Feminist and Queer Legal Theory by Martha Albertson Fineman & Jack E. Jackson & Adam P. Romero

Author:Martha Albertson Fineman & Jack E. Jackson & Adam P. Romero
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited
Published: 2009-10-16T04:00:00+00:00

III. Representations and Representational Politics

Thus far, I have argued that gay activists’ employment of race/sexual orientation analogies deracialized aspects of sexual identity and desexualized aspects of racial identity. Black identity was essentialized as heterosexual and gay identity was essentialized as white. Racializing gay identity and sexuating black identity would have compelled the gay rights advocates to recognize not only black community identity differences (for example, the differences between heterosexual blacks and lesbian and gay blacks) but also gay community identity differences (for example, the differences between gay and lesbian blacks and gay and lesbian whites). This, in turn, would have required them to address the extent to which their own civil rights advocacy reflected racial hierarchy that privileged the identity position or victim status of white gay men and, to a lesser extent, white lesbians.

The racial hierarchy that gay rights advocacy produced was not just discursive, it was material as well. Gay rights activists selected specific individuals to function as representatives for gay and lesbian victimization. The experiences of these individuals—and their complete identities—were deployed to give content to, or put a face on, the social, economic, and psychological costs of military discrimination for lesbian and gay people. The hope was that this strategy would convey that real people—innocent, decent, hardworking people—people who were “just like everybody else,” were being harmed by military homophobia.

The real people gay rights proponents used to advance this story were themselves overwhelmingly white. More than that, they were “but for” gay people—people who, but for their sexual orientation, were perfectly mainstream. These icons of gay victimization were represented, in fact marketed, as “All American Kids”—the children next door. The images of gay identity that the activists presented to the American public were respectable and white.

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