Passing with Mattilda part 1: Why the Gay Rights Movement is a Sham

Interviewed by Troy Williams

One of the most provocative contemporary queer authors has to be Mattilda: AKA Matt Bernstein Sycamore.  She describes herself as a “genderqueer faggot queen, somewhere in the genderblur trans continuum”.  Her books are subversive, thought provoking and fantastically hazardous to the heterosexist status quo.  Hur new anthology, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender Conformity confronts the messy crossroads of identity and ill-fitting social categories.    In part one we discuss the dangers of gay assimilation.  In part two we’ll discuss Nobody Passes. 

TW: My first exposure to your writing was when my boss handed me your article, “Sweatshop Produced Rainbow Flags”. And it was one of those moments that fundamentally shifted how I would approach my own activism. I’d like to start with why you feel the gay rights movement is a sham.

M: Basically the gay rights movement has become a screen behind which to hide and oppress everyone else and get away with it. Instead of building community for people on the margins, (queers of color, disabled queers, queer activists, transqueers, sex workers, homeless queers) the mainstream gay rights movement is more about policing the borders and deciding who belongs inside and who belongs outside.  If we take a look at the priorities of the mainstream gay rights movement we see things like marriage, military service, adoption and ordination into the priesthood.  All the dominant signs of straight conformity have suddenly become the ultimate signs of gay success.  And so in that sense it’s become more about assimilation into the dominant culture and taking on all the most violent signs of straight privilege, instead of challenging power. 

TW:  Yeah.  I don’t have any patience for the military agenda of the LGBT political movement.

M: Even now we can see articles that say, “President Carter doesn’t support Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” -- and this is like an exciting mark of progress.  The fascinating thing to me is that the whole notion of gays in the military is able to exist separately from US colonial wars like Iraq and Afghanistan.  You can even hear people say, ‘Oh I’m against that war, but I think gay people should be able to serve in the military just like straight people!’  And it’s that fundamental contradiction.  If you are against the war, then no one should serve!  It’s pretty simple.

TW: My slogan is: ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Kill’.

M: (laughs.) That sounds perfect. 

TW:  But I’ve got my own set of internal contradictions.  I see the problem with marriage as a dominator template that reinforces patriarchy -- but when my conservative uncle, or George Bush or the Mormon Church start working against gay marriage, I come rushing to its defense.  So I find myself wearing different masks when I’m with different audiences.

M: (laughs) Well obviously the Christian Right exists. They have a lot of power, including the presidency.  And it is crucial to fight the Christian Right.  But we need to fight them on our terms and not theirs.  So much of the gay marriage movement is ‘oh please accept us on your terms!’  So much of it becomes, ‘how do we convince raging homophobes that we are just like them?’

TW:  We join the army!

M:  Exactly.  Actually we like to join the army more than you do!  We actually enjoy killing Iraqis more than you do!   We actually have long-term monogamous relationships that imitate your relationships to such an extent that you can’t even tell the difference! 

TW: Right.

M: But guess what?  The Christian Right is always going to be able to tell the difference.  And they don’t care if you are a nice smiling gay person like Rosie O’Donnell – or if you’re a transgender hooker.  To them we are all the same.  So much of the gay establishment media is about the ‘we’re just like you’ message and I think that is always going to fail.  That is what’s so sad about the ‘normalcy at any cost’ model.  No one fits into that.  We shouldn’t be trying to have our place inside imperialism or inside marriage or any of these horrifying institutions. 

TW: Could it be argued that the marriage movement is working incrementally?  We’ll take care of the respectable gays first and then...

M: That’s the argument.  First we’ll get marriage, first we’ll get military service, first we’ll get adoption and then everything else comes after.  And I don’t think there is a single historical example of when that actually happened.  But I also think that if we look at organizations like HRC or the Log Cabin Republicans – groups like that have more in common with the NRA then any left agenda.  So what are we going to get next -- gun rights? 

TW:  Oh we’ve got those here in Utah!  We’ve got a man who is insisting that the young kids can take weapons into the queer prom.

M: (laughs)

TW: How do you personally negotiate your own activism between being heard and not being so fringe that people completely dismiss your message?

M: I don’t feel like what I am saying is actually fringe.  It’s been made fringe.  Especially the really basic arguments. Instead of having access to marriage, people should have universal access to all the services that marriage can procure.  Things like housing and healthcare and the benefits now procured through citizenship.  Those should be things that we all have access to.  People get that.  And that is the tragedy of gay marriage, because it replaces the struggle for larger things.  The most dramatic for me is universal healthcare.  In the early 90’s universal healthcare was a mainstream gay issue because people had seen their entire circles of friends die of AIDS. And to see the dramatic shift to gays in the military and from there to marriage – it’s so obvious how these issues have replaced universal healthcare and AIDS services or domestic violence prevention.  That’s just basic reformist agenda – that’s not dismantling the system and creating something else (which I’d also be in favor of!).

To be continued…

Qcast "Passing with Mattilda" (complete interview) here:
Passing with Mattilda (26:00 min.)

Comments

[Roy]

Amazing. I thought I was out here alone. Over the last two years I have been saying that the Gay Fraternity does not care about those of us who do not fit the profile. I am on the other side of the gay universe than Matilida, but her words resound. Why should I revolt because I do not conform to one orthodoxy only to find in revolution to have to fit another. The only true revolution is transitory anarchy.