The Real Queers?

Claiming an identity or category doesn’t make you queer. Anyone can claim anything and be just as normative as anyone else. Oppression is always the chief marker of normativity. Queerness and oppression don’t go together. The real queer shuns oppression for the sake of transformation. Over the last few months, I have watched many fake queers lead the campaign for the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance. Over and over again, persons of color were treated like their voices didn’t matter. Trans persons were pushed aside in favor of more normative representations of the community. Poor people never got in the door to even have the conversation. Women were consistently asked to move aside in favor of the worn out arguments of men. I am tired of seeing representatives of the so-called queer community act just like those they claim to oppose. The Human Rights Campaign once again proved they’re not a friend of anything queer. The white gay boys who ran this HERO campaign might as well have been shouting the words of George Wallace, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Because over and over the most marginalized and oppressed members of the Houston community were segregated out and informed that they didn’t matter to the campaign. I am reminded how frail, normative and brutally oppressive identity politics intrinsically are. The old normativity always makes way for a new normativity. Will the real queers please stand up?

Amen.