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From Identity Politics to Queer Politics: The Risks of Assimilation
For queer theorists and activists, the “identity politics” that inform legal reforms tend to essentialize homosexuality, to reify identity categories, and to assimilate the subjects it has created. Tone Hellesund considers that “(…) homosexuality is still seen as the truth about a human being. In Norwegian, we use the word legning; we speak of homofil legning, a homosexual inclination, which I see as a very essentialist framing of sexuality. That is a term that is very much used in the public debate and in every day conversations amongst general people. It is assumed that if you are a homosexual, you have this ‘inborn inclination’; your core is that you were born a homosexual, and there is nothing you can do about it. This is a very strong story in the Norwegian context. In order to gain citizenship rights, to give homosexuals more space and to give us the right to live as ordinary citizens, there has been a discourse focusing on homosexuality as an essence, thus promoting an essentialist agenda. There has also been a strong focus on the suffering of homosexuals. The suicide narrative is very strong in Norway, particularly since a report was published in 1999 that showed a higher occurrence of suicide attempts among young homosexuals than among heterosexuals. Those statistics have been used heavily by the homosexual organization to claim rights. On the one hand, the focus on inborn identities, the essentialist understanding of homosexuality as a fundamental difference, the focus on suffering and the cry for tolerance, have been the roots that have led to obtaining citizenship rights. On the other hand, I think it is a very problematic discourse. Even today, when we have citizenship rights, that narrative is holding homosexuals down as something fundamentally different, as something that should be tolerated and felt sorry for.”
According to Ellen Mortensen, Director of the Center for Women's and Gender Research at the University of Bergen, the use of this strategy has paved the way for the success of the legal reforms, but “(…) the theoretical foundation for the political work done is not queer theory but identity politics. Something that is peculiar to the Scandinavian countries is that there is quite a short distance between certain academicians, especially in the social sciences, and the policy makers. For instance, within academic feminism, they were instrumental forwarding many of these equal rights law proposals when it comes to gender. Likewise, within the gay and lesbian community that is still fueled by what I would call identity politics and the clear-cut categories of gay and straight. They have been able to make successful political impact precisely because of this strategy. They have made these legislation proposals on the basis that, for instance, gays and lesbians are a minority group that should have equal rights. It has not been made on the basis of queer theory, because that muddles the terrain.”
MONG Choi highlights the community-centered behavior that takes place in Korea. “(…) Korea’s sexual minority movement is quite similar to that of the United States. It has placed LGBT identities, coming out of the closet, forming communities, helping each other and taking political action when needed as its core mandates. However, this whole identity-centered movement deserves to be criticized. People satisfy and confine themselves within their own communities with their happy and friendly personal lifestyles and are not able to question their rights at political and social levels. They think: ‘Is there really a problem? Can’t we just talk it over?’ (…) We thought that we needed to go one step forward from this identity-based movement, and that is why we founded the Sexual Minorities Committee of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP). But the sexual minority issues proposed by the committee had their limits too. They couldn’t be made into a general agenda because they are restricted within the boundaries of the community’s specialized needs. So nowadays we take action in a more general sphere, covering many kinds of minorities such as immigrant workers and immigrant women. We discuss minorities’ housing rights and labor rights and those things that we need to protect from capitalism.”
Cultural prejudices may arise from clear-cut identity categories according to Norman Anderssen, Social Psychology Professor at the University of Bergen. “(…) If you talk about gender or sexual categories, the clearer you make these distinctions and the more you thematize them, the easier it is for people to have certain opinions about some of these categories. It is a kind of logic, whereby the more you insist that there are homosexuals, bisexuals and heterosexuals, the more you let people have opinions about these groups. To really dissolve negative attitudes, we need to dissolve our concepts and notions of sexual distinctions, including gender. This is a very radical position in line with general queer theory: As long as we have these very strong categories, we will also have negative attitudes.”
When asked whether she thought capitalism as a system has provided the space and the conditions to form and enact LGBT identities, CHOI Hyun-sook, a Korean sexual minorities activist and former out-lesbian presidential candidate, affirmed: “(…) I actually doubt whether it is capitalism that made possible the identity formation of sexual minorities. It is true that many cultural and academic discourses, especially feminist discourses, developed within the capitalist system; and that thanks to these discourses, we were able to question the so-called normality, which only approved of heterosexuality. These discourses threw a light on the various and unique people who were living in obscurity. But they were always there and what they didn’t have was a name. (…) LGBT identities are not something imported from the West; they existed at all times, in Korea, in India, in Thailand (...) Western theories just made it possible for them to identify themselves as LGBT. I think that Korean LGBT people have different identities, different cultures and different lives from those in the United States or Europe. I can’t agree that capitalism itself played a major role on sexual minority identity formation; it can opportunistically stand on the side of sexual minorities, but it ultimately aims at reinforcing normative family values.”
Recognizing the often-rigid perceptions of the international LGBT Movement of what being gay should be, that is, a way of reproducing conventional notions of family values and social respectability, Karen Pinholt has intended to build an agenda that “(…) makes sure that everyone who is LGBT can be that in exactly the way they want to be. You have the right as a person to define who you are and live that life, and others should not limit you. That also means that as an LGBT movement, I can't tell other people how to be gay or that they are being gay in a wrong way. The Gay Movement, in an attempt to find the gay identity, which is an important quest, has been moving on so fast that it has lost a lot of people. Some feel that being on the back of a truck in a Pride Parade wearing next to nothing and dancing to disco music is a normal way to be gay. Whereas others think that getting married and getting 2.3 kids, or whatever is the average, is a normal way to be gay, because you are supposed to be part of the gay culture. My objection is to both. I think that we should work towards making it possible to be gay exactly in the way you are gay, and to recognize that there are gays in all sectors of Norwegian society. There is no right or wrong way to be gay. There is only one thing that is wrong, and that is living a life you don't want to live.”
We Who Feel Differently [another Queer blog]
