The Fascists Will Never Accept Us
Cautionary and seemingly well-meaning exhortations for groups whose rights are now under threat to sanitize their image are patronizing, hollow, and counterproductive, but ever-present in US politics.
You start out in 1954 by saying, “N——, n——, n——.” By 1968 you can’t say “n——”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N——, n——.”
- Republican campaign consultant Lee Atwater in 1981
Maybe if you weren’t so Black, the segregationists would have given you equal rights sooner! So goes the logic behind a distressingly common, putatively sympathetic piece of advice for marginalized groups seeking equal rights or defending themselves from rightwing movements to limit them further. In American political discourse, it is often taken as a truism that the hegemonic power holders and conservative groups who hold the key to inclusion need to have their feelings coddled by oppressed groups lest they become offended or scared and as a result continue jealously guarding their privilege at the expense of others. ‘If only we’d been more conciliatory and less ourselves, maybe they would have deigned to allow our existence.’
This sentiment was on full display in a recent New York Times piece highlighting the opinions of eight conservative Americans. Leaving aside the questionable choice to give a platform to hateful voices that are in no danger of being silenced, the conservatives’ summations of their thoughts on basic topics are revealing:
Christopher: I support feminism, but I don’t support modern feminism. I think that modern feminism is focused on so-called toxic masculinity, and they are actually purveyors of men-bashing. And so I support femininity and feminism but not to the point where they’re looking to hoist themselves above men to try to make up for so-called patriarchy.
…
Danny: Look at fashion. Look at the newer generation of how people dress, how men dress. There’s men, and there’s women, and there’s masculinity, and femininity. And there’s no reason to destroy one in order to make the other one better. I’m not trying to get into a negative men-versus-women thing, but I’m seeing masculinity under attack. And I’m seeing men wearing tight skinny jeans, with no socks and velvet shoes. And it’s cool to wear pink. I don’t mind wearing pink. It’s a cool color. And I’m not saying colors belong with a certain gender. It’s so funny — this is what we were talking about earlier: Every time you speak, you don’t feel comfortable enough to say what’s on your mind, where you have to almost give a disclaimer. I have no problem with pink. But when we go out to a club or a dinner or dancing, you see some of the younger generation wearing very feminine clothes, blatantly feminine clothes — so much so that we are almost trying to portray masculinity as negative.
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Krupal: It’s like, you’re a woman, you’re given a trophy. If a guy does something, it’s not a big deal. If girls do the same thing, it’s like, you go! Girl power! I think her gender plays a bigger role, and it gives her more advantage these days — be it career or anything.
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Christopher: You have individual racism, just like you have individual sexism. You may have pockets or communities of it that are known for it, certain people that may be in office that may be purveyors of it, but it doesn’t make the whole system that way. And I think what happens is people try to make it become systematic. And I understand it — don’t get me wrong. I can’t say that 50, 60 years ago, that it wasn’t systematic, because it was. But you can’t take that and then just refuse to look at all of the changes that were made and say, “Oh, yeah, we’re still there.” Because we’re not.
These are conservatives who by and large vote for candidates who identify with with traditionalist, fascist ideology. They may variously cite pluralism, family values, and a rose-tinted view of the past as their motivations, but in practice and in reality they are aligned with the sort of openly discriminatory policies seeking to destroy LGBTQ+ rights in the US. This is no valid fear of losing relevance or straying some kind of moral tradition, it is the terror of losing hegemony and the well-stoked fear of white replacement dressed up in Times-appropriate language. These eight conservatives are not misguided potential allies, and would raise the same concerns about extremism and fanaticism whether or not LGBTQ+ movements were actually confrontational. The “groomer/pro-pedophile” debacle illustrates this: these slurs have caught on in certain circles despite the complete lack of evidence that any of it is going on at the hands of anyone in the LGBTQ+ community. They are dreamt up by propagandists and reinforced by dishonest conservative media, wholly independently of the actions of any gay rights campaigner.
Echoing these concerns, gay activist and writer Jonathan Rauch writes in “Walking the Transgender Movement Away from the Extremists”
But I also see a different and more disturbing historical parallel. A generation ago, in the early 1990s, the gay and lesbian rights movement (as it was then called) came under the sway of left-leaning activists with their own agenda. They wanted as little as possible to do with bourgeois institutions like marriage and the military; they elevated cultural transgression and opposed integration into mainstream society; they imported an assortment of unrelated causes like abortion rights. To be authentically gay, in their view, was to be left-wing and preferably radical.
A loose collection of gay and lesbian conservatives, libertarians, and centrists watched with growing concern. We thought that the activists were dangerously misguided both about America and also gay people’s place in it. We resented their efforts to impose ideological conformity on a diverse population. (In 2000, a fourth of gay voters chose Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush.) We saw how they played to the very stereotypes that the anti-gay Right used against us. We knew their claim to represent the lesbian and gay population was false.
And so we pushed back. An opening shot was the publication of Bruce Bawer’s landmark book A Place at the Table in 1993, with its attack on what he called “group-oriented pride” and the famous aphorism, “The only time I ever feel ashamed of being gay is on Gay Pride Day.” That year, I launched what would be a twenty-year stream of output with a New Republic piece arguing that gay Americans should stop thinking of ourselves as oppressed. Andrew Sullivan took up the cause of marriage, embracing its fundamentally conservative nature, and he published his influential book Virtually Normal (1995), arguing that nothing about homosexuality is inconsistent with mainstream values.
Rauch alleges that the far left infiltrated the gay rights movement and is currently doing the same with the trans rights movement, to both campaigns’ detriment. The radicalization of gay rights had to be undone in order to compromise and achieve modest victories like gay marriage and workplace discrimination laws (he does not seem to recognize how fleeting and shaky these victories turned out to be in light of recent pushback among the right). Radicalism in the trans rights world is comparable and similarly in danger of derailing the entire movement: “Insisting that it’s always hateful to draw distinctions based on biological sex in sports, prisons, and medical training strikes most of the public as nutty, unfair, and dangerous. The backlash that is forming will harm trans people, gay and lesbian people (who are already caught in the undertow), and everyone who hopes for candor and compromise.” His assumption that gay rights “deradicalization” and sanitization were ever necessary or helpful in any way is unsupported, as are all similar concerns from like-minded authors. The subsequent history of LGBTQ+ rights in America in fact cries out for increased radicalization and closer association with the far left. The fight is far from over, just as racism was not entirely and permanently defeated by desegregation: minority rights are under constant attack in the form of gerrymandering, economic inequality, and workplace discrimination, to name only a few issues. Would this still be the case, had more radical civil rights groups prevailed in the 20th century? (Aside from this, Rauch conflates two very different results of radical left influence when he accuses leftists of hijacking the gay rights movement and altering the cause, rather than reinforcing and radicalizing it—the distinction is important.)
Rauch and his ilk are also ignorant of recent American history, which consists of many successful and highly disruptive protests. In fact, the more visible and confrontational a group is, the more likely it is to gain attention and achieve its goals, more permanently than those ready and willing to compromise with the forces of fascism. In the end, what good is a concession from a government still run by those who want you silenced or harmed? Do these threatened individuals have no recourse other than what the oppressive government generously allows? For example, women who are unable to get an abortion safely surely have some inherent self-defense right to fight against the state and secure their right to life by whatever means necessary. These issues need not lead to violent protest of any kind—the power holders decide how violent and radicalized the oppressed must be, should they choose to brutalize protesters or ignore their demands—but they do need to be confrontational (the labro strike, for example, is both a highly confrontational and highly effective form of protest). This is the entire point of protesting, despite the many unfounded warnings that even a minor disruption from a picket line or sit-in might upset some who would otherwise listen: the alternative is a violent upheaval, and fascists fear that and that alone. To credit milquetoast groups with civil rights successes is to ignore the many radical lives lost in the service of actually accomplishing those victories.
We might call the authors of these attempts at sagacious strategizing “rights movement focus groups.” Focus groups are brought in to review certain films prior to release, and any subject matter they find objectionable is often removed from the finished product in a way that compromises the auteur’s vision and dumbs the film down for a mainstream audience. Film studios who employ these groups are overly concerned with a film’s image and popular reception, usually to its artistic (and sometimes financial) detriment. The rights movement focus groups fill a similar role in the political sphere: they ensure that protests aren’t too confrontational, that bodies are not too openly displayed or different, that language is not too forceful and vulgar, that the necessary connection between equal rights for all and far left ideology is not too obvious. They personify the nebbish, cowardly question “What would the community think?” Their exhortations are doubly offensive in light of the fact that the emerging anti-LGBTQ+ laws are highly psychologically distressing to marginalized groups:
Even without finalization, bills like this have already increased psychological distress among youth, as two-thirds of LGBTQ+ youth report that recent debates about state laws restricting the rights of transgender individuals have negatively impacted their mental health.1 This is only the beginning.
LGBTQ+ youth do not possess a predisposition for suicidality because of their identity or sexual orientation. Rather, their experiences of marginalization, discrimination, and peer and family rejection serve as significant factors for increased suicidality and mental health symptomatology—which is the epitome of minority stress theory. The Trevor Project estimates that LGBTQ+ young person attempts suicide every 45 seconds in the United States. This past year, up to 50% of LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered suicide; transgender and gender-diverse youth are also 2 to 3 times more likely than their cisgender peers to experience discrimination and a lack of safety at school.
From Healthline, regarding Florida’s notorious “Don’t Say Gay” bill:
Part of a wave of proposed discriminatory anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation popping up throughout the country, experts say this bill will be damaging and dangerous for the overall mental and physical health and well-being of queer, trans, and nonbinary students and their families in the Sunshine State.
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When the simple reality of your own identity becomes politicized and a point of debate, it can be dehumanizing, increase stigma and stress, and be especially damaging for young people.
This is especially true for youth early in their elementary school years, who might not fully be able to grasp why they and their families are coming under attack.
“Discriminatory laws can worsen mental health and suicide rates among LGBTQ people. State laws permitting denial of services to same-sex couples were linked to a 46 percent increaseTrusted Source in mental distress among LGB adults,” said Dr. Jason Nagata, assistant professor of pediatrics in the division of adolescent and young adult medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
In the UK:
The mental health of the UK’s transgender community is at crisis point, professional bodies and support groups have told the Guardian.
The stark warnings follow a week of intensified public discussion of transgender rights as the government moved to exclude trans people from a ban on conversion practices.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission also published guidance saying transgender people could legitimately be excluded from single-sex services if the reasons were “justifiable and proportionate”.
The Atlantic finds that teens, especially LGBTQ+ and female youths, are experiencing an unprecedented mental health crisis:
To ask any group under such assault to sanitize their existence for the fascists trying to erase them is tantamount to kicking someone while they’re down.
These bills do more than impact the psychological health of the marginalized, they’ve also lined the pockets of anti-LGBTQ+ groups in recent years:
In today’s heightened culture war, the coffers of the anti-gay movement are overflowing. According to publicly available annual returns, 11 nonprofit groups identified as anti-LGBTQ hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center took in over $110 million in contributions during the financial year ending in 2020.
The dollar amount represents a recent high-water mark for the organizations, whose take of donations, grants and other noncash contributions has increased steadily since 2016, when the same 11 groups reported more than $87 million in such contributions.
The Trump phenomenon showed that stoking hatred and cruelty are good business in the US (his 2016 campaign initially took off when he insinuated that Mexicans are rapists), and the growing popularity of these hate groups argues against a more conciliatory approach—how exactly is compromise possible with groups who hate you? The rights movement focus groups might argue that these groups are only in it for the money, that they are not truly motivated by hatred and are therefore possibly open to reason. As noted in my previous essay “Culture Warriors and the Evil/Ignorant Spectrum,” this more cynical, prurient aspect of the fascists’ agenda (raising money, selling books, or courting prejudiced voters) do not subtract from the outcome of the movement, which is intolerable and unjust, even assuming that all of these bills were only astroturf campaigns by groups looking to capitalize on growing hatred in the US. The same pundits and patronizers who ask LGBTQ+ groups to tone down their otherness for “Middle America” are the ones who bend over backwards to give right wing campaigners the benefit of the doubt and posit that maybe they are not truly evil, just ignorant or misguided in some way. They uphold compromise as an inherent good, forgetting that compromise with evil is corrosive.
If one group can be repeatedly asked to change and strategize, then so can the other, and it is much easier for the power-holders in society to rein in their prejudice than for those seeking equal rights to change their very identity. The rights movement focus groups’ advice inappropriately places the burden of responsibility on the already marginalized to try and fit into the overarching community, whose niceties are capricious and facile. It forgives that community for its intolerance and allows it to shirk its responsibility to police its own members. Why is the onus on the LGBTQ+ community to provide a sanitized public façade and not on the comfortable establishment to reign in its members’ prejudices? Provided that one’s identity does not require harm to anyone else for its expression (fascists’ distress at having to be reminded of LGBTQ+ groups’ existence does not count as harm), even the most limited form of civil society protects that identity in law, immune to the legislative whims of the majority. One might claim to identify as a rapist, for example, but this identity is rightfully restricted by laws against rape. LGBTQ+ individuals do not harm others by existing, by protesting, by being visible, by marrying, by asking to be called a certain pronoun, by having sex, by raising children, or by sharing a diner counter with straight cis males. This is a basic point, but it is often lost in the patronizing minds of the centrism worshippers.
A similar form of patronizing concern can be found in the rights movement focus groups’ support for equal rights as a self-serving safeguard of their own rather than an intrinsic good. The rights of the marginalized are worth protecting in and of themselves, and need not be cited as warnings of what could come for the rest of us should they be further restricted. “If it could happen to them, it could happen to me” is a fascist line of thinking that presumes we are only capable of self-interest and conceptualize the rights of others only as a bulwark against intrusions into our own lives. To protect the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals only because theirs would be destroyed on the way to your own is to exploit the LGBTQ+ community—support predicated on this notion would evaporate the moment it becomes politically expedient to throw them under the bus, if it is believed that doing so would protect one’s own social position.
At some point, changing one’s image amounts to changing one’s self. This is the poison logic behind the fascists’ moral opprobrium: they are not truly offended that the LGBTQ+ community is being too forceful or confrontational, they are offended that the LGBTQ+ community has the temerity to ask to be treated as human beings. It is identical to the old racist charges of “uppity” and “in your face,” natural extensions of much more vile racist tropes and dog whistles meaning virtually the same thing. Rauch again: “There is nothing intrinsically radical or left-wing about gay equality. And there is nothing intrinsically radical or left-wing about trans equality.” Rauch is half right: there shouldn’t be anything radical or political about these concepts, but there is. In a world that wants you erased, simply existing is a defiant, revolutionary statement that should be embraced loudly and proudly. Be intractable and immovable in your declaration of your humanity and your worthiness; don’t sell out your comrades by saying “I’m not like those transsexuals” or “I’m not like those gays!” The fascists controlling your destiny will not accept you no matter how you dress up and self-hate, because they are fascists. They must change, not us.