While I am partial to queer, militant anti-marriage views that question why anybody (queers specifically) would want to be part of something that replicates the problems of heterosexism—or further invite capitalism and the state into the fabric of their personal lives—I cannot get wholly behind them when faced with real people getting married. Marriage is one of those acts in which I don't expect people to make sense or live up to what I perceive to be their politics.
For me being against same sex marriage in practice limits the ways I can understand queerness, life and love to work. While I am cautious of how marriage—as queer theorist David Halperin may suggest—can get us too "knit up in a web of mutuality," not being anti-same sex marriage is my way of being open to the ways people—queers—can tinker with marriage that will eventually result in new, better and various ways marriage can be inhabited. I think about performance artist Keith Murray who married himself, or the straight hippie couple from Edmonton that in a wrist tying ceremony have committed to each other for only a finite span of time.
Do these possibly lax and romantic considerations make me a disappointing queer? I don't think so. Participating in the complexity of an issue while making space for humanness is part of cultivating a good queer. In terms of marriage I think many of us are being rail-roaded into simplicity, choosing a side and along the way missing a chance to dive into bigger issues. The tyrannical way marriage dominates the American LGBT discussion—being misrepresented as fundamental to equality—is the problem, not merely marriage. One of the only reasons I bring up marriage, living in a country where same sex union legislation was passed five years ago, is because it has become an issue from which we understand and measure other queer concerns. The energy spent on fighting for and against marriage pushes important issues to the margins. With marriage we are being manipulated by states, supposed gay rights groups and the marketplace to focus on ramifications of heterosexism and conservatism rather working towards removing "isms" at the core. Talking about marriage distracts us from challenging the limited acceptable ways of being that enact violence on how we actually live.
One need look no further than current headlines in Canada about the ship from Sri Lanka to see how larger issues are compartmentalized to pit people against each other. Rather than a national debate about what Canada is doing to ensure no one feels so unsafe they must flee their home, we instead debate the merits of turning the boat away. How is that even up for discussion?
Earlier this year Shannon Barry was assaulted while walking home. Rather than succumbing to the typical fear-motivated conversation of minority as victim, people—primarily through the Community Response Project—took the opportunity to focus on the Canadian prison industrial complex, queer's complicity if we play the Hate Crime card and the different ways we can conceive of justice. This moved the discussion from constructed, played-out scripts of bad guys, cops and victims that maintain status quo power, to real action and conciseness around broken systems, our own roles and a questioning of where we can go from here, an understanding that change can come and queers can power it.
It is the seed of action like the Community Response Project, not that binary dynamics being sown in debates like Same Sex Marriage, that queers have the opportunity to nurture. Instead of fighting against those we may oppose—like those who may choose to get married—queers have an opportunity to respect perceivable gains made within the LGBT rights movement—like marriage—by using the successes, improving/queering them and moving beyond to ensure real equality for all. Let's leave behind the pettiness of one way or another and move forward with queer complexity guiding many ways forward.
No comments:
Post a Comment