Gay universalism, homoracialism and « marriage for all »

I dunno about the parts regarding French politics but I think the point they're trying to make is that our ideas about sexuality do not apply to every culture. And that foreign attempts to "liberate gay people" are often as misguided as historic attempts to "civilize the natives".

Like, consider what it means to "be gay". First, you need to think about gender such that everyone has it, and has only 1 kind. Then you need to make distinctions between attraction towards different genders. Then you need to draw discrete lines between those categories. And where are those lines? Is it about kissing? Or just having thoughts? Or having sex? Is dating enough? If it is then what qualifies as dating?

Different cultures have wildly different frameworks for all of this and what they're saying is that in order to save "gay people" you need to create "gay people" as a concept. And that we should be very careful with how we approach social issues because we can provoke a negative backlash when we impose ourselves.

I think we should be mindful of how our beliefs about gender and sexuality are informed by our history and that people with different histories think differently.

This is a bit long, but I wanted to genuinely defend why I thought the article was worth sharing in the first place.

I honestly don’t know how you interpreted the article that way.

This is literally the fascist claim that the LGBT are forcing everyone and particularly children to be gay.

Why is this said like this is absurd or a bad thing??? That is objectively true, and the author acts like it’s some secretive plot to destroy the immigrant community by turning them all gay.

I admit it could be clearer, and may just be the fault of translation, but they didn’t try implying that if read in full context:

That’s also why the working-class neighbourhoods respond to homoracialism with indentitarian masculinism and … ever more homophobia. As ugly as those reactions seem, they have a common motivator: ardent resistance to white Western imperialism and a stubborn desire to preserve a real or imagined identity about which there is broad consensus. For whether we identify as homo or not, whether we engage in homo-erotic practices or not, to be a colonial subject means that you are always defined against the “model immigrant.”  When it comes “homosexuality” in working-class neighbourhoods we must avoid the impasse of demanding assimilation into Western sexual democracy and the attendant reaction of various actors to this call. In this respect, it is interesting to see how the defenders of a “universal” homosexual identity impose the frame of analysis at the heart of their campaigns to « save » the homos in working-class neighbourhoods.  In an article that virulently denounced what I said on the TV program discussed above, Johan Cadirot – head of the Refuge, “an association that houses victims of homophobia” – says that there are not “fewer homos” in these neighbourhoods but that they are “more hidden and in denial.”7

The goal is therefore to convince non-Whites that they must identify as homosexual. This is the choice offered by hegemonic homosexual activism: pride or shame, coming out or the closet. This is not to question the sincerity of people who come to the aid of the persecuted or harmed. But hell is paved with good intentions. In this discourse, any resistance to LGBT identities is seen as an effort to hide or closet, if not as latent or explicit homophobia. How can this assimilation of sexualities – hetero or homo, hidden or visible – be justified?

With the paragraphs in mind, the start of the 2nd paragraph is clearly referring to the people mentioned beforehand, those that did sought refuge in the shelters, aka gay people. So it wasn’t fearmongering about converting all non-Whites to homosexuality.

The key part of the entire 2 paragraphs is the dichotomy between “hidden and in denial” versus “visible and proud” - do homosexual indigènes not have any minds of their own to negotiate with the fact that they live in a homophobic community?

This is what they mean by the entirety of that 2nd paragraph. Why are those the only 2 options given for homosexual indigènes? Why must they either be out and proud or in the closet? Both implictly implying that they are the victims and not agents that act upon a given condition.

Which is why later on the author says:

Homosexual indigènes confronted with this dilemma therefore face three possibilities11 : distancing themselves, geographically or otherwise, from family and community when they have the means to do so (which is rare), submitting to heterosexual marriage and therefore to significant emotional precarity, or marrying a homosexual of the opposite sex to keep up appearances. What links these three strategies is the preservation of the family and community order and the impossibility of coming out. Homosexual identity and its related political demands? Certainly possible for a small number (at what cost?), but a dead end for many.

There is a material cost to the 3 dilemmas she mentioned, but also to coming out, to claiming a politicised identity, which also incur a lot emotional costs too, of course. But not only to the individual. It will affect the entire family and community. It would destabilize the entire social fabric of indigènes communities.

So If I say that the homosexual political identity is not universal it is also perhaps in order to better protect the [homosexual] practice, to protect freedoms but also lives.

Not because gay people are destructive - but it would upset the social reproduction of these communities, which would mean the total subjugation of the indigènes to the oppressors. And for many, that is not worth the cost, so:

Their experience within racialized communities convinces them of the necessity of such a negotiation in order to avoid any kind of complicity with white imperialism. They know that white imperialism can only weaken the already-compromised social body of the indigènes and work to dismantle the family, which has become, for the indigènes, the ultimate refuge… Heterosexual marriage is therefore the only possible horizon … to the extent that the Western family, as defended by Civitas and the right of the political spectrum, remains a desirable horizon for non-Whites in France… The decline of the social state reinforces communitarian and family solidarity … Our families are torn between rising unemployment, women’s domestic employment in white families, workplace discrimination suffered by both men and women, and educational underachievement. Under these conditions, how not reinvest in the family; what other option is there ?

So when you say,

Oh no no no, you don’t get to eat your cake and have it too. There’s a reason those two organizations coincidentally appear on the same side when it comes to traditionalist and anti-LGBT action/rhetoric. You can’t just say offhandedly that it’s not what it looks like and that’s it’s actually ok when we do it because insert post hoc justifications for homophobia.

It isn’t a post hoc justification, it is literally how homophobia is reproduced in capitalism. Homophobia is reproduced through the institutions of the heterosexual family, in which for the case of the indigènes, is what the author argues is the last line of defense from racialised society.

To use the famous chapter by D’Emilio,

lesbian and gay identity and communities are historically created, the result of a process of capitalist development that has spanned many generations. A corollary of this argument is that we are not a fixed social minority composed for all time of a certain percentage of the population. There are more of us than one hundred years ago, more of us than forty years ago.

and

Our survival and liberation depend on our ability to defend and expand that terrain, not just for ourselves but for everyone. That means, in part, support for issues that broaden the opportunities for living outside traditional heterosexual family units…

The essence of this “racialised” homophobia is entirely different. I can’t say specifically about the organisations she mentions - as I am entirely clueless about French politics - but the case she makes is clear: this apparent homophobia is a form of decolonial resistance of an oppressed group against the imperialists.

It is nothing like the “traditionalism” of the White Right, a reaction to losing privileges due to the decay of capitalism.

Just like Northern labour aristocrats, we must then push back on this idea that somehow these labour aristocrats were victims of propaganda and in turn that somehow the reluctance for some minority groups, especially muslim ones, to neither fully accept nor reject “marriage for all” and a gay political identity, is due to fully internalized Homophobia, rather than a form of resistance having lived in precarity under White imperialism.

Which is why in the end the author reckons

for a political strategy that allows a convergence against the main enemy, even as some are fighting for progress and individual emancipation while others resist this. And this requires, above all, the identification of the enemy. Is it imperialist, capitalist, bourgeois and racist power? Or is it the bearded and veiled “sexist” “reactionaries” for some and the progressive, feminist pro-homo rights for others?

What is the primary contradiction?

On your “you don’t get to eat your cake and have it too” comment, I can say the same to you. The fact of the matter is, Gay Imperialism exists. It isn’t a simple “co-opting”, if that was the case, I guess European social democracies were just “co-opting” communist policies during the cold war as well. There are larger dynamics at play and we should stop the “pathological or paternalistic relationship with homosexuality”.

Which is why in the end they reckon that

In fact, respect for indigenous time – putting an end to commandments and interference in the affairs of the indigènes – […] In the longer term, [will hopefully lead to] the easing of the two constraints – the one that forces people to identify as homosexual and the one that enforces a rigid heterosexuality – will allow non-white people to find a balance between their public and private lives, their relationships and their family solidarities.

Is this not what we should strive for? The removal of the conditions that forces indigène communities to rely on hetero-patriachal families, which critically needs to be carried out by the indigène themselves.

This will eventually remove the material basis for homophobia.

As-salamu Alaikum

Thank you for sharing I learned a lot. Nothing to add for now. Will think

From what I know, she’s an activist based in France, that was part of the “Indigenous of the Republic”.

They would fall under the so-called decolonial Marxism, if we were to give a term in my opinion.

here it is: https://www.decolonialtranslation.com/english/gay-universalism-homoracialism-and-marriage-for-all.html

but i already added it to the main post aswell

ah fk mb I thought I added it in the main. Doing it now.