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Cathy Cohen Class Assignment

Cathy Cohen argues an excellent point for what holds back real action in any movement. The major issues are rooted in privilege and divisive behavior linked to sexual identity. The topic of privilege is an interesting one because it covers a lot of ground and highlights the vulnerabilities in many marginalized groups. Simply being marginalized is not enough to behave inclusively, many people find their personal struggle enough and do not wish to associate with people that will further ostracize them from a mainstream community, examples of this would be butch gay men, feminine lesbians and heterosexual non whites. The risk in this attitude is the perpetuation of oppressive behavior is sometimes for the purpose of changing ideas from inside. Another risk is that if you have the unfortunate luck of exile from your marginalized community for being too deviant you may not have the resources to succeed on your own. Radical change takes a huge exchange of energy to create movement and deviants passing under the radar as heteronormative do a disservice to all communities under the thumb of oppression.
Secondly, the issue of radical queerness for the sake of radical queerness is also a massive energy cost, but with almost no return on it’s investment. While it does have a place, it also distracts from what is at the root of queer activism. To be queer is to not subscribe to the dominant ideals of Western culture, specifically the nuclear family, but also opposition to marriage and could possibly include refusal to work in a traditional labor market or live in a house/apartment. Like the feminist movement, inclusivity is a necessity and disassociating from subgroup because the racial or gender privileges of a heteronormative society soften the edge of not quite fitting in. At the end of the day, if you are not one of them you are not one of them and until we are all free no one is free. For real radical change to occur in queer activism it has to be about more than about sexuality, including fringe society as a whole, and work with marginalized leaders to make more than just footnotes about queer politics.