There is not any doubt that the queer people, that is the sexual minorities, have been prone to ostracism and violence based on gender orientation and sexual identity for a long time. Their struggles have often been a subject of mockery and ridicule in the heteronormative world. Transgenderism is often equated with disability, treating it as some kind of abomination. Historically, the LGBT+ community have been exploited and stigmatized. People look at them with disgust and contempt, as an ‘other’ in society. It is in this sense that the queer people should seek emancipation from this heteronormativity, and for this reason, there is a need for an inclusive movement engineered by a collective aspiration for a gender-egalitarian society. Yet, the hitherto queer right movements have often become directionless, and to be more precise, been like a toothless snake. A snake that doesn’t bite. Why do I say so? At a time when the queer rights movements are gaining momentum all over the world, does my comment bear any significance? Let us analyse through an in-depth introspection.

It has been observed that contemporary queer movements are being powered by an antagonizing force that defines heterosexuals as their enemy. In other words, they outright make a nemesis of straight people. In an article titled “Why We Should Ban the Straights”, Tori Sitz comments that straight people should be banned, that is to restrict them from the public sphere, and that straight-reproduction has been the root of all evils that humanity has had to endure. Sitz even goes on to proclaim that the two world wars were a phenomenon of heterosexual violence. Such pronouncement is nothing but an affirmation of a belief that all heterosexuals are evil. And in the process, they only aggravate their subordinate situation, which is, in turn, only making queer liberation more difficult. If the queer rights movements keep antagonizing the heterosexuals, no doubt that in the longer run, they will get antagonized too. The queers will get no solidarity from the non-queers, and it will only lead to the hardening of their sufferings. The arch-nemesis of homophobia is heteronormativity, not heterosexuals in general. There is a huge difference between the two. It is the idea of ‘heteronormativity’ that prevails in society that they should antagonize. By militarizing the queer rights movements against heterosexuals, they end up only with a loss of solidarity. For example, in the context of the feminist struggle, can all men be blamed for the subordination of women, or is it, particularly the notion of patriarchy that is to be blamed?

The fluid nature of gender roles and sexual orientation is a complex phenomenon. The complexity of this increases by taking into consideration the presence of ‘closeted queer’ people. Out of this complex gender conundrum, there can never be a proper demarcation between the straights and the queers. It is in this context; that the queer activists make a mistake. They conceive the ‘heterosexuals’ and the ‘queers’ as two distinct sexual classes. But is it so? Is it that simple? Their tendency of this demarcation it has been argued draws inspiration from the Marxian differentiation between the haves and the have nots. But in practice, unlike the Marxian distinction between economic classes based on the division of property relations, the distinction between the two sexual classes becomes vague.

The dissimilarity between heterosexuals and the queers is not synonymous with the antithesis between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The latter are properly developed classes, while the former are just categories. Bourgeois exploits the proletariat by controlling the means of production, but in the case of (so-called) sexual classes, the ownership of the ‘means of social control’ (if the means of production is for economic classes, then ‘means of social control’ is for sexual classes) are even widely distributed, making the demarcation vague. As a result, the required dialectics between the two sexual classes cannot be formed. This way of mobilizing the queer rights movement is, hence, faulty and requires deep introspection. The straights and the queers are, indeed, complementary categories. That is why the movement can only be properly mobilized by dint of support from both sides. It is homophobia and heteronormativity that are hindering this mobilization, and not the people who practice heterosexuality in general. Homophobia and heteronormativity are two ‘psyches’ that might belong to both the straights and the queers, and not to a straight person alone. The fight must be against these psyches, rather than collectively antagonizing the heterosexuals.

Radical queer activists pronounce that a true gender-egalitarian society could be achieved only by eliminating heterosexuals. Their pronouncement reaches an apogee when they throw out terms like ‘queer anarchism’. This tendency of equating queer activism to the elimination of the heterosexuals resonates with Valerie Solanas’ SCUM manifesto, which is a radical feminist manifesto published in 1967 that argues that men are the reason behind this damnation of the world, and women can fix it only by the formation of SCUM, an organization aimed at reconstructing society and eliminating the male sex. In short, the SCUM manifesto asks for a male ‘gendercide’ (Warren, 1985). Far-radical queer activism, too, is as obnoxious and dangerous as Valerie’s SCUM manifesto. Their tendency to liberate the world from cisgender people would, undoubtedly, result in an inevitable termination of queer rights movements.

In India too, the queer module of claiming rights has, from time to time, been defined by a growing sense of elite structure. Moreover, the queer intelligentsia, dominated mostly by those who belong to the elite, vastly ignores other marginalized sections like the labourers, farmers, women and the ethnic minorities. They, most of the time, even fail to acknowledge the struggles of other queer people who fall below in the caste and class hierarchy. The numerous ‘Pride Parades’ across the country, which has their significance, seldom reach those queers who are economically poor and are not mainstream. Such cultural queer protests fail to incorporate the sexual subalterns like hijras and working-class queers and remain limited only to the high-class elites. For working-class lesbian subjects, the disadvantages of class, gender and sexuality are simultaneous (Kumar, 2014). There are so many NGOs that support and fund the queer cause. But have we seen any NGO that is interested in addressing such intersectionalities? Ashley Tellis, in an essay titled “Disrupting the Dinner Table: Re-thinking the Queer Movement in Contemporary India”, writes:

In India, NGOization has largely been a voluntarist, bourgeois, entrepreneurial project. People who run and work in NGOs are largely middle class and upper class and are unlikely to even talk to, let alone stand by, labourers, farmers and sex workers despite making many noises about such intersectionalities and alliances (Tellis, 2012).

In short, class-elitism and NGOization of this movement have been fostering more deprivation of the poor, in particular, the poor queers who are the minorities within the sexual minority.

At a time, when homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia, transphobia, transmisogyny and heteronormativity are ubiquitously present in society, we must seek to emancipate the queer community from their present state of subordination and the overarching idea of ‘homophobic hegemony’. It would be possible only by elevating their status position and by equal distribution of social capital to them. For this, obviously and without question, we need a total queer rights movement. But this movement must have to be inclusive of all genders and must reject elitism as a driving force. This movement must come out of the urban premises and go to the ghettos, to those rural areas where there still is an unspoken 377 imposed. Moreover, queer rights Movements cannot thrive by antagonizing the cisgenders. It must seek solidarity from them. The fanatic zeal of antagonism of the queer people against the heterosexuals would, otherwise, only culminate in the failure of queer politics. It would be their historical defeat.

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Niloy Pratim Kashyap is an MA student pursuing Sociology at Cotton University, Guwahati. He can be reached at prniloy63@gmail.com.