Feminists in Struggle hosts the newly formed LGB Alliance USA to discuss how they are combating the new face of homophobia. LGB Alliance USA volunteers introduce themselves, discuss plans for the organization, and answer questions from viewers. Speakers include Lynette Hartsell, Jos Grover A., Luis Sanchez, A.S.W., and Carol Freitas.
LGB Alliance USA is a volunteer-run, lesbian-led organization dedicated to protecting the resources and advancing the rights of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals throughout the US. Learn more at https://lgbausa.org/.
Feminists in Struggle (FIST) is a national female-only radical feminist network, democratically run, and composed of individuals born female and affiliated female-only feminist organizations. Learn more at https://feministstruggle.org/.
I think the word “queer”, used by people who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Trans is definitely an expression of internalized homophobia/transphobia. You’re seeing yourself as essentially deviant and wrong, and you construct your identity around that perception. It’s no accident that the Q-word has spread like wildfire among us, because it expresses the shame that never really disappeared. Pride celebrations have become Trojan horses built for hiding people who are basically closeted, convinced of their own abnormality and anything but proud. The goals of the original Gay Rights movement, which very much involved broadening the concept of what you could be or do as a woman or as a man, those goals have somehow failed. Younger generations have been won over by entrenched gender roles and stereotypes. I see them imprisoned within these stereotypes, and what’s so tragic is that they seem to want to be imprisoned. They’re not interested in the freedom from role rigidity that Gay and Lesbian Liberation offered. Transfolk are the most crippled by shame and stereotype, and I really feel bad for them. Most of them are where LesBiGay people were in the 1940s and ’50s, begging the medical establishment to “fix” them.
Thank you all for your tireless efforts to realign the focus of the LGB community.
I am still in the infancy stages of completely understanding how this movement could have gone so off course. Watching this presentation has certainly helped and I will continue to promote the LGB COMMUNITY. I will be forwarding this link to several of my friends and acquaintances. Thank you all again so much!!!