Julia Serano: The Science of Gender Is Rarely Simple Three decades later, despite some genuine efforts to increase diversity, especially in progressive movement circles, exclusivity and elitism still divide us. It was exhilarating to speak before a crowd of nearly one million people. At the second national march, in 1987, I was invited to be one of eight major speakers. About 100,000 of us were there from around the country, a good turnout but much smaller than subsequent marches - when being out and proud was less dangerous. I enthusiastically participated in the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979. Keep reading >īarbara Smith: Why I Left the Mainstream Queer Rights Movement It was called “working class.” Before college, passing as “not poor” had been my way of life, much in the way that trying (and failing) to pass as “not gay” had been my way of life. My-father-worked-two-jobs-poor, but my-mother-still-had-to-remove-items-from-our-shopping-cart-at-the-grocery-store poor. It wasn’t until I got to a private university in the late 1990s that I learned the phrase for the kind of poor my family was: not sleeping-on-the-street poor, but always-worrying-about-money poor. At best it results in privilege.Ĭamille Perri: It’s Not a Bad Time to Be Queer, If You’re Rich and White Gaining rights for some while ignoring the violation and suffering of others does not lead to justice. Neither will political agendas focused on unquestioned assimilation. Marriage equality and celebrity culture will not solve it. These statistics show it is not possible to achieve justice in a vacuum. People who are transgender, particularly transgender women of color, experience appalling levels of violence, and this violence is exacerbated by poverty and racism. youth have a 120 percent higher risk of experiencing homelessness than heterosexual, cisgender youth.īlack men who have sex with men have the highest rates of new H.I.V. Twenty-four percent of lesbians and bisexual women earn less than the federal poverty line. community experienced food insecurity in 2017. We have won rights and achieved recognition that would have been unimaginable 50 years ago, but many of us continue to be marginalized, both in the larger society and within the movement itself. In the 1970s and 1980s, I co-founded the Combahee River Collective, a black feminist group, and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press to give women of color, lesbians of color and even gay men of color a voice. I prefer to put my energy into multi-issue organizing.
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