Over the rainbow

I ponder the issue of identity a lot, and throughout Pride month, I was thinking in particular about the issues of representation and inclusion/exclusion within the LGBTQ community. I must confess that I’ve never attended a Pride parade. In general, I’ve never derived pleasure from watching parades, and I don’t like crowds. More importantly, the so-called community has never felt like a completely inclusive one to me. My introduction to this space was in university. It seemed very white and representative of very specific identities—namely, people who identified with either the ‘L’, ‘G’, or (less so) ‘B’ in the acronym LGBTQ. Thankfully, that acronym has been expanding over the years to acknowledge the existence of different identities. To the best of my knowledge, it is currently LGBTQQIP2SAA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit, asexual, and ally), sometimes referred to as ‘Alphabet Soup’ owing to its length.

But not everyone is eager to eat this soup. If you think homophobic heterosexuals are a problem, you might be surprised to learn how rampant racism is in the LGBTQ community and how frequently same-sex attracted people dismiss and promote the erasure of different sexual and gender identities. I suspect we’ve all been guilty of assuming that someone is gay because they’re attracted to someone of the same sex or of questioning the identity of a bisexual who is dating a person of the opposite sex or of being insensitive to someone’s gender identification. But it is crucial to learn from this and be more aware, more receptive, more understanding, and more respectful. I was appalled the other day when I read the comments on an article about this acronym. Rather than supporting the recognition of the various sexual and gender identities, people were complaining about how unnecessarily complicated it is—that people should just identify as queer if not lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. In one of these comments, a woman derided those who want to expand LGBT and suggested that anyone who doesn’t identify with one of these terms should ‘figure it out, like [she] did’.

From this perspective, one might deduce that only three sexual orientations exist: heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual. But it actually gets worse, as bi erasure and invisibility within the so-called community are common. Ask any bisexual and you will hear stories about being told to pick a side. So, what many people actually feel is that only two legitimate sexual identities exist: straight and gay. This ignores the countless people who occupy the enormous space between these two ends of the sexuality spectrum and denies their right to self-define.

While reading up on Toronto Pride, I stumbled upon an article titled ‘Why are we erasing LGBT people from our own community?’ I assumed that it would be about how we overlook the identities of our fellow queer people. On the contrary, the article is critical of people who identify as anything other than gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. The author—a white male—complains about Pride Toronto’s mission to ‘[bring] people together to celebrate the history, courage, diversity and future of our community’. I agree with him that ‘celebrating’ and not ‘demonstrating, promoting, and demanding rights and equality’ is a failure on the part of the organizers, but I was disappointed that despite this critique, he doesn’t get into a discussion about this. What I cannot agree with is his criticism of the use of the ambiguous terms ‘people’ and ‘community’. Unlike him, I commend Pride Toronto for acknowledging that not everyone identifies with ‘LGBT’, and I agree with the organizers that dropping this signifier promotes more inclusion. The author, however, argues that the terms lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender are ‘all-encompassing’, and thus those who do not identify with one of them are manifesting internalized homophobia or transphobia. That is one very privileged viewpoint!

How can a sexual minority demand recognition of their sexual identity and deny others the same right? If we truly believe that everyone should have equal rights, we must reject the dominance of the white, cisgender, homosexual, middle class identity within the rainbow. It promotes a homonormativity that aligns dangerously with a capitalist culture that thrives on oppression. This is why many people of colour don’t identify as gay or lesbian, despite being attracted to members of the same sex. Furthermore, the corporatization of Pride that complements this homogenization of the queer identity excludes and deters people who might otherwise want to celebrate.

 (Noah Berger/Reuters)

As a Huffington Post blogger states, he chooses not to attend Pride because ‘it’s for those members of the LGBT community who are the best customers for the sponsoring brands and who fit an image of lithe, young, white male gayness’. A look at Pride Toronto’s sponsors this year is telling: several alcohol companies, Viagra (known to be used recreationally), TD Bank, Manulife Financial, Eska Water, Smart… The target market is clearly affluent inhabitants of metros, who like to party. Yep, ‘lithe, young, white male gayness’ sounds accurate.

This celebration of capitalism in addition to the increased police presence is why individuals and groups, like Black Lives Matter, opted out of San Francisco’s Pride celebrations this year.

(Mel Evans/Associated Press)

Anyone who can feel comfortable and safe in the presence of heavily armed police is clearly privileged enough not to be suspicious of law enforcement, is unfamiliar with the history of the LGBTQ rights movement and the initiation of Pride, and is disinterested in the ongoing history of discrimination and violence that people of colour are facing at the hands of police. And, like me, they’ve probably been lucky enough not to have had to do any real work for the cause, because so many have already fought and/or lost their lives fighting for their basic right to be regarded as human and non-criminal. Pride appears to be a battleground between those who see identity as political and those who do not.

Like white feminism, we seem to have a white homosexuality problem, where white people lead the movement and are satisfied when they make progress and are okay with leaving everyone else behind. This is perhaps best exemplified by the struggle for marriage equality that does nothing to mitigate or eradicate pressing issues such as laws that allow for discriminating against people on the basis of their sexual or gender identity, the continued brutalization and murder of trans women of colour, homelessness among queer youth, the high rate of domestic violence that bisexual women face, etc. Of course, this is not to say that I oppose same-sex marriage. I only wish that those who’ve fought for that right would also pursue securing the rights of others, who continue to fight for their very survival. Until your LGBT rights encompass the rights of all sexual and gender minorities, what is there to be proud of?