Dear queers and allies of all colours!
Dear activists, dear friends, dear comrades!
We from AIL want to dedicate our speech to resistant queer practice.
If you follow the news closely, if you take a look at the social networks, if you listen in the community, there is a pattern. We keep hearing reports of anti-queer hostility, devaluation and violence. And all too often, the fear arises that things might not get better, but rather worse. But what can we do to change this?
The bourgeois answer is simple: fit in, don’t stand out so much, then nothing will happen to you. With gay marriage and a business pantsuit, please imitate as best you can exactly the restrictive norms that have just punished you for breaking out of them so harshly. Frequently connected with the hint that one could turn to the police after all. With conformation to the heterosexual standard, a safer life is promised.
We know: This is bullshit! It is not queerness that endangers us, but queerphobia! It is not assimilation that protects us from attacks, but our outcry against them! Against misanthropic assholes and fascist thugs there is no help in hiding and self-humiliation, but in feminist self-confidence and practical anti-fascist solidarity!
The self-defense trainings of the self-ironically named “Homokommandos” in Poland are a brave example of what successful queer resistance can look like.
And looking back to Christopher Street, remembering the experience before the Stonewall Riots gives also a warning. It reminds us to be wary of the hope of recognition through assimilation.
This hope, which also comes up from time to time in leftist queer circles, sadly is as understandable as it is false. How beautifully simple it would be if we could return to the bosom of oh-so-free and equal bourgeois society with a little less colourful hair, with waiving unfamiliar pronouns, with the renunciation of sinful polyamory.
But aren’t the divisive, oppressive, ostracising mechanisms that keep this society going on the one hand exactly what harshly discriminates us on the other? They don’t get diminished just because we voluntarily submit to them. They will diminish if we expose, criticize and abolish them!
This hope is also false because the state forcibly locks up those of us who do not fit into its order in psychiatric hospitals, jails or deportation prisons. Because sex workers are still stigmatized and socially marginalized. Because cops don’t protect, but rather persecute us.
Believing in this narrative is dangerous because it takes away our courage to stand united in our diversity for our common, indivisible human rights. We must not let it stop us from joining together and taking space together!
Let’s pair up anger and affection!
Let’s party together and fight together!
Because Pride is not just today, Pride is every day!
For the deconstruction of the norm, for the defeat of capitalism, for smashing the patriarchy!
We’re here, we’re queer – we’re fabulous, don’t mess with us!