’re not a real woman. You’re gender confused. A lot of straight men see women kissing on the street and think that the women are either trying to turn on the men, or only desire women because they never tried a real man. To think that women actually prefer other women is a mutilation of the male position.    

So the strategy to subvert this oppressive system of power relations between genders and sexualities is not only to upgrade the feminine values and the female position and include other sexualities than the straight one as an acceptable form of desire. We need to subvert the conception of genitals being connoted with a correct way of acting gender – and to fight the hierarchisation between different expressions. As it says in the FI resolution, we need to “work to undermine the perceived ‘naturalness’ of heterosexuality.” Because naturalisation is the most powerful tool of oppression. When something is promoted as natural, is becomes illegitimate and without cultural sense to question it, as these examples illustrate: Why should only heterosexuals have the right to adopt? Because it is natural for a child to grow up with a father and a mother. Why are women overrepresented in jobs like nursing, childcare and social workers and men overrepresented in crafts and in leadership positions? Because it is natural for women to care for others and for men to do hard physical work and make decisions. These answers are all bullshit. My answer to these questions is because this is how men and women are socialised in an oppressive capitalist society. As socialists we should not say that homosexuals should have the right to adopt because they can be just as good parents. No, we should say that whom you sleep with and how you perform your gender is of no importance to whether or not you’re able to take care of a child. And we shouldn’t say that women should be better represented in leading positions, because feminine values are a useful additive to traditional decision making. No, we should question the fact that gender is even an issue when applying for jobs. 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 extent they exist, will not have any legal or economic consequences.” To widen this, we fight for an inclusive society where neither race, gender, sexuality, belief or anything else can be used as the basis of oppression. A society where everybody is free to create the life they dream of, without fear of social stigmatisation, economic punishment, or juridical inequality.   

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 is structured by norm and deviance.