BE of WARY of the the IMPULSE IMPULSE to to
VICTIM BLAME BLAME VICTIM By Gilles Cooke
The difference from a liberational and equality understanding of LGBT activism would appear initially to be somewhat semantic. Conflicts of the ‘00’s and ‘10’s such as marriage equality, or contemporary conflicts such as the MSM blood ban do serve as examples of a clear crossover in these two doctrines, however it is as often a concept which obscures what LGBT activism is for. “Equality”, as a metric to measure liberation, is a concept linked abstractly to positive social progress, but what anterior ideas are bundled into the concept of equality? For example, it is all too easy to obfuscate a question regarding a settled issue like marriage on the grounds of equality, with a cynical trick statement, “But you are equal, you have as much a right to marry the same gender as I do, which is none! Each of us is equally free to marry someone of the opposite gender!” Another example example, there is no more a right for a cis person to easily access HRT and facilities to transition than a trans person, however that does not mean that many trans people do not have a unique need for it so that they can live authentically. Just because there is “equality” does not mean there is justice.
poses of equality, but due to the fact that members of the community would frequently be unable to join their partners in ambulances, or, in instances of tragedy, be unable to inherit a partners assets after they died. It was not just so they could enjoy the lifestyle of the prototypical conventional family model. This misconception has resulted in the idea that the height of all that LGBT activism aims at the integration of the community into the normal functions of the existing way things are gone about, that assimilation into cishet systems, even systems which are otherwise oppressive to disabled people, poor people, and ethnic minorities, is the apex of all of what is fought for, even in spite of large amounts of these groups also falling within the LGBT community.
Fundamentally, there is a difference between the various purported “end goals” of these two views, wherein the assimilationist envisions a mere ‘lack of conflict’, contrasting the liberationist, which understands that there must be a deeper resolution in there being societal justice anterior to an absence of tension, doing justice by vulnerable lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender people, asexuals, and other members of the community, running the whole gamThis same rhetorical grift can be extended as ut of people who society has dealt injustices. far as you like, however it is, for one purpose, only obfuscation, and obfuscation that is hardly Much of the assimilationist view holds heternew in form. Over one hundred years ago, Ana- onormative dynamics in relationships, cisnortole France stated, with no shortage of flourish, mative forms of presentation, as ideal and aspithat “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rational, that our dynamics, our ways of loving the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridg- and our ways of living should exist entirely es, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” downstream from heterosexual and cisgender Even looking at marriage, as an example, norms, adjusted only to accommodate differ was focused on not just for aesthetic pur- ent partners than the historical norm. It is the
