So I thought Dean Spade was pretty great. Spade’s ideas around the importance of political mobilization of queer and trans oppressions to actually save lives while refusing politics of inclusion completely reframes neoliberalism for me. In a neoliberalist society, the problem of the impossible trans person living in the set of circumstances can not be solved unless society exceeds recognition and inclusion. Spade speaks of the commitment that social justice only trickles up, not down. Therefore, we must centre experiences around the most vulnerable and reframe the “distribution of life chances,” or redistribute biopolitics and life politics (Foucauldian). Furthermore if we rely on formal legal equality, that what the law says about a certain group is the sum total its goals, what are we actually accomplishing? “Regulate me, it feels good,” Spade says, critiquing the false sense of security found from two lesbians or two gay men being included legally in a marital relationship. Instead of focusing on the reasons why, structurally, we have such vulnerable groups, we are hell bent on just adding more into these systems to make them more inclusive and work for more people than before. Dean urges the need to focus on ideas of regulation and norms and how inclusion often only strengthens the norms as they articulate “some kind of new found justice and equality.” Boom, I can’t even begin to think about how one attacks. Legal processes are laid out. There are a series of steps to follow and it can be met with tangible evidence of accomplishment or success, if only a false sense of it. But what does it look like when we just go out and change laws? We’ve been changing laws for years and questionably, do not see sweeping periods of change.
I think it is important to situate what Spade is saying outside the context of our immediate world. I think of Emma Goldman: “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” An extremely profound statement in the midst of decades of first wave feminists fighting for equal recognition in law, Goldman believes equal rights to life to manifest not in woman suffrage, but in revolutionizing sexual love and intimacy. Fighting for suffrage in the domain of the man then acts as a distraction, a scam, to occupy women with while social conventions continue on as they were. Similar to the ways in which inclusive legislation only works to strengthen norms for Spade, but in a much different context, with many different influences.
In a 2013 article title “Marriage Will Never Set Us Free” (I’ve included the link to the article below) Spade asks: What’s the deal? Is same-sex marriage advocacy a progressive cause? Is it in line with Left political projects of racial and economic justice, decolonization, and feminist liberation?” Followed by:
“Nope. Same-sex marriage advocacy has accomplished an amazing feat-- it has made being anti-homophobic synonymous with
being pro-marriage. It has drowned out centuries of critical thinking and activism against the racialized, colonial, and patriarchal processes of state regulation of family and gender through marriage.”
Through our cyclical celebration of changing laws, I never really stopped to think of what was being lost in the process.
No comments:
Post a Comment