WE REMEMBER STONEWALL.

So this post is a little late in the day, but I felt that this is something I NEEDED to write about. Many of you will have heard about bookies “Paddy Power” and their recent set of adverts that feature transgender women, inviting customers to “spot the stallions from the mares.” 

Find here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/feb/21/channel-4-paddy-power?INTCMP=SRCH 

This is a disgraceful attack on transgender people – since the birth of capitalism, our gender expression has been ridiculed and scrutinised, often leading to the attack, abuse, rape and murder of transgender people. Now Paddy Power thinks it is acceptable to invite the public to ‘spot’ transgender people on its adverts, and plans to place transgender women in the crowds at the Cheltenham Festival for attendees to spot.

Channel 4 and BskyB both hosted the advert on their channels, despite hundreds of complaints against the transphobia of the advert, only pulling it when advertising standards body Clearcast withdrew their previous approval of the ad.

This isn’t the first time that Paddy Power has attacked oppressed groups in order to make a profit. In May 2010 the company aired a disablist advert depicting sight-impared football players accidently kicking a cat, and earlier this year the company released a sexist advert featuring model Imogen Thomas, alongside the tag line ‘BLOW ME!’.

Paddy Power is a prime example of why we need an anti-capitalist alternative in order to liberate our communities. It is clear they will stop at nothing, and ignore any oppressed group, in order to make a profit. Without capitalism we could educate others about oppression and liberation, we could fight alongside our allies and make our streets safe for everyone, and take away the economic, political and social oppression that disables us.

Paddy Power is only one company and we cannot just rely on advertising standards to keep them in check, we need a drastic change, a revolution, where we take the power away from the bosses and their political allies, where we can liberate and empower ourselves.

Under capitalism profit always comes before the welfare of working class people, we have to fight for every concession that the political class will give us. But in order to stop our oppression for good we need to build a movement using the tools that we have as a class, – we need to remember that we are the majority, the 99%, and when we strike and withdraw our labour, we can bring the capitalist system to a halt. Coupled with this, we should mount a celebration of our diversity, with demands for the liberation of oppressed groups. Together as a class, we can create a society where the bosses of Paddy Power couldn’t broadcast their filth.

Taken from: http://marxistqueen.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/40/ 

So during LGBT and Queer history month, Education Secretary Michael Gove defended the right of certain schools to distribute homophobic material in their sex/relationship education classes…

Found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/feb/18/anti-gay-book-gove-row

Trades unionists represented by the national TUC (Trades Union Congress), have condemned the homophobia that persists in our education system. One example of the filth handed out in our schools, was the booklet handed out by a US preacher in some Roman Catholic schools in 2010. The booklet, “Pure Manhood: How to become the man God wants you to be”, discusses a boy dealing with “homosexual attractions” which it suggested may “stem from an unhealthy relationship with his father, an inability to relate to other guys, or even sexual abuse”.

During OUR month of remembrance and education, that pays respect to the LGBT and Queer warriors that protested, occupied, rioted and died for sexual and gender liberation - this piece of Tory scum wants to talk about the ‘marginalised’ Christian majority?

You know what Gove? FUCK YOU.

In our schools LGBT and Queer kids still get bashed, they still suffer bullying from kids and staff, and now it seems they are still being conditioned with homophobic shite. Suicide rates are through the roof and mental health disabilities are widespread across our communities due to the oppression we suffer. 

Don’t be fooled, this call to arms about the ‘right to religion’ is not progressive. If those in power wanted to look at religious rights, they would look at the disgusting Islamophobia that persists in the media, in political rhetoric, or the attacks on our streets by fascist EDL thugs. Instead, they want to silence our right to exist with their ‘right’ to be the bigoted.  

But we will not take this. Though we are taught to be hushed (you can get married soon, you are equal now!), it is our duty as the next generation of LGBT and Queer warriors to step up. Gove is responsible for the all out attack on our education system, taking education from the people and calling it a privilege of the rich. It is leaving college students without the support of EMA, and riddling them with debt if they manage to get a place at university. This is an attack on our class, and as I have learnt, a racist attack on people of colour. Now in true Tory style he wants to allow bigots in our education system to abuse LGBT and Queer youth. 

Recently at my Student Union at Sheffield University, the union council tried to pass a motion to dilute our anti-arms company policy and to break away active union opposition to the arms trade. These companies profit off perpetual war, racism and genocide - and now they wish to be bold on our campuses.

The fight for free education needs to continue, and incorporate a defense against this attacks on LGBT and Queer people. It was networks of LGBTQ trades unionists and their allies that identified this attack, and now as students we must use our anti-cuts networks to bolster the resistance against this scumbag Tory government. Our education system is not being subsidised by government funding, but by arms companies looking to develop technology and recruit on our campuses. This is not the education that any of us deserve, or the young people who have yet to pass through this rotten system.

I think we can all agree on one thing, Gove needs to go. Now.

So i’m going to try and write my own stuff more often, because being an “out-of-activity” activist really sucks. I want to throw round a few ideas around about an aspect of LGBT and Queer oppression that is important to our struggle.

*DISCLAIMER: I SUPPORT EQUAL MARRAIGE LAWS - THIS IS TO MAKE COMMENT ABOUT WHETHER THIS IS THE ONLY DEMAND THAT LGBT AND QUEER PEOPLE CAN MAKE*

Today one issue that has been hotly debated is the issue of ‘gay marriage’ - whether same-sex couples should be able to enter into the same marital contract as opposite-sex couples. We see it debated by the political class, represented in the media, and time/money has been spent on campaigning by increasingly less representative LGBT and Queer organisations. But is this really what sexual and gender liberation should look like? Though I completely support equal rights for LGBT and Queer people, is this mainstream rhetoric really representative of the struggle we face today?

General opinion has shifted since the birth of the sexual and gender liberation movement, due to the links that sexuality and gender liberation activists have made with other struggles - for example, its close ties with the feminist movement, within trades unions, the black liberation movement and the anti-war movement. Faced with the radicalism of the sexual and gender liberation activists before us, those in power have been forced to take on an ‘equal rights’ rhetoric, now primarily concerned with ‘gay marriage’.

However the issue of gay marriage is not as simple as just another ‘equality campaign’. As a revolutionary socialist/feminist, I find it very problematic that a movement for liberation is represented in the media as being embodied by the need for equal marriage laws, when the institution of marriage and the family itself is a site for sexual and gender oppression. The way in which our vision of liberation has been taken away from us and moulded into a narrow vision of assimilation - accommodating traditional notions of marriage and ‘family values’ - is becoming a battle in itself. 

Just the other week, we had a Liberal Democrat campaigner knock on our door. We asked them what they were going to do to stop the day to day oppression that we LGBT and Queer people suffer - we were told by a wide-eyed enthusiastic campaigner that “you can get married soon!”. I wanted to scream I DONT NEED MARRIAGE, I NEED LIBERATION.

The condition of LGBT and Queer people is survival, we still face discrimination and ridicule at work, we still face verbal abuse in the street, the spaces we created and developed through work in the public sector have been cut and removed. We sit on the breadline, we suffer from depression, anxiety and other mental health problems, we get sold an oppressive packaged idea of what we want in exclusive bars and at commercialised pride marches. 

Our problem will not be solved by assimilation, it will be solved by a movement of empowered activists, it will be our ideas that lead to the breakdown of marriage and the dissolution of power and hegemony within the industrial family - it will stand in the face of homophobia, transphobia, abuse and rape.

It will be when we take back the means of production, when we have our say in what services we recieve, when we are given the space and respect to become more ‘visible’, when we work together to change the shitty system that fucked us over. We want to make it better for the next generation of LGBT people and Queers. Marriage wont solve that. What we need now is to begin to empower our community, organise against our common oppressors and reach out to other liberation campaigns. 

Those in power are resentfully palming us marriage and we are expected to be happy and grateful, David Cameron wants to tell us he is responsible for a ‘gay rights’ breakthrough, whilst he is simultaneously cutting jobs, support and medical services. He has clearly shown which side he is on, revolution now please?