[News] To Fight Far Right Attacks We Must Reclaim The Radical Legacy Of Pride

[Anti-Imperialist News]

popularresistance.org
<https://popularresistance.org/to-fight-far-right-attacks-we-must-reclaim-the-radical-legacy-of-pride/>
To Fight Far Right Attacks We Must Reclaim The Radical Legacy Of Pride
By Olivia Wood, Left Voice. - June 14, 2022
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[image: image.png]

Above Photo: Lucas Jackson / Reuters.
This Pride Month, many are worried about the escalating attacks on queer
people, and especially trans people, coming from the far right.

*Instead of staying home, we need to take Pride back to its roots as a
protest against oppression, not a party.*

Attacks on trans people are continuing to become more prevalent and more
vicious. Not only are there currently more than 150
<https://www.tracktranslegislation.com/> bills making their way through
state legislatures that specifically target trans people, but the far
right, aligned with certain sectors of the feminist movement, are also
becoming more and more explicit in their calls for a eugenics campaign
against trans people, with the end goal of as few trans people in existence
as possible. One Twitter user, echoing language used by Tucker Carlson
<https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1534551999718359047?s=20&t=AZ4Gae8ENH0CZcRyFV1rHw>,
even called for a “post-Weimar cleanup”
<https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1534557053296906240?s=20&t=AZ4Gae8ENH0CZcRyFV1rHw>
of
“degenerates.”

The most common types of anti-trans legislation currently being proposed at
the state level are bills that restrict trans youth’s access to
gender-affirming healthcare and those that restrict trans youth’s ability
to participate in sports. The other three main types are bills that
restrict teachers’ ability to talk about gender in public schools, bills
that restrict trans people’s access to bathrooms and other
gender-segregated public facilities, and bills that restrict the ability to
update one’s name and gender marker on IDs and other documentation.

One of the most horrifying examples is Ohio’s Sub HB 151, which House
Republicans passed last minute on the first night of Pride Month. If the
bill becomes law, any girl on a school athletics team who is “suspected” of
being trans will be forced to undergo a genital examination, hormone level
check, and genetic analysis. According to ABC Cleveland
<https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/politics/ohio-politics/ohio-gop-passes-bill-aiming-to-root-out-suspected-transgender-female-athletes-through-genital-inspection>,
the language of the law has no additional provisions: *anyone* can invoke
this law on a student athlete for any reason. In the name of “protecting
girls,” Republicans are trying to pass a law that will enable *anyone* to
force a girl to choose between quitting her sport and undergoing a series
of invasive — and expensive — procedures
<https://twitter.com/polevaultpower/status/1533263120788926464?s=20&t=yrG6UxaIj6Pa4Pfvwclosg>.
Additionally, there are *already* several layers of restrictions on trans
girls’ ability to play school sports in Ohio, and according to the Ohio
High School Athletic Association, there is currently only one trans girl
playing school sports in the entire state. The only thing this law
accomplishes, outside of bullying a specific child, is further demonizing
and fearmongering about trans girls and women while opening up new avenues
for all girls in Ohio to be terrorized.

In addition to the ongoing legal attacks against trans people, eugenicist
rhetoric is becoming increasingly mainstream, as we saw last week when a
clip
<https://twitter.com/joss_prior/status/1532431478461804544?s=20&t=07PjVPyGr0HwxVqVQk89Lg>
from
a YouTube livestream circulated online of prominent UK transphobe Helen
Joyce explicitly calling for
<https://twitter.com/setoacnna/status/1533204551251132417?s=20&t=nYOZf3U960jWPKL7Cqrk8Q>
“reducing
or keeping down the number of people who transition” because “the fewer of
those people there are, the better.” What’s significant about this
statement is the fact that she said what many on the right believe so
directly. In the remainder of the clip, she goes on to regurgitate
eugenicist talking points that have been directed at disabled people and
people of color since the word “eugenics” was first coined in 1883, such as
the ideas that trans people are a burden on society, that “every one is a
difficulty.” She also states that the time for “consciousness raising” for
transphobic ideas is over, and now it’s time to focus on influencing
politicians to use the power of the state to repress trans people in order
to create a “sane world.” Using the power of the state to repress trans
people, just as the right wing in the United States is enthusiastically
doing now.

This instance of “saying the quiet part out loud” was paralleled last week
by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who posted a video
<https://jemartisby.substack.com/p/marjorie-taylor-greene-said-christian?r=dfab0&utm_medium=ios&s=r>
saying
Christian nationalism is the movement that will solve the country’s biggest
problems, among which queerness is one. “This is the movement,” she says,
“that stops the sexual immorality and teaches children and brings them up
in traditional families…This will be the movement that protects kids’
innocence.” She also dismisses allegations of rightwing domestic terrorism
as media lies and says that “if anybody is a domestic terrorists, it’s the
radical Left…we could even say the Democrats are domestic terrorists.”
Meanwhile, a day later, a group of self-described “Christian Fascists”
invaded a family-friendly drag event in Dallas. Clips shared online
<https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/status/1533575273840623617?s=20&t=Rz_cmQdwx0QNUJBqq_phvQ>
show
the fascist group shouting at children and their parents, making a wide
variety of homophobic and transphobic statements, and threatening various
forms of violence, including encouraging the police to begin shooting
people because “that’s what the badge is for.” Conservative commentator
Matt Walsh, who in recent years has been making a name for himself on the
right by pedaling transphobia, recently added “theocratic fascist” to his
Twitter bio — meant as an ironic joke, much as he also describes himself as
a “women’s studies scholar,” but sincere bigotry disguised as irony has
been a powerful vector for the transmission of far-right ideologies for
decades.

Taken together, these examples of different forms of transphobia illustrate
what is called *stochastic terrorism*. This term refers to a phenomenon in
which one person/group/collection of groups spreads a particular ideology,
which then gets taken up by *different, unaffiliated* individuals or groups
who transform violent *messaging* into violent *actions*. The people who
played a large role in spreading the ideas, such as politicians and media
figures, are then able to avoid blame for the violence while still
encouraging the attitudes that lead to massacres, like the recent shooting
in Buffalo, or the attacks on Pride events. Anyone who participates in
mainstreaming far-right rhetoric plays a role in creating this violence.

In turn, the attention drawn to the drag event by the far right’s attack
inspired Texas Republicans to propose
<https://twitter.com/BryanforHD2/status/1533820586048241669?s=20&t=WyNGKFZpAZEuXvmhaJklbw>
a
new law that would ban drag queens from performing in front of minors,
regardless of the content of their shows. Meanwhile, in Apex, North
Carolina, the Chair of the Apex Festival Commission received two phone
calls threatening
<https://www.cbs17.com/news/violent-threats-prompt-apex-to-pull-drag-queen-story-hour-from-pride-festival/>
him
and his family if he did not cancel the Drag Queen Story Hour planned for
the Apex Pride Festival last weekend. A town council member shared in a
Facebook comment that other Apex Pride organizers had also been threatened.
The event was reinstated after a statewide LGBTQ+ nonprofit got involved,
but during the same weekend, a U-Haul of neo-Nazis
<https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06/white-supremacists-pride-event-arrested-in-idaho>
headed
to Pride was stopped in Idaho, and Proud Boys
<https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/men-disrupt-drag-queen-storytelling-at-san-lorenzo-library-shouting-homophobic-slurs/>
stormed
another Drag Queen Story Hour, this one intended for preschoolers, in San
Lorenzo, California.

In light of this trend toward violent escalation, some people are
expressing hesitancy over attending Pride events this month. But gathering
as a community in the face of threats like these is precisely what Pride is
all about. It always bears repeating that Stonewall, and the Gay Liberation
Movement that followed, was born in response to police attacks on the
patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a bar that primarily served working class
queer people of color. The people there that first night were actively
being beaten and arrested when first one, and then another and then
another, decided to fight back. Pride means showing up for our community,
particularly for trans people, *especially* when the state and its
unofficial agents are trying to oppress us.

In most places, Pride has become a collection of festivals and parades —
celebratory, rather than combative. We need to return Pride to its roots as
a protest, and organize ourselves to fight the Right. In New York City, the
Reclaim Pride Coalition hosts an annual Queer Liberation March as a
politicized and fighting alternative to the parade organized by the gay
nonprofits. This year, the march is specifically dedicated to “Trans and
BIPOC freedom,” and  “reproductive justice” in response to the most
pressing political issues of our time. Queer people across the United
States and the world should begin organizing events like this one, free of
Democratic politicians, corporations, and police.

The Christian fascists in Texas wanted that event to stop, and for events
like it to never exist again. If they can’t stop us from existing, they at
least want us to be *invisible* — but they do want to stop us from
existing. Pride is about saying “No” to people like that. Pride is about
saying “Fuck you” to everyone who wants us gone. Pride is not just about
*feeling* proud of who we are, but *standing up to* the people who want us
to feel ashamed. For every blow against us, for every homophobic and
transphobic law, every bigoted comment, every threat from a far right mob,
we must turn out in ever-greater numbers. For our queer ancestors, for each
other, and for the generations to come.
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