By Stephen Kerry
Introduction
Western social-identity movements address social oppression experienced by individuals, as individuals and as belonging to social identities (whether essentialised or constructed). However, social-identity movements are more than a forum for individual / social oppression, they are movements towards social emancipation. Social-identity movements offer up the collective perception of these individuals attempting to represent their vision of social emancipation. More than a three decades of analysing this social oppression however has not revealed a workable methodological/epistemological discourse that considers little beyond a unidirectional, hegemonic, teleological, utopian, monocultural, Eurocentric, masculinist, heterocentric, monoepistemic, or binary discourse of social oppression, identity or emancipation.
The implosion within identity politics and social-identity movements, has removed the social epistemological and activist power that these discourses potentially had (and still may have) access to. The demise of feminist and gay liberation movements as contestable tools for socially analytical paradigms indicates a crisis within and among these (and other) social-identity movements. This indicates a failure of western social-identity movements to accommodate difference within and amongst social-identity movements. Based within a modernist identity politic these social-identity movements are restricted by thinking that is unidirectional, hegemonic, teleological, utopian, monocultural, Eurocentric, masculinist, heterocentric, monoepistemic or binary. By applying a postmodernist discourse to social-identity movements perhaps the polemics behind social emancipation may be resolved (as opposed to realised) through the postmodern tool of queer theory.
The above polemic has been inherited from thirty years of feminist and gay liberation social analysis and sexual identity politics by new-millennium social-identity movements. Queer Collaborations as an example of a contemporary Australian forum for new-millennium social-identity movements perpetuates the observed implosion that has prevented feminism and gay liberation from `moving forward' and achieving their aims of gender/sexuality emancipation in Western societies.
The 2001 Queer Collaborations Conference is to be held in Newcastle NSW, thus as a Working Paper this study aims to make recommendations (Appendix B) to the Queer Collaborations 2001 Organising Collective in regards to highlighting and resolving the implosion inherent to social-identity movements, as introduced above.
Infighting over issues of prejudice and difference has hindered this Australian queer movement, as witnessed by this author over the past six years (1995 - 2000). The author will compare an historicised analysis of feminist and gay liberation movements from their inceptions in the 1960' and 1970's to their contemporary incarnations, with anecdotal evidence acquired while attending Queer Collaborations in Melbourne (1995), Perth (1996), Brisbane (1997), Adelaide (1999) and Bathurst (2000). Further reference will be made to the Resolutions passed at Queer Collaborations 2000 (Appendix A) and the email discourse that has ensued following the 2000 conference.
This Working Paper attempts to draw out the outstanding features of the feminist and gay liberation movements and the ways in which they have inherently destructed, and become stagnate and immobilised forms of social-identity movements, and perhaps it is by understanding these features that some movement can be achieved within new-millennium social-identity movements such as Queer Collaborations.
Implosion in Social identity movements
Feminism
The countercultural movements of the 1960's throughout western countries consisted of the development of discourses that articulated and addressed the oppression of certain members of these societies. Within western cultures women were / are oppressed by a hegemonic, dominant and inhibitive male culture. The reality, perception and institutionalisation of women's oppression had been, and still is being, addressed by the feminist movement. Women became dissatisfied with the political left, such as Marxism, and as the feminist movement emerged from the 1960's “fighting for a egalitarian world” (p.4 Segal, 1999), it abandoned Marxism. This allowed feminism - and other `new-left' movements - to “establish the legitimacy of their own sphere of struggle and their own social and discursive practices” (p.107 Seidman, 1993).
Despite the view of social-identity movements addressing oppression alone, Udis-Kessler proposes that indeed this is “a simplification of the actual social context in which movements exist” (emphasis added p.57, 1996). Borne from the feminist discourses were engagements with not only institutionalised forms of oppression, but also: an articulation of “gender” (p.38 Segal, 1999), and “power” (p.42 Segal, 1999); the establishment of “an autonomous community, evolving its own language of social analysis, and forging an oppositional politic” (emphasis added, p.107 Seidman, 1993); plus “there was an emphasis on women's shared needs, and struggles to end gender inequalities and cultural subordination” (p.5 Segal, 1999)
These processes, institutions and discourses established by feminists came from the impetus to achieve freedom from oppression for women within western cultures. However there became a character of feminism that far from achieving this goal distinguished itself by splintering, isolating and ostracising many women.
The splintering of feminism into feminisms, while having a positive affect of exploring women's differences, had a negative affect of the policing of women; their identity as women and/or feminists, their commitment to women and/or feminists, and their legitimacy as women and/or feminists. This came not from the outside oppressors but from within. As feminism or feminisms grew, so too did the distance between women, and between women and achieving freedom from their oppression. Naomi Wolf concludes from women's narratives themselves:
While a strong majority of women passionately endorse the goals of feminism, a large number avoid identifying with the movement itself. This estrangement impedes women from attaining the equality that they desire. (original emphasis, p.xvi Wolf 1993)
This internally-generated `estrangement' was witnessed through the “transgression” (p.68 Wolf 1993) of the “ideologically overloaded” (p.68 Wolf 1993) feminism, the proscription by women of other “women's pleasures and private arrangements” (p.68 Wolf 1993), a feminism that did not come to reflect women's lived experiences, and a movement that considered not following the “party-line” or “consensus” as “disloyalty” (p.122 Wolf 1993). Although labels such as `liberal', `radical (liberatarian or cultural)', `Marxist-socialist', `psychoanalytic', `existentialist', `postmodern', `multicultural and global', and `ecological' feminism are useful and may shift the focus from a `monolithic' feminism (Tong 1998 p.1), and indeed reflect the realities of women's difference these labels threaten the identity, commitment and legitimacy that some women use to achieve freedom from the common oppression from a hegemonic, dominant and inhibitive male culture.
Wolf reflects the point made by “American lesbian journalist Donna Minkowitz [who] has seen [the] fear of dissent cripple her women's group ... she describes how, when a woman presented a divergent view, she was subjected to `intense hostility' ...identifying this consensus `group think' as a form, `not of community' but of domination: `Like all unrecognized domination, it was ultimately sterile and life-choking” (emphasis added, cited p.121 Wolf 1993). A position articulated by Lynne Segal:
Feminism grew too big for its marching boots in the closing years of the 1970's; since then many of its exponents have taken a more reflexive turn. But the anxiety it generates has far from dissipated. (p.1 Segal 1999)
An “anxiety” that reflects (or mirrors?) the oppression from a hegemonic, dominant and inhibitive male culture. Segal locates the failure of feminism to achieve its goal, is not just in its exponents' “reflexive turn”, but in the waning excitement experienced by “all social movements” (p.1 Segal 1999) following the establishment of “a new collective identity” (p.1 Segal 1999). Social movements as experienced through:
everyday politics become a more discouraging, even tedious affair; a matter of competing interests and conflicting alliances. It never remains the revelation which first inspired new levels of self-confidence and hope, as it was when women's liberation erupted into the lives of many women at the close of the 1960's (emphasis added, p.1 Segal 1999)
Is it the “ebb”, the dissipated “revelation”, the “reflexivity”, or the perceived “disloyalty” that removes the political/activist power from social movements? Naomi Wolf adds that the fault can not be thrown at “a persistent and expansive campaign on the part of the mass media, the religious right [or] others to discredit the movement” (p.66 Wolf 1993), nor does this author suggest that we should rest at a simple `disinterest' explanation for the loss of feminist discursive success. A more invasive and uncomfortable analysis is required.
Defining `feminism' as “nothing more complicated than women's willingness to act politically to get what they determine that they need” (p.65 Wolf 1993), is questioned by Segal because such a simplistic view failed to reflect the real, lived and diverse experiences of women. Until the 1980's, when we see the emergence of “black and other particularizing feminist voices [feminism was] merely represent[ing] the experience of white, middle-class, western women” (p.47 Segal 1999).
In the 1980's a dual difference discourse was championed among women, firstly “around race and ethnicity, alongside the celebration of lesbian consciousness” and secondly the assertion of `women's' gender difference (emphasis added p.48 Segal 1999). These two discourses lead to what Segal sees as feminisms' “centrality and significance always [being threatened] from their collision and proliferation” (p.48 Segal 1999). This dualistic discourse and its subsequent “collision” shattered the illusion of feminism as a unitary, cohesive force, and pushed forward the internally-generated estrangement. Women of colour, indigenous women, Third World women, lesbian women, bisexual women, and non-English-speaking-background women found within and without feminism, (as their feminist fore-mothers had in the 1960's) their own voice and began to “establish the legitimacy of their own sphere of struggle and their own social and discursive practices” (Seidman, 1993 p.107).
The polemic that such discursive fields of three decades of feminism established had themselves become, by the end of the 1990's, hegemonic, dominant and inhibitive to women's identity, commitment and legitimacy as women and/or feminists. Feminist thinking of the 1960's: “a reflexive anti-capitalism, an insider-outsider mentality, and an aversion to the `system'” (p.xvi Wolf 1993), and “assumptions about universal female goodness and powerlessness, and male evil”(p.xvii Wolf 1993) became “dangerous when times change” (emphasis added, p.xviii Wolf 1993).
Although 1990's or new-millennium women do not reject these modes of feminist thought outright, they do insist on a discourse and a movement that considers the contemporary and pervasive attitude toward a feminism that real women can possess. Feminism's perceived “code of rigid behaviours” (p.66 Wolf 1993) and its “intellectually destructive habits” (p.119 Wolf 1993) combine within 1990's and new-millennium women's perceptions such that feminism no longer is seen as representing their “choices”, “lives” or “images” (p.63 Wolf 1993). Segal speculates that perhaps such a shift in feminist consciousness and priorities came about because “early women's liberationist search for social transformation came up against women's own subjective resistance to change” (p.5 Segal 1999). The failure is further demonstrated by the fact that after three decades of feminism in the West, “what we have yet to see is movement towards fairer or more caring societies, whatever the rhetoric of New Labour in Britain or the machinations of Clinton in Washington” (p.7 Segal 1999).
Why is it that women's social emancipation has not come about after three decades of feminism? The under-/misrepresentation of “all” (Barbara Smith original emphasis, cited p.47 Segal 1999) women in feminism, lead to the inevitable emergence of feminisms and a more inclusive approach to addressing oppression of all women. However this diversification splintered the movement, and shifted the focus of its members away from the original cause of its formation: the hegemonic, dominant and inhibitive male culture. In its stead women's oppression (re)materialised in feminism through the machinations of feminisms' policing of what is a feminist and/or woman. This policing involved an internalised assessment of women's legitimacy to claim feminism for themselves, in their own words, or for their own lived experiences. This polemic established for many women internally-generated estrangements - a distancing not from the goal but from the collective action of and identification with feminism.
This author hence questions the viability of maintaining a social-identity paradigm that, despite all good intensions, leaves its members feeling, and being splintered, isolated and ostracised from the collective movement. And if its members, whom are supposed to be represented, are left out of the movement because of (some feminists' concept of) illegitimacy what use does it have in attempting to address the `real' illegitimacies of the hegemonic, dominant and inhibitive male culture? Although, as will be articulated in the next section on the Gay Liberation Movement, there are strengths in identity politics, and identifying with a collective movement, there appears the overarching features of social-identity politics that stifle social-identity movements, and leaves them dead in the water, a quandary that has lead to and may be addressed by this study.
Gay liberation
“Gay liberation is a movement of human sexual liberation” (emphasis added, p.113 Seidman 1993). Where feminism waned gay and lesbian activism thrived, and offered “fresh” exuberance politically and theoretically (p.55 Segal 1999). Gay liberation is a movement that follows the 1960's counter-culture movements' awareness of social oppression experienced by individuals in western cultures. Gay liberation acknowledged and attempted to address the heteronormativity and heterosexism of western cultures. Where women sought to achieve civil-rights, equality and freedom from oppression on grounds of their identity as women, gays sought acknowledgement of their existence through the identity of gay in a hegemonic, dominant and inhibitive heterosexist culture. Consequently via the gay liberation movement gays sought civil-rights, equality and freedom from oppression as a social-identity.
Gay liberation discourse has articulated a plurality of origins to a gay identity, including: “constructionist”, “essentialist” (p.116 Segal 1999), or an “ethnic” model (p.396 Namaste 1996). However as Beewym and Eliason articulate: “[w]hether we accept sexual and gender identities as biologically based essences, social constructions, or some combination thereof, the need for political organizing is still paramount” (emphasis added, p.8 1996). Further Namaste concurs that: “clear categories of collective identity are necessary for successful resistance and political gain” (emphasis added, p.396 Namaste 1996). Specifically Namaste sees that “lesbians and gay men have made themselves an effective force in [North America] over the past decades largely by giving themselves what civil-rights movements had: a public collective identity” (p.396 Namaste 1996). The significance comes not from the history of the term, identity or practice of being gay but - as with feminism movements - the collective identity and political power and the goal of achieving social emancipation from oppression in western cultures.
Gay liberation challenged the specific discourse engaged by the homophile movement who considered “homosexuality as a condition of a segment of humanity; repudiating the idea of homosexuality as symptomatic of psychic or social inferiority” (p.111 Seidman 1993). This establishment of a unified, and cohesive gay identity was an attempt to free individuals from a historicised, medicalised and legislative heteronormative oppression in western societies. However such an identity makes the assumptions that these like-minded individuals possess “similar attitudes, experiences, values and politics” (p.6 Beewym and Eliason 1996). The ramification of this reconceptualisation meant that there was the removal of an acknowledgement of difference within the movement, and among those that the movement meant to speak on behalf of. Namaste emphasises that the “marked disregard for the multiplicity of non-heterosexual identities” not only blinded those involved to the achievement of “sexual liberation” but also risked the “reification of gay and lesbian identities” (original emphasis, p.205 Beewym and Eliason 1996). The ethnic model and the essentialist and the social constructionist theories (p.118 Seidman 1993) around a gay identity lead to the establishment of discourses that generalised all gays, regardless of obvious `differences', such that “all other qualities of the individual [are seen] as emanations of the attributed essence” (p.55 Ponse 1978). The under-representation of difference shifted the focus away from individuals' needs and capacity to identify with anything other than the prescribed and required gay identity(ies).
Jagose insists that “[b]oth the lesbian and gay movements evolved into social movements so culturally concretised and elaborate that the tenets and values they represented came to be seen as hegemonic, and were resisted in turn by further marginalised groups” (emphasis added, p. 58 Jagose, 1996). There appeared in the decades following gay liberation the establishment of discourses that challenged gay liberationists assumptions of a unified gay identity:
There transpired a revolt of the social periphery against the centre, only this time the centre was not mainstream American but a dominant gay culture ... the concept of a unitary lesbian or gay male subject was in dispute (p.118 Seidman 1993).
Further Seidman articulates the “abstraction” of a gay identity, as seen within the discourses of lesbians and gay men of color, that is, a unified gay identity negated “considerations of race and class” and thus implying a “white, middle-class standpoint” (p.120 Seidman 1993). Bisexuality “as a core aspect of one's identity does not seem to have arisen in any patterned way until after Stonewall” (p.53 Udis-Kessler 1996). That bisexuals were a part of the movement, but did not seek identification until after its inception, is indicative of the limits gay liberation had over others. It was from both the disintegration and conflict within the feminist and lesbian movements that influenced the emergence of bisexuality:
As bisexual women were trying to re-imagine ways of explicitly connecting feminism and their relation with (or capacity for relations with) men, the lesbian feminist cultural unity was losing ground and the norms of defining `real', `true' lesbians were weakening ... the unified identity required (or thought to be required) was too monolithic and too limiting to be tenable for many women (emphasis added, p.57Udis-Kessler 1996).
This discourse illustrates the increased visibility of lesbians and gays of colour, bisexuals, transgenders and intersexuals (among others), their identities and their voices. The isolation, splintering and disintegration of gay liberation is demonstrative of the complex nature of social identities in regards to sexuality, and the proliferation of the diverse other identities exemplify the fact that the gay liberation failed to capture this complexity within its discourse of social emancipation. The increasing multiplying of voices throughout the three decades following gay liberation indicates the crisis that mirrors that within feminism. The discourses surrounding lesbians and gays of colour, bisexuals, transgenders and intersexuals does not just lay bare a teleological progress toward social awareness of increasingly more and more oppressed peoples, but is a personification of the silence and omission that has been thrust upon members of western cultures, or more significantly the members of western cultures that gay liberation meant to act on behalf of.
By the early 1990's, these identities came to be known collectively as `queer'. Queer is the reclaiming of a derogatory word and a linguistic, semiotic and practical `short-hand' for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders and intersexuals through an all-inclusive term. Despite its regressive implications and criticisms, it survived as a neo-gay term. Jagose (1996) says that “the delegitimation of liberal, liberationist, ethnic and even separatist notions of identity generated the cultural space necessary for the emergence of the term `queer'; it's non-specificity guarantees it against recent criticisms made of the exclusionist tendencies of `lesbian' and `gay' as identity categories” (p. 76 Jagose 1996). Such historicisation of `queer' is imperative to conceptualise its agenda:
The process of ascribing new, positive meanings to the word `queer', though has to be seen within the context of the ever-changing terminology that same-sex communities use to describe themselves. In general terms, we have moved from the `homosexual' of the first half of the twentieth-century to a small number if `homophiles' in the 1950's, from the `gay liberation' in the early seventies to the lesbian and gay movement of the mid-seventies to mid-eighties; and from the lesbian, gay and bisexual organizing in the mid-eighties and early nineties to contemporary lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender or `queer' activism (emphasis added p.5 Beewym and Eliason 1996).
While gay liberation gives way to queer it maintains its identity-politic power, Seidman insists despite the social-identity polemic “[m]any of us have built coherent and meaningful lives around [an affirmative] identity. Moreover, although we still encounter substantial opposition in the social mainstream, we have gained considerable social inclusion” (p.129 1993). In the face of this persistent `power' attained by social identity movements, queer attempts to open up the remaining limitations inherent to the social identity movements articulated above. Queer is a complex term that renounces the exclusionary sites of gay liberation, from the insights of Alexander Doty we “find a term with some ambiguity, a term that would describe a wide range of impulses and cultural expressions, including space for describing and expressing bisexual, transsexual, and straight queerness” (emphasis added, cited p.97 Jagose, 1996). Despite what is said above, queer is more than a term that implies a short-hand attempt at coherence of hitherto `separate' identities, it is a self-embracing paradox, summarised by Jagose: “Clearly, there is no generally acceptable definition of queer; indeed, many of the common understandings of the term contradict each other irresolvably” (emphasis added, p.99 1996).
Queer goes beyond merely being a term to describe the plethora of present sexual identities. Queer is a tool of analysis of social systems when employed by queer theory. Within western academic and intellectual thought movements, queer theory reconceptualises queer in regards to sexual dichotomies, systems and paradigms through theoretical, philosophical and analytical concepts. Queer is positioned as a postmodern discursive within sexuality and gender discourses, narratives and identities via queer theory. As Namaste implies, postmodernism “has had an important influence on the development of queer theory ... [q]ueer theory is interested in exploring the borders of sexual identities, communities and politics” (p.198 1996). Such an agenda lies along the same axis as a postmodernists' analysis of the social identity politic: “appealing to one's sexual, gender or ethnic identity as the ground of community and politics is rejected because of its inherent instabilities and exclusions” (p.130 Seidman 1993). Further it is the postmodern tool of deconstruction that challenges, and attempts to bring down “the implicit underpinnings of a particular binary opposition” (p.198 Namaste 1996).
The activation of queer as a postmodern deconstructive tool, along side the non-specificity, contradictions and the irresovability of queer, lends itself as a powerful tool indeed. Feminist and gay liberation discourses are, therefore, able to be opened up by postmodern critique through queer and queer theory. Within the social identity movements of feminism and gay liberation, we find that no logical process of resolution has eased the crisis, no resolution has presented itself and ended the three decades of domination of one aspect of feminism or gay liberation over another. New-millennium social movements are suffering at the hands of three decades of stagnation and immobility. Queer offers such a resolution. This author witnesses that it is these distinctive and unique qualities here outlined, that will be a way out of the desolation of feminism and gay liberation, it is queer that will assist feminism and gay liberation in achieving their respective goals of social emancipation. Queer conveys the new-millennium impetus of resolving the crisis witnessed within twentieth century social identity movements.
Queer and queer theory cannot be separated, together their inherent non-specificity reflects for this discourse the way to embrace multiple thoughts, opinions, and perspectives simultaneously. It is the feminist and gay liberation movements' `specificity'; their capacity to limit access to their movements through legitimising the definitions of the movements that has limited access to many individuals, and prevented the movements themselves from progressing and achieving their respective goals of social emancipation. It is time to stop the infighting, and stop fighting each other. The internal machinations must agree to disagree and move on. By collectively addressing the oppression of a male and heterosexist society, from various points of view from within the two movements, maybe the hegemonic male and heterosexist forces in western societies will waiver under the combined pressures. By accepting their internal differences the internal machinations of the feminist and gay liberation movements are not compromising their integrity as a movement, they are tapping into the potential power they have collectively. From this position then perhaps social emancipation can be achieved.
Ultimately it is from the queer agenda of multiplicity, duality and inherent contradiction that these movements can take inspiration. The acknowledgement of difference does not negate their power, it empowers the people for whom the movements represent: women and queers who hitherto have been splintered, isolated and ostracised from the movements. By simultaneously keeping in mind the individual need of empowerment through acknowledged difference and identifying with a collective without being stigmatised, social identity movements can both adequately represent those they have set out to, but can move toward social emancipation.
In the next section we examine the Australian queer social-identity movement Queer Collaborations, and the ways that these resolutions can be applied to achieving the collective goal of social emancipation in `real' world.
Queer Collaborations
Queer Collaborations emerged from a one day conference at Sydney University in 1991, and has since become the largest queer student conference in the country, which has been hosted by almost every capital city, and attracting over three hundred queers annually for a week long forum of debate, discussion and sharing of experiences of being queer. This author has attended five conferences: Melbourne (1995), Perth (1996), Brisbane (1997), Adelaide (1999) and Bathurst (2000), where it has been observed that there is the perpetual trend for controversial issues to disrupt rather than enlighten the conference. Rather than focusing on the commonalities of the conference delegates, there is the dominating affect of allowing personal differences to shift the attention toward splintering, isolating and ostracising of conference delegates. The narratives and recollections to be presented here are to provide a lens into the internal machinations of queer collaborations. Their significance lies in their reproduction of attitudes that individuals hold toward other queers, and demonstrates the infighting such attitudes cause among the queer student activist movement.
Queer Collaborations does not offer a unified front, and many delegates attend the conferences with preconceived attitudes that can be said to be reproductions of broader-community prejudices. As such many individuals have used the conference as a forum to express their opinions about others at the conference. One example can be given from anecdotal evidence the author has acquired regarding the issue of bisexuality. Bisexuality has been a focus for some delegates' attacks - “I wish bisexual women would just make up their minds, and come out as either straight or lesbians” (`Lesbian' Speaker QC 1999 Adelaide). `Bisexuals' have articulated a response to the prejudice: “I have been accused of wanting best of both worlds, well why not?” (Unidentified delegate QC 1997 Brisbane). Further, where bisexuals are accused of enjoying the safety of a heterosexual life, or enjoying the benefits of gay liberation, one delegate responds to the underestimation of bisexuals' real life experiences: “If a person comes out at work as bisexual, and are discriminated against, they aren't made part-time” (Unidentified delegate QC 1999 Adelaide).
Other discussions have been entered into at queer collaborations that have attacked transgenders, bears, paedophiles, Liberals (as in Federal Government party), and drag queens (however time restraints have prevented a full narrative catalogue here). Each accusation is made out of fear and ignorance. What is common to the narratives witnessed by the author is that each have made it clear that these others either, are accused of not having a legitimate claim to their own particular standpoint (as in transgenders and bears), or do not have legitimate claim at voicing their opinions (in the case of paedophiles, Liberals and drag queens) at Queer Collaborations. Both situations have fatal ramifications for a conference that aims to explore the diversity of queer experiences. Not that the author supports one perspectives' arguments, but surely if one is to be educated into a particular perspective, Queer Collaborations is the place for such discourse, despite the political, social or moral controversy it creates.
Following Queer Collaborations 2000 (Bathurst) a number of resolutions were passed (Appendix A) to ensure that the Queer Collaborations conference 2001 would encompass some guidelines that may attempt to resolve some difficulties witnessed by some delegates at that conference. While some resolutions sought to refine the conference's aims (Resolutions 1. and 15.), to offer education in regards to “womyn's” issues (Resolution 3.), and to resolve the attacks on others (Resolution 31. and 32.) other resolutions seek to perpetuate the silence of controversial issues, specifically paedophilia (Resolution 10.), party politics (Resolution 10.), and drag performances (Resolution 16).
It is this condoned “censorship” (Resolution 10.) and the blatant disrespect for difference (which lead to the need of installing Resolutions 31. and 32.) that has lead to this present study. However there is more to be considered than the establishment of the Resolutions. There is the realisation by the conference delegates that such prejudices and infighting are potentially disastrous for the queer movement, as the discourse (in the Queer Collaborations email discussion list) that continued after the conference indicates:
[A]t my first QC ... I never knew that there was tension between gay men/lesbians, and bi-sexuals. As far as I was concerned we were all fighting for the same thing (acceptance of the love for our partners of the same sex).
[QC Correspondence from <author unknown> sent to QC Email list (queercollaborations@egroups.com). Forwarded to me 2nd November 2000].
And:
[W]e are all very different people it is naiive [sic] to assume that because we are queer that we have something if anything in common is there any reason why I who just happen to be a lesbian should agree with someone else who is a lesbian we seem to be victimising ourselves, which really is our own business but we also seem to be doing it to other people a lot as well as I sit here typing this on a relatively brand new iMAC at unii [sic] can hardly cry oppression but I am not going to pity and belittle anyone's experience who is not white, male or middle class by feeling sorry for them and thinking they are inherently worse off than anyone else. [W]hy is it necessarily a priviledge to be white?? [W]hy is it necessarily [sic] a priviledge [sic] to be male?? I usse [sic] the word 'priviledge' [sic] not in the way it has been over used on this list to mean someone better off than someone else socially or financially I think its quite offensive to assume that its a priviledge [sic] to be male or white. I also find it sad that i sit here expecting that as sson [sic] as [I] send this email one of two things will happen when it reaches your email inbox you will either delete it because you're sick of getting 50 emails a day from this email list or you will get you hackles up about something I have written in this email and take offense [sic] to something not meant to give it or there is a third option you may read it and hear it and take it for what it is an opinion of one person who would like to change the world but wont and who like you is fighting for the liberation of all queers every where (I'll try not to trip as i dismount my soap box, i suggest we all do the same)
[ emphasis added, QC Correspondence from <identity withheld> sent to QC Email list (queercollaborations@egroups.com). Forwarded to me on Friday 27th October 2000].
Three of the conference delegates from one university have engaged their own discourse of the internal machinations of the queer movement, attempting to resolve the eternal debates of infighting and addressing rather reproducing the “naïve” perspective that all queers can get along. What follows in excerpts from email list discussions in October this year [2000]:
- Person A:
- [T]here are too many divisions in the world as it is...why do we need em in a queer society too?
- Person B:
- [Y]ou asked why there has to be divisions in the gay community. [W]ell [I] think that you will never find a group of people, no matter what they are united by, that does not have division. [E]verybody's different in so many ways. [A]nyway, as if there isn't people that you don't get along with just because you don't get along with them nobody likes everybody do they?
- Person A:
- Everyone is, and should be encouraged, in letting their thoughts and opinions be known...not everyone needs to agree, but the respect needs to be there at all times ... It was just really really frightening to see just how many cracks are in this thing we call queer unity...[I] certainly hope that for QC2001 it will be a different story.
- Person C:
-
Difference is what we all must accept to be accepted
as truly human. So at QC next year, do whatever you need to do
to blow your hair back, don't judge people but try and
understand where there coming from and if then you still think
they're fucked, find a bed and masterbate [sic] till your
heart is content. Take people as they are and not as you see
them. Is that possible? [To Person A], good strategies have been
made to help stop the slurring that may go on at QC2001. Go
team.
[Discourse occurred between 24th October to 26th October 2000].
Further, in response to one Queer Collaborations email comment regarding the right to censor delegates (in this case Liberal Party queers), another delegate said: “It seems we're all after equality and freedom but are not willing to live it. If we're all equal what makes your argument more [read `better'] then [sic] your opposition's argument?” [QC Correspondence from <identity withheld> sent to QC Email list (queercollaborations@egroups.com). Forwarded to me on Thursday 2nd November 2000]. This discourse reflects the more than obvious disruptions that infighting can cause. It draws attention to queers attacking queers and away from addressing the real issues of oppression from a heterosexist society.
The Queer Collaborations 2001 Organising Collective has been advised to take on board the Resolutions passed at Queer Collaborations 2000, in an attempt to resolve the perceived problems encountered at the conference. The Collective is taking the resolutions seriously, and is vigorously addressing the problems they themselves perceived (as participants at Queer Collaborations 1999 and 2000). Although the author is a member of the Queer Collaborations 2001 Organising Collective, it is significant that this study be submitted to the collective to formalise those considerations presented herein, especially the personal narratives that illustrate the perpetual prejudices against others and individuals' disregard for difference.
Despite the problematic nature of some of the Resolutions, it is encouraging that at least some others are indicative of the consideration delegates are making toward the splintering, isolation and ostracising that infighting within the Queer Collaborations is causing. Further the ensuing narratives presented above illustrates the fact that individuals within Queer Collaborations are concerned by the perpetuation of this polemic, and thus committed to resolving the perceived problems, especially before the convening of the conference in 2001. Consequently this analysis of discourse surrounding Queer Collaborations goes beyond just highlighting the problems within the social-identity movement of Queer Collaborations. Participants are wary of infighting and the consequences of not respecting others' differences. It has demonstrated that the new-millennium Queer Collaborations will include a progressive move toward addressing real issues surrounding the lived-experience of Australian queers, and perhaps achieve its goal of social emancipation, and freedom from the oppression of a heterosexist society.
Conclusion
Three decades of internal policing of social-identity movements such as feminism and gay liberation has rendered them stagnate and powerless, and consequently left the individuals they mean to represent being splintered, isolated and ostracised from these movements. Originally these movements sought social emancipation from the hegemonic, dominant and inhibitive male and heterosexist Western cultures, however the establishment and institutionalisation of these movements, as autonomous spheres of addressing oppression lead to a mirroring of external oppression within. Individuals who sought social emancipation through identifying as feminist or gay met with pressures to conform to a specific identification, rather than an individualistic identity within a collective movement. The lack of emphasis on difference in the feminist and gay liberation movements is a destructive feature that reproduces the hegemonic, dominant and inhibitive projects of a male and heterosexist culture.
Discourses around difference did little to address the internal oppression. The creation of new paradigms of feminisms and queer did not lead to social emancipation, it merely highlighted the presence of unresolvable differences between individuals in their attempts to address, and achieve freedom from oppression. Neither of the feminism or feminisms, nor the gay or queer movements resolved the polemics inherent to social-identity politics.
Queer Collaborations is a social-identity movement that reproduces these polemics. The fact that Queer Collaborations has had to pass motions specific to these issues of discrimination between differences means that it isn't inherently tolerant of difference either. However there is a narrative discourse that indicates that individuals within Queer Collaborations are more than mindful of the problems, they are attempting to address them in practical ways. Whether through the resolutions, the email discussions or in the organising of the next conference, these issues are being presented in a progressive and potentially successful way. The addition of this study to the discourse, as hoped by this author, will concretise the features that have prevented not only three decades of social-identity movements, but also a decade of Queer Collaborations from achieving their goals. The recommendations (Appendix B) made here however can only be of use if the individuals involved in the organising of the next conference and the conference delegates themselves acknowledge that one, there is a problem, and two that it is only by collectively addressing them that any progress can be made. For the issues have been articulate in social-identity and Queer Collaborations discourse for as long as they have existed, yet nothing concrete has been achieved.
Thus it is the recommendation of this study that a practical application for these issues be found in regards to: firstly, acknowledging, accepting and practicing tolerance of difference of individuals; secondly, the practical prohibition of silence of issues; thirdly, the practical application of removing the policing of individuals from identifying as however they wish within social-identity movements; fourthly, a practical application to allow individuals an expression of their own lived experiences; and finally a practical application to allow individuals addressing and expressing the common oppression in their own ways and voices.. It is through the collective force of individuals addressing and expressing collective oppression in their own unique ways that perhaps freedom from oppression can be achieved.
Bibliography
Beemyn, B. and Eliason, M. (1996) “Introduction” in Beemyn, B. and Eliason, M. (ed.s) Queer Studies. A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Anthology. New York University Press, New York.
Gamson, J. (1996) “Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct?” in Seidman, S. (ed.) Queer Theory/Sociology, Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge.
Jagose, A. (1996) Queer Theory Melbourne University Press, Carlton South.
Jeffreys, S. (1993) The Lesbian Heresy. A Feminist Perspective on the Lesbian Sexual Revolution. Spinifex, North Melbourne.
Namaste, K. (1996) “The Politics of Inside/Out: Queer Theory, Poststructuralism, and a Sociological Approach to Sexuality” in Seidman, S. (ed.) Queer Theory/Sociology, Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge.
Ponse, B. (1978) Identity in the Lesbian World. The Social Construction of Self, Greenwood Press, Westport.
Segal, L. (1999) Why Feminism? Gender, Psychology, Politics. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Seidman, S. (1993) “Identity Politics in a `Postmodern' Gay Culture: Some Historical and Conceptual Notes” in Warner, M (ed.) Fear of a Queer Planet. Queer Politics and Social Theory. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Seidman, S. (1997) Difference Troubles. Queering Social Theory and Sexual Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Tong, R. P. (1998) Feminist Thought, Allen and Unwin, St Leonards.
Udis-Kessler, A. (1996) “Identity/Politics: Historical Sources of the Bisexual Movement” in Beemyn, B. and Eliason, M. (ed.s) Queer Studies. A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Anthology. New York University Press, New York.
Warner, M. (1993) “Introduction” in Warner, M (ed.) Fear of a Queer Planet. Queer Politics and Social Theory. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Wolf`, N. (1993) Fire with Fire. The New Female Power and How It Will Change the 21st Century, Chatto and Windus, London.