I have written about this before, but it has been on my mind as of late. As the rights of myself and many of my trans comrades in the United States continue to deteriorate, my mind goes to this story from years ago.
In 2011 the US government was exposed for funding and otherwise propping up LGBT rights groups in Cuba as part of an effort to disseminate American propaganda and stir up general disorder against the Cuban government.
As we all know, Cuba is a global leader in LGBT rights, particular stellar among AES. Through substantial efforts for many years, Cuba has made massive strides in achieving rights for all people and this makes it a particularly hypocritical target for the yankees.
Let me be clear, the weaponisation of our rights by the US hurts us all, but it hurts out trans comrades in the global south even more. As the US attempts to use our rights as a weapon with which to damage the popularly supported government of Cuba (they do the same to China), people around the world come to associate trans rights with Western imperialism.
This unfortunate situation makes the struggle our comrades in these countries face even harder. While the United States continues to strip away the rights of its own LGBT population, it fosters global reaction against our struggle through its own imperialism.
It truly is one of the greatest opposing forces to human rights in the world.
This conversation brought to mind an organization from Toronto, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, which works to educate about and combat Israeli pinkwashing.
https://www.cjpme.org/fs_171
More and more the liberal tactic has become to focus in on queer communities as the litmus for whether or not a nation (or organization) is “progressive” or deserving of support. We’ve even seen the same in regards to the situation in Ukraine, where liberal bystanders are called to support Ukraine by denouncing Russia’s homophobia.
This is, of course, ridiculous seeing as Ukraine is also terribly anti-queer.
It’s important to push forward queer acceptance as a framework of intersectionality, whereby the rights of all oppressed and marginalized peoples are addressed.
As Judith Butler said, “‘Queer’ no longer marks a single issue identity politics, but a form of affiliation, of coalition, and even a way of trying to establish an intersectional and coalition framework.”
In the Imperial core, victories for white, able-bodied and affluent queers are touted as queer victories. But it can’t be a “queer” victory if Black, Indigenous, disabled, mentally ill, and poor queers are still subject to marginalization and oppression. It’s merely folding queer people into the machine of oppression, using them to quiet the voices of those most suffering. “No, look, we have gay rights here, there’s no oppression.” All the while knowing that those queer people that are being propped up will be cast aside when they no longer have a purpose.
I think another super interesting thing to note, in the Imperial core (exemplified extremely well in the US), is the fast realisation of capitalists that we are a super exploitable labour group.
Many of the largest corporations in the United States have very LGBTQ+ friendly policies, internally. Excellent examples of this are Amazon and Starbucks who both offer very comprehensive health plans for trans care. Even companies viewed by the public as very conservative, like Wal-Mart, are consistently ranked pretty well as decent places to work for LGBTQ+ people.
The thing is, all of these companies are politically active. All 3 of the companies I just named operate massive PACs (political donation/funding organisations) and these groups support extremely transphobic and otherwise reactionary politicians around the country. This, combined with constant liberal inaction (of course) to codify any sort of minority rights tells an interesting story.
It’s very clear how capital views us. We’re a uniquely exploitable labour group. By denying us rights under the law, the capitalist retains the discretion to control our rights as they see fit. This may be why large companies would maintain an inclusive internal atmosphere while covertly opposing legislation that would make these things possible for everybody. Starbucks has, very recently, even gone so mask off about it as to suggest that workers who unionise would lose access to their trans benefits.
So while the imperial core uses allusions of our rights externally as a weapon against global south nations, they deny them at home and instead allow capital to use them to prevent workers from struggling for better conditions. It’s a truly sadistic situation, and I hope to both do more investigation into this, and better inform people on it. The incentive for liberals will always be to deny minority rights of any kind so as to maintain that precarious army of cheap labour. The West truly has no right to speak of other nations treatment of their people so long as this is the case.