March 1, 2003. Whatever happened to Queer Activism in Toronto?
By Michael Paré, Toronto ON
Where are all the drag queens, leather boys, dykes on bikes, and other queers? It seems that we are seeing fewer and fewer "radical" activists who really want to make a change in this country, and more of the "political" activists who band together only when they are attacked.
This doesn't mean that those who work to organize the fight against the religious right and their like are not doing good work, or that this work is unnecessary, yet at what cost does it come?
Those in "power" in the "lesbigay" community are constantly working to present the image that we are "just like hetrosexuals" They try to show how we are exactly the same as everyone else that we all strive for the same things. Whether it's saying that we too have 'family values," or that we are all "upstanding" citizens of the community, it is all an effort to make the point that we are "normal." We should be focusing on the fact that we are all people, and that all people have cultural, religious, differences, this viewpoint tries to drive home a point that we are just like those who are attacking us.
But what happens to those who do not fit this stereotype? We are asked to change, to conform to the way we should act for the "common" good. Or we are forced to remain in the background. The gay press, local and national, blatantly ignores us or projects us in a negative light. The political groups we have worked for distance themselves from us. The families we have created in the Queer community desert us
.
This push for conformity is having an affect -- it's pushing us back into a closet, a new kind of closet. It is a closet in which we all have to act in a certain way, or we cannot be a part. It’s another way to hide us from the world, so that we are not seen as a stain on the image of this "great country of freedom."
Where will this new political move take us? Will it win us the freedom to love others, a freedom granted us by our birth? Or will it only force us further back, back before bathhouse raids of 1981 (our Stonewall) and into the 50's, a place Pat Robertson yearns to be. And who will be forced to change next? Maybe transsexuals and cross-dressers, because they give us a bad name, or men and women being asked not to wear leather because it makes "Hetrosexuals" think that all we are interested in, is sex.
It wasn't good little men in suits and submissive women in dresses that took the first step at the 1981 Bath raids protest. It was drag queens, dykes and fags from Queer Nation. It was people who weren't going to take it anymore. It was people who refused to have to hide themselves away and be ashamed.
We are not all alike. We are all completely different. Every one of us has our own, hopes and dreams. Every one of us has longings for completely different things, but we are all being repressed -- and not just by others.
We all need to be able to have our place in this country, and we won't get that place "at the table" by becoming lgb clones. Queers are a very vital and necessary part of this revolution, and to force us away from you, will only lead you, further into the mold that the religious right is creating for us, a mold created in their own image.
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