This is really great history and I am so glad to see a lot of the nuance behind the Human Rights Campaign. And often there's such a gulf between activists and big money donors.
Thank you so much for this! I have had a bad taste in my mouth about the HRC since the early days, and am still disappointed whenever I witness other queer people heaping uncritical praise on them. That being said, to my bones, I agree with your point that we need both the assimilationists and the radicals (and everyone in between). I just wish it weren't true, but alas, it is. Funny story: Reading your post reminded me of the time back in... the late 80s? Early 90s? I don't remember, but there was a raging online debate about whether HRC should be addressing trans "issues" at all. At the time, I believed myself to be a gay girl (I've always had an aversion to the word "lesbian," though I'm not sure why). I wrote a post to an online forum I belonged to at the time, which was about LGBT workplace rights. I wrote this impassioned, eloquent, post about not leaving our "trans brothers and sisters" in the dust (funny wording, in retrospect, as i now know im nonbinary). Anyway, I proudly hit send, then immediately realized I'd accidently sent it to the wrong list. I had actually sent it to another list I belonged to, which was a user forum for the type of IT infrastructure I supported at the time. I wrote it using my work email. At the time, I worked for that big ol' toy company whose flagship product was recently featured in the movies... yup, shit hit the fan, as at least one person on that forum complained to my place of employment. Fortunately for me, said company was horribly shy about discrimination suits, so I got my hand slapped. Without ever mentioning why (though based on timing, it was obvious), I was told I needed to stop participating in online forums and focus on my work. Fuck them. I just switched to my personal email address and continued on as before.
If the history books I have read are accurate this fight within the community goes way back, right to the beginning. I mean Kameny demanded people dress like perfect normies when they marched. Leaving out chunks of the community is objectively not the moral and ethical way forward, but because of my biases I have a hard time believing it doesn’t work to some extent. Don’t scare the normies.
>> because of my biases I have a hard time believing it doesn’t work to some extent <<
Yep. Of course it works to some extent. The questions that exist are twofold:
1) How big is that extent?
and
2) Given the (now quantified) extent, is the practical benefit worth the ethical sacrifice?
These are non-trivial questions and legit disagreements over them will continue to happen in movement after movement until the end of time.
I have also long said that we actually need both the moderate insiders and the revolutionary outsiders to make change. Without the revolutionary outsiders, the people benefitting from the status quo have no reason to change or compromise. Without the moderate insiders, there is no one to negotiate the kinds of stepwise changes the status quo might be willing to grant.
This isn't to say that outside revolution can never succeed, but it is likely to succeed only after increasing conflict leads to outright violence. I don't want to commit war to win justice. That's antithetical to my morality. And if the strong case for the revolutionary outsider is morality over practicality, then winning through war is undesirable anyway and undercuts the basis of the critique of the milquetoast insider.
Meanwhile, the milquetoast insiders don't ever succeed in any struggle against oppression without outside agitators. I don't mean to imply that they couldn't, but we don't have any examples where they did. We don't know that it's even possible, and to the extent that it might be possible, it would surely take one hell of a long time, sacrificing people to that ongoing oppression along the way.
I don't like the insider way, and I don't trust the insider way, and I'll never be the insider doing the stepwise negotiation.
That said, we need each other, the outsiders and the insiders. We have to make peace with that.
As a heathen who never wanted children, I connect with this. In the mid 1980s when I came out, all my gay guy friends were falling sick and dying from AIDS. Some women in the lesbian community figured they could just suck it up and deal. I caught heat from some of them for volunteering with hospices but I was against separatism in the 80s and I'm against it now. I work a conventional corporate job so nobody's going to see me going to work in a mohawk and rough trade duds, but they didn't make me into a suburban soccer mom either. 😂
I listened to a podcast about the activists behind marriage equality, and the analysis was similar. Their success, the argument went, was based on casting the issue as "hey, everybody wants a lil ol' nuclear family so they can be 'normal'" and that obviously is a) wrong and b) does little to advance tolerance and acceptance in the broadest sense. I suppose it does backstop progress of a kind but it makes me miss Act Up. They use to show up at clinic defenses in LA back in the 1980s against Operation Rescue and get it done. So true, though, about what money and proximity to power can do to people.
Maybe they did frame it like that but it moved the Overton window on the topic by a huge HUGE amount. In 2004 the presidential election was won by Bush in no small part due to the proliferation of state referenda banning gay marriage. (and polling showed 61% of Americans were opposed to it) By 2008 after electing Obama we still had the line up and shove him in the right direction.
Today? 70% are in favor. That's an enormous turnaround in a mere 20 years. No it's not everything. No it's not perfect. but it's a lrge amount of progress.
It's like the ACA.
Like our host I was (and still am!) strongly in favor of a 'Medicare for All' universal single payer system.
It's not just fairer; it's vastly more cost-effective, and uncoupling healthcare from employment would be a hella boost to the economy, too. (imagine how many more people would open their own busineses if they weren't terrified of losing their health insurance), but for all it's flaws the ACA as a ginormous imrpovement over what we had before it; and that it's still standing after everything the Republicans can throw against it demonstrated it's durability.
throwing out the 80% improvement because it's not 100% is a way of losing 100%.
I would make an argument that HRC didn't move the Overton window, HRC *is* the Overton window. You know what I believe moved the Overton window on queer rights? Act Up helping make AIDS within the realm of control rather than something people freaked out over. But more than anything else, what moved the Overton window were brave souls coming out of the closet to the point where when I discovered I was trans, I came out immediately and every single person with whom I came in contact has accepted me for who I am (except a troll at a different blog, but that blog is so well-moderated that it was the troll who was outcast rather than I)!
Agreed with that, save for the caveat that when you say they moved the Overton window ... we don't actually know how much they moved the Overton window. People were coming out and making movies and telling their heterosexist uncles to go fuck themselves -- there was a LOT going on between when the Hawaii Supreme Court first ruled that their state constitution mandated non-discriminatory marriage laws (this was overturned by amendment before it could go into effect) and when Obergefell gave us the last substantive word on the matter. (The last so far. SCOTUS may very well give us a new word on marriage legalization at some point.)
I grant that HRC participated in that. I haven't seen any research that shows that they were responsible for all or even most of the Overton movement.
In general I'm with you that we need everyone including the HRC (and, good godz, Dick Cheney in this election). I just worry that your comment gives them credit at the expense of all the other folks who were also working their asses off to move that window.
I mean, if Harris wins this thing, I'm not going to be praising Cheney for moving the Overton window, that's for sure. He might even make it more acceptable for strong Republicans to reject Trump. I still won't give the fucker any credit. I thank him politely for coming out against the treason maniac and then I shall put him out of my mind.
The HRC was never as bad as Cheney, but they were pretty bad on a bunch of things. As a result, I'm willing to give them the credit for their work that there's evidence that they deserve, but I'm not going out of my way to lionize the people who endorsed Al D'Amato.
At the time I loved Queer Nation and ACT-UP and The Gay & Lesbian Task Force and positively **loathed** HRC. Over time my position has softened. Yes, I still think they were wrong headed. I think ethics demand that we do it right from the beginning. But I can also admit that their activities were not entirely without positive effects, and the negative effects of being misrepresented and/or excluded by them I am now prepared to forgive.
I swear, you won't remember because you were just a baby Crip Dyke, but the early-70s women's movement was plagued with "lesbians need to keep their heads down so we don't frighten the suburbans." I don't think it was so much donor vs grassroots, just the influential feminists (Hi, Gloria Steinem! Hi, Betty Castor!) trying to keep a lid on things.
I probably had a point when I started this. Hi, CD! Love ya!
I learned feminism at the feet of women subject to those purge/stifling attempts! I don't remember them myself for being the baby that I was (Though yes, I was alive! I just hadn't gotten my first toy motorcycle or Tonka Truck or EasyBake Oven yet. Yes, I had all 3 of those things.) But I have lots of stories of those days told by excellent talespinners still bashing around my noggin.
OMG, Tonka Trucks! I didn't have any of my own, but coveted my brother's, and played with them every chance I got. Fortunately, he was my best friend, so I got to play with them a lot.
This is really great history and I am so glad to see a lot of the nuance behind the Human Rights Campaign. And often there's such a gulf between activists and big money donors.
Thank you so much for this! I have had a bad taste in my mouth about the HRC since the early days, and am still disappointed whenever I witness other queer people heaping uncritical praise on them. That being said, to my bones, I agree with your point that we need both the assimilationists and the radicals (and everyone in between). I just wish it weren't true, but alas, it is. Funny story: Reading your post reminded me of the time back in... the late 80s? Early 90s? I don't remember, but there was a raging online debate about whether HRC should be addressing trans "issues" at all. At the time, I believed myself to be a gay girl (I've always had an aversion to the word "lesbian," though I'm not sure why). I wrote a post to an online forum I belonged to at the time, which was about LGBT workplace rights. I wrote this impassioned, eloquent, post about not leaving our "trans brothers and sisters" in the dust (funny wording, in retrospect, as i now know im nonbinary). Anyway, I proudly hit send, then immediately realized I'd accidently sent it to the wrong list. I had actually sent it to another list I belonged to, which was a user forum for the type of IT infrastructure I supported at the time. I wrote it using my work email. At the time, I worked for that big ol' toy company whose flagship product was recently featured in the movies... yup, shit hit the fan, as at least one person on that forum complained to my place of employment. Fortunately for me, said company was horribly shy about discrimination suits, so I got my hand slapped. Without ever mentioning why (though based on timing, it was obvious), I was told I needed to stop participating in online forums and focus on my work. Fuck them. I just switched to my personal email address and continued on as before.
If the history books I have read are accurate this fight within the community goes way back, right to the beginning. I mean Kameny demanded people dress like perfect normies when they marched. Leaving out chunks of the community is objectively not the moral and ethical way forward, but because of my biases I have a hard time believing it doesn’t work to some extent. Don’t scare the normies.
>> because of my biases I have a hard time believing it doesn’t work to some extent <<
Yep. Of course it works to some extent. The questions that exist are twofold:
1) How big is that extent?
and
2) Given the (now quantified) extent, is the practical benefit worth the ethical sacrifice?
These are non-trivial questions and legit disagreements over them will continue to happen in movement after movement until the end of time.
I have also long said that we actually need both the moderate insiders and the revolutionary outsiders to make change. Without the revolutionary outsiders, the people benefitting from the status quo have no reason to change or compromise. Without the moderate insiders, there is no one to negotiate the kinds of stepwise changes the status quo might be willing to grant.
This isn't to say that outside revolution can never succeed, but it is likely to succeed only after increasing conflict leads to outright violence. I don't want to commit war to win justice. That's antithetical to my morality. And if the strong case for the revolutionary outsider is morality over practicality, then winning through war is undesirable anyway and undercuts the basis of the critique of the milquetoast insider.
Meanwhile, the milquetoast insiders don't ever succeed in any struggle against oppression without outside agitators. I don't mean to imply that they couldn't, but we don't have any examples where they did. We don't know that it's even possible, and to the extent that it might be possible, it would surely take one hell of a long time, sacrificing people to that ongoing oppression along the way.
I don't like the insider way, and I don't trust the insider way, and I'll never be the insider doing the stepwise negotiation.
That said, we need each other, the outsiders and the insiders. We have to make peace with that.
Okay, CD, I got halfway through this before I realized you're talking about the Human Rights Campaign, NOT Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Fucking TLAs.
I shall edit.
ETA: Okay, top line edited.
{Snort!} Thanks, buddy!
As a heathen who never wanted children, I connect with this. In the mid 1980s when I came out, all my gay guy friends were falling sick and dying from AIDS. Some women in the lesbian community figured they could just suck it up and deal. I caught heat from some of them for volunteering with hospices but I was against separatism in the 80s and I'm against it now. I work a conventional corporate job so nobody's going to see me going to work in a mohawk and rough trade duds, but they didn't make me into a suburban soccer mom either. 😂
I stopped contributing to HRC after they endorsed the incumbent for NY Senate - the loathsome Alphonse d'Amato - over challenger Chuck Schumer.
I remember that. Gods, that was awful.
I listened to a podcast about the activists behind marriage equality, and the analysis was similar. Their success, the argument went, was based on casting the issue as "hey, everybody wants a lil ol' nuclear family so they can be 'normal'" and that obviously is a) wrong and b) does little to advance tolerance and acceptance in the broadest sense. I suppose it does backstop progress of a kind but it makes me miss Act Up. They use to show up at clinic defenses in LA back in the 1980s against Operation Rescue and get it done. So true, though, about what money and proximity to power can do to people.
Maybe they did frame it like that but it moved the Overton window on the topic by a huge HUGE amount. In 2004 the presidential election was won by Bush in no small part due to the proliferation of state referenda banning gay marriage. (and polling showed 61% of Americans were opposed to it) By 2008 after electing Obama we still had the line up and shove him in the right direction.
Today? 70% are in favor. That's an enormous turnaround in a mere 20 years. No it's not everything. No it's not perfect. but it's a lrge amount of progress.
It's like the ACA.
Like our host I was (and still am!) strongly in favor of a 'Medicare for All' universal single payer system.
It's not just fairer; it's vastly more cost-effective, and uncoupling healthcare from employment would be a hella boost to the economy, too. (imagine how many more people would open their own busineses if they weren't terrified of losing their health insurance), but for all it's flaws the ACA as a ginormous imrpovement over what we had before it; and that it's still standing after everything the Republicans can throw against it demonstrated it's durability.
throwing out the 80% improvement because it's not 100% is a way of losing 100%.
I would make an argument that HRC didn't move the Overton window, HRC *is* the Overton window. You know what I believe moved the Overton window on queer rights? Act Up helping make AIDS within the realm of control rather than something people freaked out over. But more than anything else, what moved the Overton window were brave souls coming out of the closet to the point where when I discovered I was trans, I came out immediately and every single person with whom I came in contact has accepted me for who I am (except a troll at a different blog, but that blog is so well-moderated that it was the troll who was outcast rather than I)!
Agreed with that, save for the caveat that when you say they moved the Overton window ... we don't actually know how much they moved the Overton window. People were coming out and making movies and telling their heterosexist uncles to go fuck themselves -- there was a LOT going on between when the Hawaii Supreme Court first ruled that their state constitution mandated non-discriminatory marriage laws (this was overturned by amendment before it could go into effect) and when Obergefell gave us the last substantive word on the matter. (The last so far. SCOTUS may very well give us a new word on marriage legalization at some point.)
I grant that HRC participated in that. I haven't seen any research that shows that they were responsible for all or even most of the Overton movement.
In general I'm with you that we need everyone including the HRC (and, good godz, Dick Cheney in this election). I just worry that your comment gives them credit at the expense of all the other folks who were also working their asses off to move that window.
I mean, if Harris wins this thing, I'm not going to be praising Cheney for moving the Overton window, that's for sure. He might even make it more acceptable for strong Republicans to reject Trump. I still won't give the fucker any credit. I thank him politely for coming out against the treason maniac and then I shall put him out of my mind.
The HRC was never as bad as Cheney, but they were pretty bad on a bunch of things. As a result, I'm willing to give them the credit for their work that there's evidence that they deserve, but I'm not going out of my way to lionize the people who endorsed Al D'Amato.
At the time I loved Queer Nation and ACT-UP and The Gay & Lesbian Task Force and positively **loathed** HRC. Over time my position has softened. Yes, I still think they were wrong headed. I think ethics demand that we do it right from the beginning. But I can also admit that their activities were not entirely without positive effects, and the negative effects of being misrepresented and/or excluded by them I am now prepared to forgive.
I swear, you won't remember because you were just a baby Crip Dyke, but the early-70s women's movement was plagued with "lesbians need to keep their heads down so we don't frighten the suburbans." I don't think it was so much donor vs grassroots, just the influential feminists (Hi, Gloria Steinem! Hi, Betty Castor!) trying to keep a lid on things.
I probably had a point when I started this. Hi, CD! Love ya!
The Lavender Menace!
I learned feminism at the feet of women subject to those purge/stifling attempts! I don't remember them myself for being the baby that I was (Though yes, I was alive! I just hadn't gotten my first toy motorcycle or Tonka Truck or EasyBake Oven yet. Yes, I had all 3 of those things.) But I have lots of stories of those days told by excellent talespinners still bashing around my noggin.
OMG, Tonka Trucks! I didn't have any of my own, but coveted my brother's, and played with them every chance I got. Fortunately, he was my best friend, so I got to play with them a lot.
The EasyBake Oven started out as my sisters, but she never played with it and I did so she gave it to me.
I played with the Tonka Truck for about a year, then lost interest. I would have given you mine.