As you probably know, this weekend is the annual Minneapolis Gay Pride Festival and Parade. With same-sex marriage and gay rights finally receiving the public and administrative attention it has so critically required for decades, this year’s celebrations will no doubt take on some degree of activist character. It is a reasonable expectation that this year’s attendance may be record-breaking. As stated on the Twin Cities Pride website, “the Parade … drew over 125,000 spectators last year, making it one of the largest parades in the Upper Midwest, and the largest in all of Minneapolis according to Mayor R.T. Rybak.”Socialist Alternative here in Minneapolis will be again showing a strong presence and support for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender communities this weekend as part of our commitment to the liberation of these oppressed groups. For some, however, the connection between socialism and sexuality may not be so clear. But socialism isn’t “just about economics” or “just about politics” in the sense that we have learned these words. It is at root about the liberation of all of society through the democratic and participatory empowerment of all members of the working class. As the most progressive social liberation movement, our particular form of socialism takes natural solidarity with the LGBT movement. Our approach to the issue compels a more detailed examination - namely, what is the source of LGBT oppression and how can socialism combat it?
Some Statistics for Your Consideration
First, let’s start out with some basic stats and an outline of the type of day-to-day oppression members of the LGBT community face. There are more than 1,138 rights and protections dependent on marriage at the federal level alone, and these are being denied to same-sex couples (even those legally married in one or more states!) thanks to DOMA.
- Due to sexual orientation discrimination, lesbians earn up to 14% less than their heterosexual female peers with similar jobs, education, age and residence, according to a study by the University of Maryland. A survey of 191 employers revealed that 18% would fire, 27% would refuse to hire and 26% would refuse to promote a person they perceived to be lesbian, gay or bisexual.
- 42% of homeless youth identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual (Orion Center, Survey of Street Youth, Seattle, WA: Orion Center, 1986). Lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are at a four times higher risk for suicide than their straight peers. 30% of gay and bisexual adolescent males attempt suicide at least once. 42% of adolescent lesbians and 34% of adolescent gay males who have suffered physical attack also attempt suicide.
- 97 % of students in public high schools report regularly hearing homophobic remarks from their peers. 53% of students report hearing homophobic comments made by school staff. 80% of prospective teachers report negative attitudes toward gay and lesbian people
Two thirds of guidance counselors harbor negative feelings toward gay and lesbian people. 11.5% of gay and lesbian youth report being physically attacked by family members. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, homosexuals are probably the most frequent victims [of hate crimes] in the U.S.
-45% of gay males and 20% of lesbians report having experienced verbal harassment and/or physical violence as a result of their sexual orientation during high school.
Much more information than this can be unearthed with in-depth scholarship; this is but a simple survey of at-hand facts. Little of this ought to come as any surprise from avid watchers of the mainstream news. Much of it, perhaps, sounds familiar to the other oppressed minority groups of this nation - women, immigrants, citizens of various ethnicities. The fact is that the ruling elite of this country share one set of common experiences, and the downtrodden, the unemployed and the workers, share another despite their divisions.
Roots of Sexual Oppression
But besides these factors that make this discussion relevant in the immediate sense, there are other reasons, equally important but more academic-sounding, for presenting this analysis, which have to do with the special nature of anti-LGBT oppression and the way it arises from and is interwoven with many of the most fundamental ruling-class institutions in society—most notably: the nuclear family. We must “examine the social and historical context” of this oppression if we are to fully understand it. To pose it as a question: what are the roots of gay oppression?
As it turns out, the actual phenomenon of gay oppression emerged relatively recently, as did the concept of “gay” and “straight” as fundamentally different types of people, or as a well-defined subset of society as a whole. This oppression of homosexuality and the distorted views of sexuality generally that come out of this climate of oppression, are one of capitalism’s many contradictions. To quote Sherry Wolf, “Capitalism creates the material conditions for men and women to lead autonomous sexual lives, yet it simultaneously seeks to impose heterosexual norms on society to secure the maintenance of an economic, ideological, and sexual order.” This basically means that men and women in society are allowed to pursue their own sexual agenda, but the system also dictates - subtly, through social norms, and more overtly with certain institutions - that this agenda be strictly heterosexual. Why? For the status quo of capitalism.
Sexuality is not a binary phenomenon (gay/straight), nor is it a hardwired one. Like anything else humans do, sexuality is a behavior, and it changes over time. Biologically, there is only one human race, with a whole universe of sexual possibilities restricted only by the human imagination. These different possibilities can be either liberated or cracked down on depending on how society is organized. To quote gay historian John d’Emilio, “What we call “homosexuality” … was not considered a unified set of acts, much less a set of qualities defining particular persons, in pre-capitalist societies…. Heterosexuals and homosexuals are involved in social “roles” and attitudes which pertain to a particular society, modern capitalism.”
Before the rise of capitalism, homosexuality was integrated successfully into many different societies. Also, significantly, it was homosexual actions that were looked on positively, negatively, or neutrally—not a distinct category of people.
Origin of the Family
To find the ultimate root causes of gay oppression and the subsequent rise of a gay identity, we have to look back into history to when humans were first forming civilizations. A key text for this, its overall analysis yet to be successfully challenged, Engels’ Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.
Though humans as a species have existed for over a hundred thousand years, people only started living in family units during the last few thousand years, at the same time as the formation of divisions by class. Before class divisions could arise, humans first needed the ability to produce and store a surplus of stuff like food and resources. But for the majority of human history, people did not have this ability. Every person could only produce in a given period of time the amount of resources necessary to sustain his own existence. There was nothing extra to be hoarded or stolen. In this situation there is simply no motivation for subjugation, because there is nothing to be gained by it. Similarly, there was no use for the nuclear family (as we know it), because there was no wealth to be inherited; no special family interests to be preserved. In fact, pre-class social organization relied almost entirely on large-scale, collective production, distribution, and child-rearing. For this reason, it is referred to as a communal form of organization, but on the basis of subsistence for all rather than a super-abundance of shared wealth like in the future society we envision and fight for. In this situation, men and women were on equal standing—there was division of labor, but it was a sharing of work among equals.
Eventually, however, with the advent of agriculture, the plough, and domestication of cattle and livestock, humans were finally able to produce a significant surplus. With this surplus came an interest in acquiring a greater piece of the surplus for oneself, exploiting others to do so, and thus a motivation for societal divisions on an unequal basis: namely, wealth and slavery. The rise of the first sexual oppression—in this case, oppression of women—corresponded with the formation of the first class divisions and occurred through the rise of the monogamous family unit as a way to protect the resources of wealthy groups. Wealth could now be passed on to one’s children specifically rather than becoming the common property of the clan, and monogamy was required to ensure the father’s children were really his own. As Engels wrote: “Monogamous marriage was a great historical step forward; nevertheless, together with slavery and private wealth, it opens the period that has lasted until today in which every step forward is also relatively a step backward, in which prosperity and development for some is won through the misery and frustration of others.”
If anyone still doubts the connection between the rise of class oppression and the formation of the family, there is also telling linguistic evidence. The word “family” comes from the Latin “familia” which meant “the total number of slaves belonging to one man.”
Eventually, the nuclear family became the norm imposed on everyone, and even the landless peasants who owned nothing and had nothing to pass on were organized into families. All family members worked themselves to the bone, including children, and childbirth often resulted in death for the mother and/or child. It was a miserable existence. Along with this regularity came the first crackdowns on sexual behaviors. Henry VIII in 1533 made it so all non-procreative sexual acts could be punished by death. In the New England colonies, “solitary living” was forbidden. In the 17th and 18th centuries the households of the colonists were extremely individualized units in terms of both production and reproduction. Just about everything the family needed was provided by working their own small plot. Throughout these stages, the family and marriage were not seen as emotional endeavors, but economic ones. Responsibility and financial interests were at play, not pleasure and love. In fact, for a whole period, the first and only love songs were about adultery—marriage and love were not only irrelevant to each other; they were mutually exclusive!
In the 19th century, wage labor became more common, and the excesses of capitalist exploitation became ever worse, to the point where the working-class family as an institution was on the verge of collapse. Since the working-class family plays a vital role in externalizing the costs to the ruling class of raising the next generation of workers (something Marx called “privatized reproduction”), the ruling class had a vital interest in saving it. Thus, the “family wage” for men was born. This had the dual effect of relieving women from hours of grueling factory work while simultaneously imprisoning and isolating them in the home, away from social labor. A new division of labor was formed: Men, production—women, reproduction.
In this new situation of the male entrepreneur, the male wage-worker, and the female housewife, the family took on a new and contradictory role. As British historian Jeffrey Weeks describes it, the bourgeois family was “both the privileged location of emotionality and love…and simultaneously an effective policeman of sexual behavior.” This is largely the role the family has continued to play up to now, along with its role in externalizing costs. With women’s return to the workplace since World War II (in fact, women now make up the majority of the U.S. workforce), and with the generally increased feasibility of independent living nowadays, the nuclear family is more wrought with contradictions than ever, and frankly is falling apart on a mass scale. Half of all marriages end in divorce, and the family is losing its ability to effectively raise children, with both parents continuing to work longer and longer hours. At the same time day care is expensive and hard to find.
Thus, the ruling class is split on the question of whether to legalize gay marriage. While on the one hand it would serve to legitimize marriage and the nuclear family as an institution, it would also normalize homosexuality and break down many divisions in the working class that are essential for maintaining ruling-class dominance. Plus, legalization of gay marriage poses an obvious confrontation with the idea that there is anything natural or sacred about the heterosexual nuclear family at all. Thus, the roots of gay oppression lie in the need for capitalism to preserve the nuclear family, even long after it makes sense as a unit of social and economic organization for the majority of people.
The Birth of Homosexuality and the LGBT Movement
But what of the birth of homosexuality as an identity? Modern capitalism created the material and social conditions for a “gay identity” to emerge. Big cities threw people together in numbers big enough that anonymity became possible in a whole new way. People could experiment sexually without everyone they knew knowing about it. Capitalism then immediately tried to suppress this new sexuality. The new hostility to homosexuality was unique in that it targeted not behaviors but the “homosexual type” of person. Old laws attacked practices that threatened procreation, while the new laws singled out a small group of people whose behavior set them apart from the majority.
This conception of homosexuals as a different class of person actually arose from the change in how homosexuality was viewed in scientific circles. Whereas previously, homosexual behavior was considered a “sin against nature”, in the late 19th century homosexuality came instead to be considered a congenital mental disorder; a property possessed a certain subset of the population. Ironically, this idea that homosexuality is predetermined biologically has taken hold amongst a lot of gays and lesbians today, with people claiming to have been “born gay”. As an oppressed minority, many use this as a defense of their rights, arguing that they should not be persecuted for something they have no control over. There has even been a search in the scientific community for a “gay gene”. While the research on this topic could in itself fill articles, even whole journals, suffice it to say that search has been fruitless, and its motivations are ahistorical and unscientific at best, thoroughly reactionary at worst. Think how absurd phrenology looks to us right now, for instance. Put another way, the civil rights movement never bothered looking for the Black gene. And as we know now, from a scientific perspective, race is also a social phenomenon rather than a biological one.
We conclude with one last quote from John D’Emilio: “… lesbian and gay identity and communities are historically created, the result of a process of capitalist development that has spanned many generations. A corollary of this argument is that we are not a fixed social minority composed for all time of a certain percentage of the population. There are more of us than one hundred years ago, more of us than forty years ago. And there may very well be more gay men and lesbians in the future. Claims made by gays and nongays that sexual orientation is fixed at an early age, that large numbers of visible gay men and lesbians in society, the media, and the schools will have no influence on the sexual identities of the young are wrong. Capitalism has created the material conditions for homosexual desire to express itself as a central component of some individuals’ lives; now, our political movements are changing consciousness, creating the ideological conditions that make it easier for people to make that choice.”
