This was linked on the great Maggie’s Farm blog this morning.

Used to describe something that’s been around much longer than the word itself, the phenomenon of homonormativity is considered by many to be destructive to the queer rights movement and to the larger queer community.

Homonormativity is a word that addresses the problems of privilege we see in the queer community today as they intersect with White privilege, capitalism, sexism, transmisogyny, and cissexism, all of which end up leaving many people out of the movement toward greater sexual freedom and equality.

Feminism is unabashedly anti-capitalism now. By capitalism, she means free markets, not the concentrations of wealth derided by traditional conservatives. The writer, for example, is in the MacCult. The preferred economic model of these folks is closer to Mussolini than Marx. She’s OK with enormous companies that turn their owners into super-rich billionaires, as long as the companies are of the one true faith. Walmart is bad capitalism and Apple is socially responsible entrepreneurship.

The other crimes (sins?) are just new names for the same old insanity second wave feminism offered up. The “cisgender” thing should be categorized as a mental illness. If someone declared Newton’s laws of motion “oppressive” we would lock them up, for fear they would jump in front of a car or jump off a building. If instead of saying they were a third sex, these people insisted we pretend they are invisible, they would be wearing a jacket with no sleeves.

First, let’s examine it’s counterpart, heteronormativity. This is a word that similarly describes the evaluation of “normal” sexuality that we see in our culture, from the policy and institutional level down to the interpersonal.

Muchisbeingwritten about heteronormativity, which describes the assumption and promotion that heterosexuality is the only “normal” and “natural” orientation out there, privileging those who fit the norm and positing anyone outside of this as abnormal and wrong.

Our culture is deeply heteronormative, but as queer experiences and rights become more accepted, a policing of sexual and gender expressions within LGBQ spaces is also growing. This is homonormativity.

Homonormativity explains how certain aspects of the queer community can perpetuate assumptions, values, and behaviors that hurt and marginalize many folks within this community, as well as those with whom the community should be working in solidarity.

It addresses assimilation, as well as intersection of corporate interests and consumerism within LGBQ spaces.

It also describes the assumption that queer people want to be a part of the dominant, mainstream, heterosexual culture, and the way in which our society rewards those who do so, identifying them as most worthy and deserving of visibility and rights.  

Bold in the original. My base assumption in life is that the invention of new worlds or jargon follows the invention of new lies. Words have meaning and when a people use an agreed upon lexicon, lying is difficult. Thus the need for new words and new grammatical constructions. Whenever I’m confronted with jargon I get suspicious.

In this case, these people are trying to cloak their true intentions. It never has been about rights or even acceptance with regards to homosexuality. It is certainly not what is at play with the more deranged members of these sexual identity cults. It’s about offending normal people. The guys in sundresses want to parade around your kid’s school because it offends you. The worst thing that could happen to them is for people to accept it. South Park did an episode on it.

As we’ve seen the issue of marriage equality gain success, swooping the nation in election after election, we have to question its position as The Gay Rights Issue™.

Fighting for sexual liberation and equality is, of course, so much more than fighting for the right to marry, but how is the positioning of marriage equality as the major issue also promoting homonormativity?

Marriage as an issue sets up the requirement that all relationships should mimic this heteronormative standard of sexuality and family structure. It promotes the idea that all people want to emulate straight monogamous couples.

When we focus only on this issue, we exclude polyamorous and other non-normative relationship structures as acceptable, as well as, of course, those who don’t want to get married.

Even as marriage becomes inclusive of a particular kind of queer relationship, it perpetuates a policing of other kinds of relationships, maintaining the borderline of what is an “acceptable queer relationship.”

The focus on marriage challenges very little, prioritizing the legal sanctioning of one’s relationships over real relational and societal transformation.

By showing that people outside of the heterosexual norm want the same things that “traditional, straight America” wants, themarriage equality movement fights to gain access to this social institution by reproducing, rather than challenging, heterosexual dominance and normativity andusing this as a basis for who deserves rights.

I’ve often remarked that inside of a mass movement, people find clarity. That’s what keeps them in the movement. Every failure and every setback is explained in someway that signals to the adherents that they must redouble their efforts. Every success is met with sound reasons why they must keep fighting for whatever it is the movement uses as a lure for the adherents. In some case, plain old delusion works fine as in the belief gay marriage is popular at the ballot box.

Putting that aside, the incoherence of these crotch-cults is what will ultimately pull them apart. Gay marriage is the obvious example. Homosexuals have a near total lack of monogamy. The social science is quite stunning, but social science is not science so it can always be disputed. Real science tells us that homosexual males account for 1.6% of the population and 65% of syphilis cases. Syphilis rates are a good proxy for promiscuity rates. People with astronomically high promiscuity rates are never going to adopt marriage, which has proven to be the case.

Therein lies the problem. In addition to having the dog chasing the car problem that is a feature of all mass movements, the sexual identity cults have the additional problem of success invalidating the cause. Social adoption of gay marriage will just prove it was ridiculous from the start. Similarly, normalizing all of these other fetishes will only make those causes appear more absurd.

When the dog catches the car, we all see there was never a car. He was just running around and barking.

The article is a crazy quilt of jargon and locution aimed at people in the third wave feminism cult so it is easy for a normal like myself to misinterpret it. Still, the vibe is undeniable. The gals at the womyn’s studies department are getting uncomfortable with the queers. It’s not just that they are jealous of the success of gay males in the culture. It’s that the queer rights stuff is making it impossible to turn weird for the sake of being weird into a political cause. The womyn are about declare war on the queers.