The taming and control of the homosexual experience is a process that has been put forward by many of the so-called “western” countries, including places such as Italy, in which the pressure from sanctimonious bigots or from religious hierarchies placed on the political arena and society has hindered, using every means possible, the comprehensive recognition of civil rights for lesbians, gays and trans.
In Betsy Brown’s paper “The Unfamily” she synthesized political interest and the requests coming from gays, lesbians and trans who had given up the idea ever creating an alternative to the hetero-patriarchal system: assimilate us to your society, make us enter in your army, let us imitate your families, and we will ensure that “homosexuality” is the exception to your rule. (Betsy Brown, The Unfamily, Lesbian Contradiction, 1994).
The “agreements” that gays, lesbians and trans have been willing to enter into during various historical periods have assumed new and different traits in the last 20 years. But it is clear that these have been nothing more than aspirations of normalization, integration and homologation.
Towards the end of the 90’s and the beginning of the new millennium, the LGBTQ* antagonistic movement in Italy has critically unveiled the nature of the lively exchange between a capitalistic/neo-free-trade society on one side and lesbians, gays and trans on the other: a request for guaranteeing the material existence and a visibility void of every content was traded by lesbians, gays and trans who acted within the mainstream LGBTQ* movement, in exchange for a promise of being good consumers. What the movement was doing was to willingly and without contradiction accept the neo-free-trade treaty that guaranteed existence only to subjects who consumed. This was a slight variation of the “exchange” imposed by early capitalism to the working masses whose sustainment was guaranteed by the factory, under the condition of reproducing a labor force for its own production lines.
The failure of politics and the crisis of the capital’s system have now changed the terms of the issue. On the wave of the “homophobia’s emergency” gay, lesbian and trans committees have recently earned small roles of willing appearances in that historical process (already active for many years) whose consequence is that of destroying the inheritance of the resistance and erasing the distance between right and left, thus emptying politics of any sense.
In the name of distorting the concept of freedom of speech we are witnessing (paradoxically with the complicity of lesbians, gays and trans) a process of legitimizing fascism and catholic integralism functional to the substitution of politics with a business model, to the repression and the social control of all subjects who have no intention of conforming or who are not instrumental to this new regime.
We believe that to carry on a political battle based on the reclaiming of rights and devoid of every complexity causes us lose the capability of analyzing, with an oblique and critical look, the reality that surrounds us. Given that this has always been the prerogative of non-conforming subjects, it is a prerogative that we deem necessary to recover. It seems evident that in the mainstream part of the movement there has long been an attempt of assimilation to - rather than against - the assumptions of the hetero-patriarchal model. This only aims at extending to the LGBTQ* subjects the application of familistic models imported from the dominant normative system.
For this reason, we think it is important to underline the difference between fighting a legal battle for the recognition of civil unions LGBTQ* subjects and to carry out an interlocutory, political dialogue with whomsoever (also if they belong to the extreme right) so that these rights may be negotiated and “allowed”. We believe it is indispensable to ask ourselves whose “skin” is traded with these concessions.
We are not interested in a proposition of law on homophobia such as that presented by Concia – which presents itself as an adjunct to the security decree masked as a measure in defence of some minorities – that actually is aimed at worsening the sanctions and at justifying security measures without really dealing with the cultural and political problem of homophobia. Neither are we interested in requesting the right to marriage and child adoption without criticizing the fact that nowadays in our country there are subjects who, only because lacking a permit of stay, not only cannot get married, but are deprived of every fundamental right, from the access to medical care to the possibility of recognizing their own sons and daughters, to the very personal freedom.
As Tavolo LGBTQ* Trento, we don’t want to place ourselves on a path where rights are declined under a normalization perspective that is configured as a justification of the security and social control politics and that is easily manipulated in favor of anti-immigrations discourses. We believe that the law should defend the dignity of everyone, including immigrants who nowadays are harshly hit by the security law.
Freedom and dignity is for everyone, otherwise we cannot call then either freedom or dignity!
This line of reasoning highlights an important point, i.e. that only sharing issues linked to homophobia is not sufficient to claim a political proximity with other subjects that, on other issues (like for instance antifascism) hold a different position.
The Tavolo LGBTQ* Trento places itself within the ideals and practices of antifascism and resistance and believes that being antifascist must also mean being anti-sexist. Thus, it shares the path and the elaboration of feminism and declares antifascism as an unambiguously anti-sexist practice.
The Tavolo LGBTQ* Trento is secular with a critical attitude with respect to the catholic church, claiming a self-determined choice against an apparatus that promotes hatred against gays, lesbians and trans through direct and indirect political attacks; that spreads a sexphobic culture that influences the socio-sanitary politics and ongoing campaigns against the spreading of information, especially amongst young people, about the use of condoms and contraception methods in general; that wants to reduce women to the role of incubator, that attributes to them maternity and the hetero-patriarchal family as the only future for their self-realization and that considers them social amortizers that can substitute a lacking in welfare; that with conscience objection hampers the self-determination of women with respect to abortion and that is responsible for the introduction of the law 40, strongly limiting the reproductive freedom of all; that influences politics with respect to ethical issues, like for instance choices about one’s death.
Our decision to address critically the Catholic Church stems from the fact that the Church is institutionally inside the system and that the Church concerns itself with ethical issues decisions about our bodies, a role that it should not have been delegated. We live in this specific theocratic culture, it is this culture that enters in our lives and thus it is to this culture that we are specifically opposed to.
In light of this, the Tavolo LGBTQ* Trento proposes itself as a political and cultural laboratory that continues on in the experience of Universinversi; an area for struggle, affirmation and resistance.
All we can do is to continue going in directions that are increasingly stubborn and contrary!
Tavolo LGBTQ* Trento
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