05/09/2013
WHAT IS GAY, INC?
A Call to Action from the Glitterbomb Collective
The movement for liberation of q***r people in the U.S. (not all of whom identify as “gay” or even “LGBT”) burst into the public consciousness on a new level with the Stonewall Riots of 1969. This q***r insurrection was a response to the long-standing systemic oppression of q***r people, taking form in that instance as a police raid on the gay bar from which the riot takes its name. (It was common at the time for police, in mafia fashion, to take payment from bars in exchange for protection from police raids.) The riots were led by radical groups such as S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) and the Gay Liberation Front, members of which refused to cooperate with the police strip-downs that targeted Trans* people, drag performers, and cross-dressers with arrest. Police reacted violently, driving more q***rs to openly and hostilely resist, blockading the raid officers inside the bar and laying siege to it while q***r-bashing cops hid inside.
Where does this story of self-organized action lead? Nowadays, the name “Stonewall” commonly refers to a special interest subgroup of Democrats, a party which currently maintains American imperialism and serves the interests of global corporations, just as its Republican counterpart does (which likewise has a gay rights front in the Log Cabin interest group). These are characteristics of the representative political system, the liberal republic, which claims to uphold democracy and freedom while monopolizing violence and removing its citizens from the decision-making process in order to fuel the imperialistic capitalist economic system. Neither the Stonewall Democrats nor the Log Cabin Republicans represent q***r people as a whole community—they serve only the interests of wealthy and privileged q***rs, those within or supported by the upper class.
Corporate political fronts are a result of lobbying efforts conducted by and for the wealthy, those who benefit from social and economic hierarchy. In the case of q***r political fronts, influential lobbying groups include the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and similar liberal reformist organizations that do not challenge authoritarian social structures. This is why less-privileged q***rs—such as Trans* people, undocumented q***rs, and q***r people of color—are all too often abandoned by these powerful organizations’ political moves. Such front groups are legally categorized as non-profit corporations and organized on a mass scale, often state-wide or even national. They collaborate with political parties and other undemocratic groups that claim to represent our struggle. They are quick to compromise and always appeal to the state rather than admit that nobody can represent us but ourselves. They are known by their class-conscious critics as Gay, Inc.
Corporate control is the reason that our historic Q***r Liberation movement has degenerated into a watered-down, bourgeois-dominated Gay Rights movement controlled by liberal politicians rather than the q***r community itself. Gay, Inc. allows and even encourages the appropriation of q***r culture for profit and votes, regardless of the oppressive implications on our community. No oppressed group was ever liberated by selling out to imperialists and their commodity culture. Gay, Inc. and its Gay Rights movement follows an agenda of assimilation, not liberation. Capitalist warmongers tell us that the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was liberating, when in reality it merely allows us (and not even all of us) to participate in their economic draft and eternal, profit-driven bloodshed. Straight “allies” and q***rs with privilege tell us that legalizing our participation in the heteronormative, patriarchal, gender binarist institution of marriage is a step forward, when in fact free love is exactly what our struggle for sexual liberation demands. And corporations large and small cash in on the movement by selling us Pride commodities and sponsoring our community events in order to advertise their supposedly progressive views while rolling in “pink dollars”… and q***r assimilationists enable this!
When Pride becomes a commodity, it is no longer and expression of q***r culture and pride in our identity. Instead it turns into a mockery, a Corporate Pride. When banks, restaurant chains, communications businesses, and other representatives of the wage system own our Pride, we—in addition to their workers—are exploited. Corporate Pride should make us sick!
It is time that we, as a truly proud q***rs, organize as a solid community and cast off the yoke of corporate exploitation. Gay, Inc. has built a niche market out of the Q***r Liberation movement, benefiting the privileged through assimilation where instead the social hierarchy must be abolished. We can accomplish this through grassroots self-organization, building our community’s mutual aid network, and participating in direct action without depending on politicians to represent our cause. Q***rs bash back!
