Lately I've been thinking a lot about marginalized groups and oppression. More specifically, I've been thinking about how being in a marginalized group does not give you the right or any sort of "pass" to be discriminatory toward another oppressed group.
What I mean is that just because you're a gay man (please note I am speaking directly about gay men and NOT trans*women… that should go without saying), does not give you the right to claim certain parts of womanhood as your own experience. While gender is a construct and gender roles must be demolished, those of us who identify as a woman are held to different standards and face certain discrimination that a gay man will never face. That's why when I hear a gay man using terms such as "bitch" or "whore", I cringe ever so slightly.
Terms like these are ones that have largely and historically been used to degrade women. A gay man squealing "yes bitch!" doesn't quite sit right with me because while gay, the individual still identifies as a man. Women have been making strides to reclaim these terms, but unless you are femme-identified it makes little sense for you to feel you can have ownership over these terms when they are things that have not necessarily been used to target your group.
Furthermore, white gay men don't get a pass to steal other's culture or try to wash out the historical legacy of transwomen of color who launched the fight for LGBT rights.
The same can be said about women who tote around their "gay best friends" as a way to gain social status and be known as "woke". Just because your friends are LGBTQIA+ identified, doesn't mean you can throw around the f-slur or make menacing jokes about "the gays". Those things are reserved for those of us facing actual discrimination at the hands of that sort of phraseology.
Even more to think about is the role of non-LGBT drag queens and even further… non trans* drag queens that through terms like "queer" and "tr*nny" around as if they have a right. Considering that being a drag queen does not automatically mean that you, yourself are trans* makes me extremely disheartened to hear certain non trans* drag queens taking ownership to a term that is not theirs to claim.
That being said, my criticism of the drag queen community does not end there… and again it continues to be mostly directed at cis-identified drag queens. This time I question the culture behind it and the stigma against women that much of drag perpetuates. Women are constantly deemed to be dramatic with standards of sex appeal and more. That being said, many drag personalities are set to mimic society's standards of a woman and not in the political satire way. In many ways these personas tend to over-sexualize a woman's role and not at the consent of all women.
However, this all being said, I recognize I may not be the most educated on every single subject I touched on. In many ways, I guess I'm just questioning while we tend to give one marginalized group a pass over the other. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. are all issues that we should be tackling as a collective and not overshadowing each other. I'd like to hear more discussion on these issues and find ways that we can collectively begin to understand each other's experience better.
Comment below with your thoughts or experiences. Let's open a dialogue.
