UK students oust reps for gay men from LGBT societies: aren’t ‘oppressed’ enough
Cracks in LGBT unity emerged at a national
conference in the United Kingdom, where lesbian, transgender, and gay
university students from racial minorities charged male, white homosexuals with
sexism and worse, recommending they lose their automatic seats on the councils
of the movement.
The annual conference of the National Union of
Students LGBT+ wing exposed apparently deep-seated resentments of male, white
homosexuals and their dominant place within the movement, reported PinkNews,
passing a motion that denounced them for their sins and calling on local
university branches of the organization to remove their automatic seats on
LGBT+ governing bodies. “Gay men do not face oppression as gay men within the
LGBT+ community and do not need a reserved place on society committees.”
The wordy preamble to the same motion stated, in
part, that “Misogyny, transphobia, racism and biphobia are often present in
LGBT+ societies. This is unfortunately more likely to occur when the society is
dominated by white cis gay men.” (“Cis gay men” refers to biological males who
identify as male.)
The preamble also reveals the motivation for the
motion was an article in the libertarian, free-speech magazine Spiked! criticizing
university student sexual minority and feminist groups for shutting down
speakers they disagree with, by arguing that oppressed minorities need “safe
spaces.” Such arguments are used in North America by student governments
to justify banning pro-life speakers or pro-life student clubs.
The preamble for the same motion also states that,
“Free speech…if oppressive…has often damaging consequences for marginalised
people in ways privileged people cannot understand,” apparently viewing free
speech as a tool of male, white oppression, including male, white homosexual
oppression.
LBT resentment of homosexual privilege has been
growing, according to an article by homosexual writer Colin Walmsley that was
published by Huffington Post in February, “The Queers Left
Behind: How LGBT Assimilation Is Hurting Our Community’s Most Vulnerable.”
Walmsley argues that white, middle class
homosexuals of both genders have achieved their goal of social equality and
assimilation with the legalization of same-sex “marriage.” But marriage, he writes,
is an expression of love, economic security and relational stability, which are
“attributes that many marginalized LGBT people do not have.”
“So while love may have won for middle and upper
class gays, many transgender people, queer people of color and queer homeless
youths instead find themselves left behind by a community that has become
increasingly defined by the interests of its white, cisgender, middle and upper
class members.”
Walmsley said homosexual leaders have always been
willing to hide from public view the more masculine lesbians and drag queens
within the ranks as they “dismantled the hypersexual, flamboyant gay”
stereotype. “Middle and upper class gay interests have become inseparably
intertwined with the gentrification of historically gay spaces,” argues
Walmsley, “and the criminalization of poor, non-white, transgender and homeless
individuals within these spaces.”
Walmsley does not discuss the shaky truth behind
the campaign for same sex “marriage,” that only a tiny proportion of homosexuals
even wanted to be married. According to a 2013 study by Simon Fraser University
economist Douglas Allen of Canadian government data, “12.2% of lesbians
are married, 4.5% of gays, and 48.8% of heterosexuals.”
