By Charles Stephens
[read more from Charles on LifeLube here]
Will the battle for marriage equality end the plight for sexual liberation?I’m not sure how confident I am in looking toward the state to legitimize our relationships. Even if it’s in the name of protecting our rights. And though I’m mostly supportive of marriage equality, in as much as I’m supportive of any challenge to heterosexism, I’m still a bit ambivalent.
Perhaps there is a line, arguably, from Harry Hay to Allen Ginsberg, on through Samuel Delaney, Gayle Rubin, Camille Paglia, Patrick Califia-Rice and Michael Warner of queer sexual liberationists. Individuals that embraced and continue to embrace the more transgressive aspects of our sexuality. Views that run counter to the privileging of marriage, gay or straight. And yet these voices are muted, relegated to the shadows as we march onward toward Gay Marriage. This is unfortunate, since the success of any movement, long-term, has to be reflective and self-critical. And marriage equality will be completely useless to us in the long-term without being accompanied by a rigorous critique of the institution of marriage overall, even as we enter it.
Should we be fighting for equality with the majority? Or fighting for those of us that wish to remain outside of the mainstream? Can we do both? Especially since there are those of us: butches, BDSM practitioners, piss pigs, bug chasers, hustlers, drag queens, pornographers, and other perverts and sexual outlaws that will never be apart of the gay American Dream. Some of us don’t want a partner, a house, a SUV, and multiracial adopted children. Some of would rather have a dungeon, a trough, and a few slaves. And who is out there fighting for those rights? The last thing many marriage advocates want soiling their movement, is the image of the “undesirable.” This makes these individuals, the true queers, the most marginal and most vulnerable, in our pursuit of clawing our way for a place at the table.
Culturally speaking, a bland kind of middle class gay identity, has taken hold of our politics and our culture. This began in the 70s with what was known as the “clone.” This has gotten worst, because marriage equality has become the defining gay issue, along with the military, and has created a small space to have conversations about other aspects of rights. There is certainly an energetic queer counterculture critical of the more mainstream, assimilated, gay culture, but they are largely white and middle-class, and largely rooted in a kind of academic leftism that doesn’t circulate much outside of conferences, nonprofit organizations, and college campuses. And even members of the queer left too, have become absorbed in the marriage equality movement.
What I am wondering is, should we relinquish our history of transgression for a white bread American dream? Certainly, rights are important, but what do we give up in the name of being equal? And is it worth it?
Charles Stephens is an Atlanta-based writer an organizer. He blogs at http://charlesstephens.wordpress.com
Interestingly, the trade-off of "let's give you partnership rights and now behave yourselves" doesn't seem to have followed in the wake of the legalisation of gay marriage in Spain where I live. Maybe it's because most people here have simply accepted that it's just a good and decent thing to treat everyone equally under the law irrespective of sexual orientation.
ReplyDeleteThe polite apartheid of Civil Partnerships in countries like the UK is another matter, imho, dangling the lure of tax avoidance and a whiff of respectability, which plays into the hands of the most conservative in the gay community as much as it does to the rest of those who would like us to shut up and play nicely.
Dear Charles,
ReplyDeleteThanks for this post. I grapple with this question as a sex radical who is now very happily married and in an open relationship. I think one answer to your question is no, we don't need to relinquish being sexually on the edge for domesticity. Many of us have both! The reality for many couples, whether they are married or not, gay or straight, is that transgression, fetish, kink, what have you, is alive and well among couples. The more important question to me is, why is everyone so private about their sexual transgressions when there is ample evidence that a healthy portion of the population is not exactly following missionary-style, monogamous relationships?
Again, thanks for your column.
Tony Valenzuela
Charles,
ReplyDeleteYou've posed some reasonable questions. Certainly, these are questions that many of us have pondered in various forms. A significant problem with public discourse around "gay marriage" is that "marriage" can refer to several different things. As presented, your argument seems to also conflate marriage with conformity and sexual/emotional exclusivity. Teasing out the individual aspects that we're discussing will ease our consideration of the issues:
1. Marriage:
(a) a standard financial contract endorsed by the state,
(b) an acknowledgement of spiritual or emotional bonding,
(c) an acknowledgment of a range of interpersonal contracts.
2. Sexual or emotional exclusivity: mutual agreements between the participants about how they choose to organize their internal and external relations.
3. Conformity: adhering to normative standards of the dominant culture.
Assuming that "marriage" (in the 1(a) sense) requires a certain alignment across the other issues is unwarranted and invites unnecessary confusion. Negotiating relationships that meet our individual needs is what's important -- sometimes a governmental endorsement could facilitate that, sometimes not.