[Marxism] A Marxist Theory of Gay and Lesbian Oppression

[Louis Proyect]

(A new subscriber with the email address of jvanek at mac.com just tried to 
post a very long article that bounced to the moderators. We have a limit 
of 35k and the article was nearly twice as long. Since it is on the Web, 
you can read it in its entirety there.)

I'd like to start a dialog on a Marxist theory of homosexuality.

I understand some in the Marxist movement consider this issue 
"petit-bourgeois" identity politics, and that some think of it as a 
particularly bourgeois vice.  I disagree.  I'm especially interested in 
the way an enforced heterosexuality based on the sexual division of 
labor conditions people to relationships and institutions of dominance 
and submission.

I'm going to start by posting the first part of a series of articles 
from www.permanentrevolution.net

Chapter 1 The origins and nature of lesbian and gay oppression

The origins and nature of lesbian and gay oppression

Lesbians and gay men are subjected to brutal oppression in capitalist 
society. Despite some countries having legalised homosexual acts between 
consenting "adults" in private, oppression discrimination and legal 
harassment continue to exist on a massive scale. So much so that 
millions feel obliged to conceal their sexuality or to repress it. The 
submerged misery of these millions is incalculable. Against all who 
voluntarily or involuntarily reveal their sexuality, a massive barrage 
of repression is unleashed. Lesbians and gay men face not only abuse and 
derision but physical assault which can end in murder. At work lesbians 
and gay men face the constant threat of dismissal and victimisation and, 
if unemployed, discrimination. In addition there is the routine 
harassment by the police on the streets, in the gay clubs, through 
entrapment and so on.

Lesbian mothers are systematically denied the custody of their children. 
The "popular press" keeps up a persistent campaign of vilification - an 
incitement to "queer bashing" and a constant stoking of the fires of 
homophobia.

Why is there this monstrous campaign of repression which unites such 
unlikely bedfellows as the Pope, Ian Paisley and the Ayatollah Khomeini? 
Homosexual acts have long been condemned by certain religions - most 
notably Christianity - but the systematic oppression of homosexuals as a 
distinct category of people separated off from "normal" society, 
especially in Western Europe and North America, began only some two 
hundred years ago. That is it is a feature of capitalist society. The 
justification for this oppression is that homosexuality is not merely 
abnormal but also, and more importantly, "unnatural". While the levels 
of toleration that capitalist society is prepared to grant homosexuals 
have fluctuated, acceptance of homosexuality and therefore the 
recognition of it as a perfectly natural phenomenon, has never existed.

Yet the sexual behaviour deemed "natural" by capitalist society - 
heterosexual activity with great emphasis on penetrative intercourse as 
"real" sex - is only one aspect of human sexuality. What makes it so 
suited to being described as the only natural form of sex is its 
reproductive function. Now this is extremely important for the survival 
of the species and has always been so. The idea, perpetrated by many 
radical feminists, that penetrative heterosexual intercourse is 
inherently oppressive to women ignores a fundamental biological fact of 
human life. However, acceptance of the importance of reproductive sex is 
only half the story. Because one thing is natural it does not follow 
that everything else is unnatural Moreover, the very word natural brings 
with it a whole number of problems of definition. Human beings have 
never taken nature as a fait accompli, but have always sought to either 
utilise or transform it our species has, by social means, repeatedly 
developed and transformed our own "nature". To understand the 
development of lesbian and gay oppression it is necessary to dispense 
with capitalism's categories of natural and unnatural in matters of 
sexuality.

They are arbitrary in the extreme.

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