Make Gays Horny Again: The Desexualisation of Queerness

The legacy of queer censorship is one that can be tracked parallel to the evolution of homophobia. From village exorcisms and the exile of queer people from their communities, to what we see today in the removal of sexuality and gender from the "queer" label, sexual behaviours or gender experiences deemed as non-normative have had a colourful history with social exclusion.

Under the guise of political correctness, consolidation of power on the axis of cis-heteronormativity has shifted in priority from violent coercion into heteronormative performance to the ontological death of queer existence through the desexualisation and sanitisation of LGBT culture and history. This shift, characterised by media inclusion of openly gay or trans characters followed by the appropriation of queer aesthetics and indicators as trends, is not without the continuation of queer-antagonistic violence perpetuated by people invested in cis-heteronormative standards. However, outside of the individual harm and death of LGBT people, capitalism (relevant here due to its privileging of an inexhaustible labour force enabled by the child-bearing expectation of heterosexual coupling) has infiltrated LGBT organising that has historically been counter-culture, stemming from a time where one was expected to do anything and everything to get rid of any hint of a queer desire. This insidiously pervasive act has resulted in "queer" being less of a radical descriptor of how one chooses to prioritise desire and self-fulfilment and more of a useful vehicle for branding. This has, once more, disenfranchised a group of marginalised people that initially intended upliftment for themselves and others who have been discriminated against in similar ways.

In the past two decades, with the advent of marriage equality (namely gay marriage, as marriage legislation still discriminates against disabled people) as well as gender expressions that are seemingly less rigid, it’s been said that the 2010s are a far easier time to be queer. However, this is not an accurate description of the phenomenon being observed. People unaffected by queer antagonism would cite the “facts” that gay people are now present in fiction (as little more than caricatures or sidekicks, but I digress), able to be open about their preferences (see: marginally more empowered by social sanctions to incur violence and survive rather than risk death) and able to get married and raise families (read: replicate the labour production nuclear units preferred under the intersection of capitalism and cis-heteropatriarchy) as reasons why homophobia and exclusion of non-normative sexuality are on the decline. What these people would get wrong about this in a time of cishet male musicians wearing dresses (all of which somehow manage to be poorly tailored) and the wide viewership of shows like Grace & Frankie, is what white cishet people and people otherwise protected by the dominant paradigms always get wrong about the purpose of leftist organisation: for people who have never experienced oppression, a re-territorialisation of the centre by people whose existences have been deemed "alternative" to the norm is marginalisation.

Operating under the assumption that a reflection of one's lived experience in every possible context, fictional or otherwise, is what everyone needs to feel safe, people that have never experienced oppression then project impossible ideals like the end of homophobia or racism onto violence in blackface. For example, Young Thug wearing a dress on an album cover, a choice which he then defended by distancing himself from the queer community using homophobic slurs. A different example for people who may not follow TheShadeRoom is the assumption that anti-Black racism ended with the election of a biracial president, even though the Obama administration deported children, and dropped bombs on children abroad. So I regret to inform you that Harry Styles did not “end toxic masculinity” by wearing an ill-fitting dress because unfortunately, trans women are still dying if they are not cis-passing; or if they are but their voices are not high enough; or if they reject a man’s advances; or if they, or if they, or if they… I regret to inform you that Cara Delevigne’s “peg the patriarchy” garb is meaningless if penetration is still being used in alignment with ideas of subjugation, violence or diminished stature. 

If an absence of queer antagonism is only possible when queer lived experience reflects the monogamous, nuclear family, then an absence of queer antagonism is impossible.  If to be queer is encompassed in name alone, then to be queer in behaviour is to be further marginalised.

The history of queer community and association is one that thrived on flagging, the adoption and implementation of agreed upon symbols to signal queerness to others privy to the code, in times where secrecy was necessary. The misappropriation of these indicators by cishet people is violent and leaves queer people unaware of which spaces are safe as opposed to spaces that just co-opt a visual.

Additionally, this privileging of queer image over queer being has led to the censoring of LGBTQ+ people in spaces that claim to cater to them despite efforts to align with cis-heteronormative standards. The misuse of queer image for capitalist gain or for neoliberal interpretations of inclusivity and justice has created the misunderstanding that queer spaces are meant to welcome everybody who feels the need to indicate their ‘tolerance and acceptance’ of queer existence. This egregious mistake is why queer people discourse about kink floats at Pride being “too much” for public parades. Had these concerns been rooted in the actual knowledge of BDSM best practice, i.e., the impossibility of acquiring consent from an entire parade and onlookers, maybe these would be critiques with a smidgen of merit. However, over and over again, we see that this isn’t the case but rather, these comments are rooted in the palatability of queer existence in the eyes of people who are at best disdainful to the very idea of methods of being that are not binary and heterosexual.

The idea of Pride parades originated in the counterculture taking centre stage in the face of that position never being offered to them by the powers that be. To Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, this meant visibility on their own terms; they decided being seen for their lived experience was essential in the consolidation of the empowerment they had wrested from the dominant culture: that is, since humanity had not been given to them benevolently, they were under no obligation to be acquiescing to cis-sexism or heteronormativity, visually or ontologically. One, notably misled and incorrect, could say this kind of freeing aggression is no longer necessary since LGBT identity is no longer as counterculture as it was at the advent of the gay rights movement. This stance operates under the assumption that queer visibility in the present day is an amicable addition rather than a galling spectacle. There is no freedom for methods of desire or coupling if the goal is gay marriage and adoption processes free of discrimination. Let me repeat: for gay and transgender people, being visible and understandable to cishet people and traditional (read: bigoted) standards is not liberatory when the preference of the paradigm in power would be our decimation. If an absence of queer antagonism is only possible when queer lived experience reflects the monogamous, nuclear family, then an absence of queer antagonism is impossible.  If to be queer is encompassed in name alone, then to be queer in behaviour is to be further marginalised.

So I regret to inform you that Harry Styles did not “end toxic masculinity” by wearing an ill-fitting dress because unfortunately, trans women are still dying if they don’t pass or if they do pass and their voices aren’t high enough or if they reject a man’s advances or if they, or if they, or if they. I regret to inform you that Cara Delevigne’s “peg the patriarchy” garb is meaningless if penetration is still being used in alignment with ideas of subjugation, violence or diminished stature. 

In the last decade, strides made on the behalf of "gay rights" have been nothing but allowances being made to the "right kinds" of queer people: meaning those queer people who are cis, white, abled and invested in the amatonormativity (the widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship) that is engineered by colonialist, heteronormative standards, uncoincidentally, preferred by capitalism. For Black, Brown and Indigenous trans women amongst whom the death toll has steadily been disproportionately higher than that of their cis counterparts, no strides have been made. For non-binary trans people who are told their ideal methods of address "won't work in the real world", no strides have been made. For queer people in the global south who still leave their home countries for fear of gender-based violence often resulting in death, homophobia is not being dismantled by presumably cishet white men in ill-fitting dresses nor are these people benefitting from the absence of kink at Pride and the inclusion of "allies." Jokes made about queer characters by their cishet parents and guardians are not "normalising queerness", they're projecting intimacy onto microaggressions. 

I say all this to say: it is with the deepest regret that I inform you that outside of pinkwashing, queer people are not much further in 2021 from where we found ourselves in 1971. The generative power of protest and organisation was, unfortunately, rendered obsolete by corporate-funded  floats becoming the centrepieces of Pride. LGBTQ+ communities have become spaces of spectacle rather than spaces of safety and sadly, goals of being inclusive have been replaced with the goal of palatability, further marginalising members of the community, namely Black trans women, that stood to gain the most from the original goal of queer liberation. Henceforth, if we're still working towards an outcome of a free and expansive queer existence, we have to make gays horny again.