Why assimilation culture is ripping the LGBT+ community apart.
The LGBT+ community is a tightly knit online community and there is little doubt that this stems from the fact that unlike race and religion, LGBT+ individuals may not have physical contact with other members of the community and consequently face social ostracization. As a result, people turn to online forums that allow for self expression and solidarity, a place to discover yourself in peace, and this often leads to better connections in person. Whether you love it or loathe it- social media’s enabling of the online community has been a godsend for many, being able to connect with other people in the same situation as oneself has saved countless lives. Something so wholesome should then be a universal force for good — alas, no. While it seems to be a haven of safe-spaces, bright coloured flags and preferred pronouns, it is really hiding the truth that this community is fractured, and splitting apart at an alarming rate.
The truth is, affirmation is spaced far and wide between a plethora of discourse, all re-hashing the same debates, full of arbitrary buzzwords, often debating someone's ‘validity’, and for every debate settled it seems another is bound to arise, for the issue lies deeper, in truth it’s the culture of assimilation that we all exist in that’s to blame — a well known concept that has now seeped into LGBT+ spaces.
Cultural Assimilation is simply where a marginalised identity often absorbs the norms of the culture that is most dominant in a society. It actively erases the history of entire peoples, forcing people to conform to the societal values of the time or risk becoming further marginalised. Historically, we’ve seen this be forced onto indigenous communities, removing mixed-race aboriginal Australian children from their parents and placing them in white institutions, wiping the passage of culture out. It then becomes easier for these children, instilled with the values of their oppressor, to fit into that society, as now they are deemed more palatable to the oppressive, Eurocentric brain than their parents. Whether it’s forced or not, this is a process that all marginalised communities experience, be it ‘colourism’ or ‘straight-passing privilege’, there is a fixed mentality of ‘not pushing the boat out’, and even within in the LGBT+ community, there are some people that this is just easier for.
The acceptance of LGBT+ folk is one of the prominent civil rights breakthroughs of the last quarter-century and the widespread legalisation of gay marriage in North America and Western Europe is the clearest example of this. It on paper, brings gay rights to an equal level of their heterosexual counterparts, at least in what they can do. However, the society remains mostly unchanged, the heteronormativity that forms the institution of marriage remains the dominant ideal. It adds LGBT+ identities on at the end, like an afterthought, and doesn’t alter the issues of society that meant LGBT+ folk were originally excluded. In fact, it makes such people reliant on that construct. For example, in the UK, if two women want to have a child via a sperm donation by a friend or acquaintance — they would have to be in a civil partnership or married to both be the legal parents. This removes the opposition to society’s flawed traditions by removing the threat of radical change, it makes those who have the potential to do something radical, dependent on the system for acceptance. For the parental benefits of a straight couple (not necessarily a married one) a gay couple must marry — so why would they revolt against their chance of normality? This assimilation is not forced. It’s not as brutal or violent as it has been in other times — but it has significant effects.
The legalisation of gay marriage was a turning point for the UK in the way it viewed LGBT+ pride and the community as a whole. In recent years, we’ve seen a skyrocket in rainbow capitalism, companies capitalising and cashing off the back of the LGBT+ community, especially during pride month. One famous example of this being the LGBT sandwich sold temporarily by the British chain Marks and Spencer’s, it was not — despite the marketing — made of members of the community, but instead lettuce, guacamole, bacon and tomato; all very important identities. We’ve also seen the transition of pride from a furious demand for rights, to a music festival with a rainbow aesthetic that can be headlined by seemingly cishet artists. We see pride month posts from the conservative party — despite a majority of Tory MPs voting against gay marriage in 2014. These blissful rainbow tinted glasses hide the fact that homophobic hate crimes have doubled in the following 5 years since such legalisation — and this split shows. Inter-community battles break out. With many gay people, who may fit the old stereotypes, feeling pressure to appear ‘less gay’, as if their sexuality is ok, but their pride is not. This can even come from their counterparts who do not fit the stereotype — as if they are responsible for homophobia — and not the homophobes.
This problem is not more clear than in the transgender community. The legalization of gay marriage in 2014 ended the fight for many cis gay people, and left the transgender community in the side-lines. What once had been a united fight is now thinning out, as gay people gain the ability to assimilate into society, they leave their trans counterparts stranded in silence. The same study that showed homophobic hate crimes doubling, showed that those against trans people had tripled. Yet, unsurprisingly, the gay individuals who owe their rights to trans activists such as Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson are unwilling to stick their neck out in fear of losing what they’ve just gained. This bitter discourse in the community was clear when the actor Elliot Page came out as trans last year — the response from many lesbians was not one of support, but one of dismay at ‘another lesbian lost’. It’s like marginalised identities exist in a constant feeling of debt towards an oppressor — for letting you exist.
How society lets trans folk in the UK exist is through medicalised processes. You must spend years on a medical waitlist to be diagnosed, then spend years on a medical waitlist to begin treatment, then spend years living out your life as your gender, with no legal back-up, to have your gender legally changed. It’s assimilatory once more, but this time to the gender binary. It’s ok to be trans, as long as you spend years medically changing everything to fit perfectly with society’s expectation of manhood or womanhood. This works for many trans people, who want nothing more than to blend into the masses of people who share their gender identity, but for many, who’s gender may not fit neatly into a binary box, this leaves them invalidated — with non-binary individuals not receiving any legal recognition despite the mounting evidence and medical consensus that gender exists on a spectrum. And once more — instead of being uplifted — these people are shunned in their own community often ‘trans-medicalists’, who may even use the trans-exclusionary term ‘transtrenders’, claiming these people are disingenuous, doing it for attention, and are bringing the whole community down. This casts the very same doubt on them that the cisgender-heteronormative society has been casting on all trans people for centuries. Ultimately, trans people are not the reason transphobia exists — and if a society is not willing to accept transness in all forms — then it is not an inclusive society. But when you are already dealing with dysphoria and doubt, from all sides, it’s easy to see how you would do anything for a little protection and recognition — and that is harder to achieve while fighting for non-binary folk, as it would be impossible for them to assimilate and their acceptance would require dismantling the entire gender binary — and that’s something that doesn’t seem very likely to happen any time soon. So really, it’s no shock the community breaks apart. Furthermore, the slow progression of legislation involving the trans community as a whole does little to acknowledge the intersection of race and gender identity — in a study by the human rights campaign, they found that the majority of murdered trans people in 2020 were black trans women. They face a disproportionate amount of violence and harassment, and are more often than not left abandoned by their white counterparts, for fear of over-visibility or unwillingness to accept their own privilege due to the discrimination they face themselves. It’s sickening — to see the mass of these communities internalize the abuse they’ve been told — be that the constant doubt, or the shaming, and then perpetuate it onto other members. Effectively they are doing the job of oppression for the oppressors, so they don’t even have to raise a finger.
And if this continues, if the infighting and discourse continues, what will be left? Will we still have LGBT+ spaces? Will they fracture off into separate identities? Frankly — it’s hard to see how they won’t. Tragically the only winning entity here is the establishment — infighting means that there is no energy left to project on the true perpetrators of bigotry, and ultimately that harms the community, and the young kids who will grow up in the future and not have the embrace of a loving community to fall into, that will certainly be a cold dark world.
Sources:
M&S launch LGBT sandwich and it’s dividing opinion (pinknews.co.uk)
Spotlighting the Intersection of Black and Transgender Identities — HRC
MPs who voted against gay marriage: full list | The Spectator
Homophobic and transphobic hate crimes surge in England and Wales | Society | The Guardian
The Stolen Generation | Australians Together
Leading doctors affirm trans and non-binary rights in healthcare — BMA media centre — BMA
How hard is it to change your gender in the UK? | The Week UK
