Adjectives and Nouns

on being the organized left’s token gay friend

I used to describe myself as a gay anarchist. My politics were primary, the object of my self-description, with my gayness being a descriptor. In other words, within the parts of the organized left I existed in, which I engaged with regularly, I was the gay one (usually one of two, sometimes three identifying as such within my city). I believed in building the ability of working people to dictate the conditions of their own lives, in organizing unions and other organizations able to advance that goal, was highly critical of the electoral process and the vast network of organizations that channel such efforts towards that failed system; I also got naked with other men when I had the chance. In that order.

In the past few years, that order has been changing for a number of reasons. Several years ago, I moved from Minneapolis to Baltimore, which in many ways disconnected me from the community I had lived within and helped build for somewhere between five to ten years. But within that, there has also been an opportunity to be more thoughtful about what kind of community of friends I want to surround myself with. In thinking about this, I realized how unsatisfying I was finding this arrangement. How stifling I found it to be surrounding myself with straight people — primarily straight men — and how it forced me to wall myself off from the only community that had ever given me affirmation, a community and a culture I needed and desired to be a part of. Conversely, I began to question why, in multiple cities with large gay populations, I so often found myself unable to think of anyone who I could expect to see both in the meetings, events, or actions of left organizations and also at any gay bar, party, dance night, or event, even when the former was a group of hundreds of people and the latter many thousands.

As I thought of this, I realized how much I would loathe to bring gay friends, lovers, exes, or acquaintances to most of the left spaces I had been in, and it troubled me. It troubled me because on the whole I have known gay men to be immeasurably further left than straight men on every conceivable issue, and it troubled me because it allowed me to see the distance I had to put up between myself and my community in order to be on the left. Mostly, it troubled me because few others seemed to have a problem with it. I saw comrades (correctly) acknowledge the need for the left to speak to Jewish communities, to Black and Latinx folks, to white men in rural areas, to downwardly-mobile college-educated millennials, but respond to the idea of including gay men among that list with something ranging from apathy to hostility. That hostility is often palpable. I have been told numerous times — generally by straight men — that gay men no longer face real oppression in society, that gay male culture is reactionary and misogynist at its core, that the existence of some queer women and trans folks in organizations is “good enough,” and more.

The reasons for this antipathy are something I am going to try and write my opinions on in other pieces. The only further point I want to make here is to note the difference between the frustrations of other members of the LGBTQ+ community in the way that gay men interact with them, and a broader political understanding that refuses to acknowledge that gay men experience any meaningful form of oppression in western society, that treats male effeminacy with disdain or discomfort, or that judges gay men/gay culture as a whole to be bourgeois, decadent, privileged, shallow, and/or reactionary. The former is something needed that I understand and support, even when there are arguments or conclusions I don’t fully agree with. The latter is a real fucking problem, and the two can interact in ways that are unhealthy (such as when straight folks appropriate the former as a justification of the latter position). This is a significant discussion, and one that deserves more time in a piece of its own.

Disturbing Parallels, and another Socialism of Fools

Even with this distinction made, there is often a disturbing exceptionalism applied towards gay communities. Personally, it took me reflecting on the differences between how folks treated my Jewishness and my gayness to recognize the problem. I saw that persistent problems within gay communities such as racism and transphobia were used not as a call to encourage anti-racist or trans-affirming work within the community, but instead to justify a wholesale dismissal of the gay community as worthwhile of engagement. Meanwhile, when that approach is applied to American Jews and Zionism (let alone racism and transphobia!), it is universally and correctly seen as extremely anti-Semitic and lacking in nuance. This is despite Jewish anti-Zionism being a much smaller minority position than gay anti-racism or anti-cissexism, and despite the consequences of Zionism being far more extreme than anything that conceivably could come from gay communities.

This is, in my opinion, primarily because the left has acknowledged the pernicious nature of anti-Semitism — particularly in the way it mimics a class analysis — that it will not accept regarding heterosexism and homophobia. And yet, the language of the global far right around sexuality is remarkably similar. Specifically, LGBT people — especially gay men and trans women — are portrayed in the same “rootless cosmopolitan” nature of old-school anti-Semitism; as a part of an international collective identity tied to the neoliberal order that intentionally undermines national unity. We are portrayed always as wealthy and self-obsessed, as both a cause and an indication of degeneracy in culture.

What is disturbing is that much of this image is not unique to the far right. Several months past, an article in the LA Review of Books, claiming gay men overwhelmingly support the European far right, using numbers that were pulled from unscientific user surveys of dating apps or gay websites, all of which expressly stated they were not indicative of any real voting pattern, and several of which seem to have been brigaded by the far right — and reporting it as scientific polling, was released; it was widely shared across left-wing social media. Key lines include “Endowed with the right to marry and no longer encumbered by sodomy laws or employment blacklists, gay men have begun to vote more like men, full stop” and “Give them the chance and they will vote for xenophobia, for racism, and for misogyny.”

The article in question — probably the most strident recently in a popular line of thinking — manages (based on a number of websites that open with lines like “this is a non-scientific open internet poll”) to make absurd claims such as having over 40% of gay men under 30 supporting Le Pen in France or having gay men generally supporting fascists more than straight men in multiple countries. It ignores that the only actual, non-clickbait poll cited involving the european far right demonstrates that the author’s argument is bullshit. It ignores that there exist actual polls and research on LGBT voting patterns and political beliefs that never seem to indicate this vast network of gay fascists. But it buys into a narrative — ”gay men got theirs, so now they will sell out all other LGBTQ people and can be considered reactionary or even fascist” — that has a disturbing amount of sway in today’s left circles, and the article was shared hundreds of times.

I am hardly the first to make a comparison to these two cornerstones of right ideology that have often found themselves embraced by parts of the left. Remarkably, the same author (and I don’t want to rag on them too much, honestly!) recognized as much in their sole other piece in that publication, a review of a book on Russian homophobia by Dan Healey. Such passages as the following tell the tale quite concisely:

Soviet propaganda trumpeted the alleged connection between homosexuality and Nazism. Healey quotes the famous writer Maxim Gorky, who wrote in Pravda on May 23, 1934, “Destroy the homosexuals — and fascism will disappear.” Those efforts would prompt gay German-Jewish author Klaus Mann to write in 1934 that communists had turned the homosexual into a “scapegoat.” In his words, gay people were “roughly ‘the Jews’ of the antifascists.”

Of course, he follows it up with the line, “Whether or not Soviet fears of a queer conspiracy were genuine or fabricated, Healey deliberately leaves open. But it is somewhat beside the point…” a remarkable statement of equivocation by any stretch of the imagination (“Whether Japanese-Americans were a subversive fifth column whose internment was justified, well, that’s an open question; that’s not the point here…” “Who knows, maybe there really was a judeo-bolshevik conspiracy against the German people; anyways, my point is…”). Even without this, it is remarkable that an author who recognizes this issue goes on to write an entire piece which provides misleading or fake evidence coupled with rigid gender essentialism to argue that gay men outside of the USA are crypto-fascists, and disturbing to see how many people on the left are eager to believe it.

To put it another way: I struggle to think of any article or conversation coming from the left that has portrayed modern gay men positively, or even neutrally (we’re alright if we’re historical, like GLF and ACT UP). I rather routinely see us portrayed as wealthy, socially conservative, untrustworthy, self-obsessed, and eager to sell out for self-interest. I find this to be disturbingly familiar.

This is disturbing even when it comes from other parts of the LGBTQ+ community, which is where much of the traction the article that claimed that millions of gay men were crypto-fascists came from. The image accepted uncritically by many in the left — straight and queer — of gay men is so far off as to beg the question of why it is so persistent. That’s not a question for me to answer, it’s a question for those who have frequently bought into it to.

Despite this narrative being so well understood, polling often shows the opposite — a 2013 Pew poll found that among LGB people, gay men are the most likely to express concern that the push for same-sex marriage has pulled focus from other issues, least likely to express anti-immigration values by a surprising amount, least likely to express assimilationist positions and most likely to express solidarity with trans folks. Despite the frequent positioning of gay men as cravenly seeking assimilation and straight acceptance, a 2015 study found just under 90% of gay and bisexual men polled agreed with the statement“”gay people shouldn’t have to conform to straight people’s norms and values.”

A small few people I know who are “of the left” — almost none of them straight — have started to recognize this as an issue, but being in the organized left as a gay man remains a thoroughly alienating experience. It will remain that way until folks on the left see this as a problem. It is remarkable that there could ever be any question about this, but not surprising.

As I have begun asking these questions, I have also, due to my work with a local LGBTQ+ history initiative, begun engaging deeply with our history going back to the mid-20th century, which has reminded me of the importance of articulating our history of struggle with nearly every government body, corporation, and institution in the country. It has pushed to the fore of my mind the necessity of that basic solidarity between all of us outcasts which formed the backbone of the very idea of an LGBTQ+ community. And it has reminded me of the desperate need for us to see ourselves within the broader history of this struggle in order to understand who we are. It is hard to read a primer on gay culture and slang written anonymously and published clandestinely in 1949 and see in it the same language, same camp, same wit and humor you use each day without experiencing something profound, as if discovering a long-lost relative. This, too, I hope to write further about.

At the same time as all of this, gay culture is at a critical moment. As we near the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, there seems to be an increased interest in building gay community, celebrating gay culture, and understanding LGBTQ history. Gay arts and expression are undergoing a sort of renaissance due in part to a handful of major shows aimed at gay audiences for the first time. Gay and trans performers, particularly folks of color in drag and ballroom are bringing their talent, their voices and experiences to larger audiences than has been seen before.

And there are clear opportunities for struggles against capitalism that are playing out every day. Despite the stereotypes, gay men often work in low-wage retail and other service sector jobs, make between 10 and 38 percent less than straight men, and are highly likely to experience workplace discrimination (all from Williams Institute survey of LGBT employment discrimination research). We are more likely to be unemployed and more likely to be living under the poverty line, statistics that are obviously compounded further for people of color. Gay spaces are being shut down left and right as rents increase and more and more urban real estate is oriented towards corporate developers and wealthy institutions, to the extent that in many cities (including Baltimore) there are now fewer openly gay bars, bookstores and cafes than there were prior to Stonewall. An honest-to-god pill that stops HIV transmission with 99.9% effectiveness is available, yet intentionally set to be unaffordable for those without a health plan covering it (in the time since I wrote that sentence in a first draft, significant organizing has happened on this front). Meanwhile, the Democratic party is ramping up its usual campaigns to ensure gay politics goes no further than the ballot; without any attempt to challenge this it will undoubtedly be successful. If there is ever a time that calls for a return to ACT UP! era tactics and struggles, we are in it.

And so, I’ve started to realign both my priorities and my self-conception of my role in various communities and movements. I am far more interested in radical organizing and movement-building within the gay community than I am promoting a place for other gays in the existing organized left. I am switching up which is the adjective and which is the noun. I am a gay man, a part of a grand sisterhood of sissies, pansies, faggots and queers. I am theatrical and over the top, I speak with my hands, I love drag queens and campy movies. I normally stand with my hand resting swishily on my hip, and I have since I was a child. I care at a deep and instinctual level about other LGBTQ people, especially kids, and cannot help but see a part of myself in their stories. And I am an anarchist who believes in all the same things I led this piece off with. In that order.