I think the remake of this poster is incredibly interesting, as is the intense response to it. Majestic had this poster on their door the whole time we lived together and it always gave me chills. It made me feel powerful and vindicated and righteous. I really like the original poster. I think it articulates very clearly the radical nature of queerness that the hetero world doesn’t really see. I never saw it as being a response to gay people who don’t identify as queer, and I find it really interesting that it has been utilized to make an entirely different point in its re-imagination.
On Tumblr and in queer communities I’ve been part of outside of the internet, there certainly is a trend of rejection of lesbian identity. In my experience, lesbians are often categorized as: “homonormative”, non-radical, apolitical, second-wave, oppressive, boring, and “vanilla.” In self-identified radical queer spaces, there is often a large-scale erasure of the extremely radical lesbian feminist history that allows us to have the language to critique anything in the first place, as well as a silencing of radical, living, breathing lesbian culture.
This is nothing other than misogyny. We are doused in a culture that thrives on the hatred of women. “Radical Queerness” isn’t immune from that, and in fact these communities are often responsible for perpetuating misogyny in many different ways. One of these ways is actually by discursively defining lesbianism as archaic, backwards, and inherently apolitical. I like using the word lesbian to describe myself. It’s not the only word I use, and often it is not all encompassing of my desires. But there are some spaces and some moments I experience with myself where queer just doesn’t cut it. When I claim the word, “Lesbian” to talk of my sexuality and my politics, I invoke a rich history of brave women who taught me everything I know about survival, and fuck, is that powerful.
I don’t believe this poster to be “queer-hating”, nor do I think it is setting up a dichotomous relationship between queers and lesbians. I think it is asking us to question a culture of radical queerness that elevates certain identities over others (ie: if you are queer, you are inherently more radical than if you are lesbian.) It is asking us to think hard about this tendency to silence and erase radical lesbian history and it is a reclamation of a perfectly valid and resistant sexual politic.
-Ashley
A) There have been, actually, a lot of homonormative women who insist that they are lesbians, or even “gay women” and not dykes or queer, rejecting those identities as over-sexualized and too far out of the mainstream. It’s not a label that’s been imposed on homonormative women, it’s an identity many of them claimed for themselves, and that’s where it came from.
B) There’s a lot of good reasons self-identified queers reject radical lesbian feminism, first and foremost that radical feminism of all stripes, but especially lesbian rad feminism, is deeply racist and transphobic, the latter to the point of physically attacking, as well as outing and placing in further danger, trans women. It’s “disrespect” the rad fem community has fucking earned. And, by the way, that language that enables us to critique things? Largely the creation of people of color, appropriated by rad fems. Their erasure of the work of POC is part of their deep racism.
So FUCK YOU and your defense of them and their bullshit.
^^^ THIS too!
I see glitterpolitic’s point. I think they’re saying, “I agree with the original poster but also…”
I really don’t get the “FUCK YOU” comment. was it defensive, or just bringing up another point of view? #jussayin
*edit* ALSO what does radical even mean anymore? i don’t even know, i’ve just about lost faith in that word.
