Today is a good day to stand together against all oppression
The new governing coalition is in place - and one thing is clear: the mood is being stirred up against those who are already marginalised in society. Cuts are being made for those who have no lobby. And promises are being made that all will go better - if no longer all have the same rights. Behind this is a well-known principle: "divide and rule". Dividing neighbourhoods, alienating families, making it more difficult to form solidary friendships. Because if everyone is only fighting for themselves, the rights of individual groups can gradually be dismantled - almost unnoticed, bit by bit.
As a queer community, it is therefore extremely important that we understand this now at the latest: Only when no one is oppressed can there be true self-determination for all. The 1st of May is just as much our demonstration as explicitly queer Prides. Because everything is connected to everything else.
Labour strike against the system
We are familiar with strikes - after all, we confront social expectations of our sexualities and genders on a daily basis. Being queer must be understood as a strike against patriarchy if it is to be political. We refuse to work against a system that divides into two genders, only recognises nuclear families and oppresses women. But patriarchy is not the only enemy of queer freedom. Genuine self-determination for all - and therefore also for queers - only exists beyond what bell hooks describes as "imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy": a system of interwoven mechanisms of power and oppression. It is no coincidence that colonialism and queer hostility are linked. Peoples who were colonially exploited were to have their queerness systematically exorcised.
Especially on Labour Day, it is worth taking a closer look at the connection between classism and sexual and gender freedom. Our self-determination is limited by social inequality - by unequal worries and unequal burdens: between those who work and those who only work; those who rent and those who rent; those who owe and those who own. Between those who are exploited and those who exploit. Between those who are spoken about and those who are allowed to speak. Between those who should only listen and those who teach. Between those who are researched and those who research. Between those whose name is a disadvantage and those who are addressed with titles.
Only very few can be clearly assigned to one side - much is fluid and simultaneous. However, it is all the more important to visualise these poles and ask how they shape our coexistence.
Money for all instead of a career for some
Queer representation does not help us where there is exploitation. The cutbacks in many large companies' diversity programmes show that superficial lip service does not change power relations. It was never about sharing power - it was about putting a gay best friend in the supporting role who sacrifices himself for the rich and powerful. At the same time, there is supposedly a lack of money for counselling centres, cultural work and social institutions. In particular, queer young people seeking guidance and precariously employed queers are being left behind.
Some of us have had great career opportunities open up to us over the past few decades, while the rest have had to watch their own problems get worse. Prices have risen in bars, clubs and cafés, and free or at least non-profit-orientated meeting places have been cut back. The "community" has no power to assert itself if it is only a loose association of different individual interests, if it is only about personal pleasure or even profit maximisation. It can stand up strongly for its interests when it unites against its oppressors.
This is nothing new - discussions about adaptation or resistance have always been part of the debates within LGBTI* movements. The question of the movement's relationship to the government and the system is also assessed differently: Time and again, it has been about the fight against the state and its violence (Stonewall as an uprising against police measures, abolition of §175 StGB and TSG) on the one hand and the recognition of the state and its institutions (marriage for all, tougher penalties for hate crime, LGBTI* in the military and police) on the other.
Poverty risks and diversionary manoeuvres
If you follow one trans person or another online, you will often notice that money is repeatedly collected for urgently needed operations. If individual cases occur frequently, there is a system behind it. Different financial resources ensure that not every person can pay for their own surgery costs. Transition can become a poverty trap - issuing new documents also costs money, as do medication co-payments or losing a job due to discrimination. What does it mean for trans people to have to deal with so many visits to the authorities and doctors, so much bureaucracy and so little time to pursue professional goals or education?
If the only political demand remains acceptance - the request to be allowed to be on the winning side - then the opportunity for a fairer world in which everyone can be better off is missed. So join forces, help each other, reduce inequality of opportunity, create access, question power relations and the significance of wealth and social background.
Meanwhile, no one should fall for diversionary manoeuvres: Racist policies against refugees and migrants are fuelling violence. There can only be security in a world in which the gap between rich and poor is small. A world that invests in education and a good life for all, that builds trust instead of sowing mistrust. Authoritarian states pretend that harsh punishments, sanctions and deportations are the end of their patience with those who harm our society. But who is really harming this society? Who can sit back while we are at each other's throats? For whom do special rules apply? A female gender entry in the passport is supposed to ensure that laws that punish harassment or sexualised violence no longer apply. This trans-hostile claim distracts from the fact that there is in fact a group of people who are almost never held accountable for their crimes and assaults: Billionaires.
Sexual health is part of self-determination - but those who have to fight discrimination on a daily basis often do not have safe access to prevention. Whether Safer sex-tools or Regular check-upsWhat seems self-evident for some is difficult for others to achieve - due to fear, lack of access to the healthcare system or because practices do not work in a discrimination-sensitive manner. Prevention needs trust, education and structures that do not exclude anyone. It is not just a health issue, but also a social one. Because those who feel safe can also live, love and feel pleasure safely.
