Gay Identity, Queer Resistance, and the Horizon of Liberation

Description

Presentation given as part of 'LGBTQ+ Feminist Resistance and Empowerment Against Conservative Ideologies' at the Complutense University of Madrid, supported by the CTSG.

The 'crisis of identity politics' represents one lens through which we can understand today's mobilisation of reactionary ideologies, conditioning a polarised field of discourse in which LGBTQ+ identities may only be denied - through conservative bigotry casting them as degenerate and illegitimate - or championed, via affirmative liberal platitudes which hang their hat on the ontologising justification that we are “born this way”. This polarisation diminishes space for more critical approaches towards ‘identity’ as a hegemonic discourse.
Consequently, the terms of struggle are cyclically returned to defending the terrain of visibility and recognition (legal, cultural, and institutional) of LGBTQ+ identities assumed to be ‘natural’, static, and inherent - fatally foreshortening the political horizon of struggles for queer and trans emancipation. I contend that the gay liberationist movements of the ‘long 1968’ - protagonists of one of queer history’s most radical, yet forgotten periods - have much to offer today’s struggles against the right. Groups including the UK's Gay Liberation Front, French Front homosexuel d’action révolutionnaire, and Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano pioneered the analysis of oppression from a specifically gay standpoint. But this affirmatory approach was not their end goal. Against assumptions that academic queer theorists ‘discovered’ the denaturalisation of gender and sexual identity, I uncover the critical dialectical de/construction of identity which conditioned gay liberationism's expansive, ambitious political horizon. My contribution probes existing and potential points of linkage between today’s social movements and the activist philosophy of 1970s gay liberationism, examining the latter’s multifaceted strategic arsenal: grassroots print cultures, creative protest and street theatre, consciousness-raising practices, and intercommunal solidarity. This historical-theoretical inquiry also points to questions of how and why gay liberationism’s radical energies dissipated throughout the era of neoliberal consolidation - and how we might rejuvenate our
movements to withstand and repel the present neo-reactionary offensive.

Period	10 Mar 2025
Held at	Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender
Degree of Recognition	International