There is a narrative running through the western zeitgeist and slowly trickling out to its various victims in the Third World that 'Queer' or at least 'LGBTQ' is somehow synonymous with colonialism and imperialism; that queerness in and of itself is an inherently western 'ideology' being enforced upon the indigenous people of the Near East and the Global South by the barrel of a gun. This notion sickens me to the core because I am, perhaps above all else, a Queer anti-imperialist... But I get it.
It is a sad and disturbing fact that the white supremacist cis hetero chauvinists behind the mirage factory that is Atlantic neoliberalism have adopted the notion of 'LGBTQ rights' as one of their many excuses for flattening the planet and turning it into a colossal beige fulfillment center at the service of the global 1%. But this must be seen for what it truly is; fickle, empty and totally deceptive propaganda.
Over the decades, as the metropolitan West has grown increasingly diverse as a direct result of its endless international adventurism, the same predominantly white Anglo-Saxon Protestant cisgender men who have always run this imperial cartel have had to get increasingly creative to sell their mission of vanilla hegemony to the increasingly Neapolitan masses within their own palace gates.
'White power for straight white men' just doesn't quite have the audience it once had even if it still does very much represent the intentions and demographics of its masters. So, we have been sold secular humanism, liberal progressivism and humanitarian interventionism among other sexy new brand names for western cultural domination. Cis women have been afforded a very well-publicized selection of spaces amidst the power elite so long as they kill like men and cover for their rapist husbands. And the Queer community has been tokenized and sanitized beneath the logo of LGBT.
Thus now, whenever some fag-bashing Evangelical Zionist goes on a murder spree he can claim to the more sensitive westerners in the audience that he is merely cleansing the Arab savage beasts with fire in the name of rainbow flags and girl power.
Never mind any of the inconvenient facts: That Queer people are much more likely to be found in western prisons, asylums, foster care harems and the various other bureaucratic dungeons than we are in goddamn parades, or that we are far more likely to become victims of the rape culture cultivated by the Epstein Class than our more conventional peers, or that said predator class still remains overwhelmingly cis-het male-WASP in its own cultural make-up... 'Some Muslims kill Queers and flog their wives, so dropping bombs on their children is a celebration of diversity!'
This is not Queer culture. This is a bunch of bloodthirsty breeders hiding behind a sanitized mockery of Queer culture. Queer culture; truly Queer culture, is not a pink monolith, in fact, it is the polar opposite by nature. Queer culture is above all else indigenous and individualist in nature. Indigenous in that it is a call for a return to the local tribal diversity of interpretations regarding sexuality and gender identity once commonplace in pagan society. Individualist in that we reject the ability of any material body, be they church or state, to define said sexuality and gender identity. All of which is quite violently anathema not only to imperialism but liberal progressivism as well.
Queer culture was born out of the maelstrom of Romanized Christianity. Colonialism of the modern western variety began with the forced Christianization of Pagan Europe and quickly advanced to the forced Christianization of Africa and the New World. Before this Queer culture was Norse culture, Yoruba culture, Apache culture... A million tribes with a billion gods and just as many interpretations of gender and sexuality... All violently snuffed out by the cultural universalism of organized Christianity which would go on to inform the cultural universalism of liberal progressivism after the Enlightenment declared the state and its various institutions to be the new gods.
Modern Queer culture was a tapestry of heathen shards gathered by wounded hands in the shadows until the anti-colonialist movements of the 1950s and 60s created a platform for us to define ourselves outside of the closet. There would be no Queer liberation without Black Power and Chicano pride and there would be no Black Power or Chicano pride without the Battle of Algiers and the reckoning at Dien Bien Phu.
Stonewall was an uprising against police brutality lead by Black and brown gender outlaws like Marsha P. Johnson, Storme DeLarverie and Sylvia Rivera, all of whom had track records with the American Third Worldist Movement and it showed through the movements that rose from the flames of the Stonewall Inn.
The various Gay Liberation Fronts founded across the West in the late-sixties and early-seventies chose that name in reference to the Algerian National Liberation Front and the Vietnamese National Liberation Front. The Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries founded by Rivera and Johnson included references to the Black Panthers, Pagan Third Genders and Third World liberation in their founding documents.
And a chapter of the GLF participated in the Black Panthers' 1970 Revolutionary Peoples Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia right alongside the Young Lords and the American Indian Movement with Huey P. Newton's vocal support and approval.
The current mainstream LGBT movement is a domesticated farce. Queerness is an expression of anti-imperialism writ intimate and much of the bigotry towards this expression in the Third World is actually a relic of imperialism. Indigenous gender identities and sexualities throughout the Global South were violently altered and criminalized under colonial rule and even after this rule, many otherwise liberated nations failed to liberate themselves from legal constructs introduced by the supposedly tolerant West. But even this is not the case universally.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, the latest target of American imperial bombardment may allow the death penalty for homosexuality, but they are also the only Islamic nation on earth to recognize gender confirmation surgery, not just as a right but as a responsibility of a truly Islamic society, with none other than the Ayatollah Khomeini issuing fatwas regarding the right to gender confirmation as early as 1964 and Shia Islamic jurists deciding that since it is not possible to change the soul but it is possible to change the body then not only should such surgical interventions be permitted but they should be treated as a kind of rebirth complete with corresponding ID and certification.
There are still many horrible things about the treatment of trans people in Iran but the fact that their laws on the issue are more humane than most Bible Belt states proves the total absurdity of the notion of imperial queerness. Persia has recognized the existence of Third Genders for over 3000 years and has totally indigenous laws that represent this history, and American bombs have murdered Iranian transwomen right alongside their cisgender sisters. Those bombs have also killed feminists struggling against the Mullahs and children who will never come out to their parents.
I mourn those people because they are my people and they were killed by bombs from a government that pays for them with the money they take from my purse with their taxes. This is also the same reason that I will not march in any parade sponsored by Raytheon or Lockheed Martin.
Because I am a Queer person, and that is why I am an anti-imperialist.
Peace, Love & Empathy- Nicky/CH
Soundtrack: Songs that Influenced this Post
* Running Up that Hill by Chromatics
* You're One by Imperial Teen
* Better Angels by the Menzingers
* Kim's Watermelon Gun by the Flaming Lips
* Lola by the Raincoats
* The House that Heaven Built by Phoebe Bridgers
* I Fought the Law by Dead Kennedys
* Headache by Frank Black
* Mississauga Goddam by the Hidden Cameras
* Gary Floyd by Butthole Surfers
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