LGBTQsoc, militant? Don’t be absurd
By James Rothwell
By Alex Gabriel
Alex Bramham, who just cancelled his campaign to be president of LGBTQsoc, complained in this paper that liberationist ‘equality militants’ control the group. I have to tell him: it’s news to us.
Having come up to Wadham a year after me, he describes a society where ‘language is policed to a[n] Orwellian level’. (This means that on saying things like ‘I’ve had a lot of guys in me, but not a tranny’ and ridiculing ‘words like [.] genderqueer’, he gets called out.) The society, according to him, is in the grip of queer ideologues – and, especially, trans* advocates – like me. Our tyrannical, militant presence overpowers other voices, and he therefore wants to form an ‘LGB soc’ by ousting trans* members. Reader, do you sense a theme?
I haven’t, admittedly, been part of the society since before he joined. But did radicals and safe spaces drive me out? Don’t be absurd. Our LGBTQsoc is a social club; calling it militant is like calling S Club threatening. If activist types like me had the influence he suggests, I wouldn’t read what Alex Bramham writes. I’d be busy, cartwheeling for joy.
Why did I join LGBTsoc, so named back in ’09? To help improve the world for other queer people. In leafy, liberal Oxford during that year, seven homophobic attacks got reported. The next year it was 19, two of them falling within a week. It angered me that this happened in my new city, as it angers me now to know queer students here who’ll face homelessness and violence if they’re outed to their parents.
It angers me that when this newspaper last reported on LGBTQsoc, it misgendered a prominent member, and that students’ tutors here address them with the wrong pronouns, even when asked not to. It angers me as an access volunteer that we lose potential students whose chances have been wrecked by years of straight bullying. It angers me that I’m typing this on a device which doesn’t recognise the word ‘genderqueer’, and it bugs me knowing many readers won’t.
I could spend my day listing things that make me angry as a queer Oxon. I could fill this entire paper, several times, and so could most of my queer friends – yes, even the ones who aren’t ‘militants’. Why is it, then, that our LGBTQsoc isn’t rallying on the High Street? That’s what I hoped to find when I first came here, but instead I found a weekly cocktail club where gay, cismale undergrads filled the room enthusing about Ladytrying and trying to pull. I’m told this hasn’t changed, and given that two of the four initiatives in Alex Bramham’s manifesto were ‘Cheap drinks’ and ‘Launch rival club night’, I’m not optimistic.
When I or anyone else said that a queersoc shouldn’t just be for drinking and fucking, we were told it had to be apolitical to be welcoming – ironically, the safe space language Alex Bramham finds so ‘militant’ was used by people with very similar outlooks to his, who prioritised vodka prices over fighting transphobia. A society privately monitoring the welfare of queer students couldn’t also, according to them, campaign for it publicly. (Simone Webb, Alex’s opponent for the presidency until he dropped out and now the sole candidate, gets my support, but her own manifesto states ‘the society [.] will continue not to be political’.)
To take no visible action against queerphobia – including, specifically, bashings in the streets of Oxford and transphobia on campus – doesn’t seem to me like good welfare provision. Would I feel welcomed by my LGBTQsoc if I feared my straight parents would kill me, and saw it had never campaigned against this? Would I feel welcome, if I were a (trans)woman, and saw no representation at a gay men’s cocktail party of the issues I faced? As a non-drinker – my dad was an alcoholic – looking for more than someone else’s bodily fluids, I didn’t personally feel welcome, and that’s hardly the worst marginalisation within the society.
Candidates for president don’t evolve in a vacuum who want to ban transfolk, ridicule their terminology and use cissexist slurs, or who’d rather drink cheap booze than ‘associate with a liberation movement’. This happens when fear of seeming ‘political’ clouds societies’ vision, and they care more for brightly coloured drinks than a fight against gender policing or real social change. For goodness’ sake, it’s LGBTQsoc. Let’s be militant about equality – for everyone – and proud of it.
Follow Alex at alexgabriel.co.uk and @mralexgabriel
Dave
22/05/2012 at 00:40
Whilst I’m sure you had the best intentions at heart, please do not continue to label LGBTQSoc as QueerSoc. Despite being gay I do not identify as queer.
Alex Gabriel
22/05/2012 at 01:07
I didn’t use that as a name for the Oxford group. I referred to ‘a queersoc’ – i.e. a queer student group – as an abstract concept. Like most people who use the term, I mean by ‘queer’ everyone who isn’t straight.
Confused observer
22/05/2012 at 03:12
I followed the online debate as a detached observer; not LGBTQ, but I sympathise with what is an important issue of equality. Came away feeling much of what was said was utterly ridiculous. Your society abstracts away from the genuine problems facing LGBTQ students by engaging in stunningly heated debates about the employment of terms which on the whole are used fairly innocently by most people. Sure, there’s a time and a place for critical analysis and deconstruction (academic literature) but using it to lambast every politically tongue-in-cheek statement is ludicrous. Grow up.
Dundee Cake
22/05/2012 at 07:19
@confused observer, I think youre right, although as I recall, lgbtsoc was about drinking (Im sure there have always been other more political groups to do the campaigning piece). However, I think its unfair to only crticise the LGBTsoc for that, when one of the most depressing things about coming back to Oxford after experiencing (rather hard) paid work, were the painfully trivial arguments about semantics and ideals, which totally ignored what most tax-paying citizens think or do, and what is reality for many people across the world. Its an unavoidable academic tendency, but thats fine. As pointed out, not everyone wants to be militant, and its nice to have a drinks soc where they dont have to be.
Rowland
22/05/2012 at 09:29
Isn’t there a separate LGBTQ Campaign group that does just the kind of things you’re talking about? Granted, I’ve never been to it, but I do know that it’s promoted at LGBTQ Soc drinking events and I would expect it would be more the kind of thing you’re looking for. Thing is, not everyone who comes to University wants to join a campaign group, and I think it’s understandable that some would like an LGBTQ Society which is casual and more of a social thing (though there are some good talks sometimes too). If the Campaign group isn’t good either, then I understand your annoyance, but I think there’s space for both of them.
Also, vis-à-vis the typing on a device which doesn’t recognise the word “genderqueer”, that says more about technology and dictionaries lagging behind slang and neologisms than it does gender equality. Heck, some word processors won’t even allow “alright”.
Rubble-face
23/05/2012 at 13:11
All this LGBTQ stuff is fantastic for procrastination. The way the society goes on and on at each other about language instead of talking about issues outside the abstract area of gendered linguistics is hilarious. The word tranny is offensive, yes, but did you all (not directed at the author obvs as he’s not a member) have to spend an hour all saying the same thing on facebook to prove the point? Maybe you should just be a drinking society, and leave the serious issues to other people.
Alex Bramham
23/05/2012 at 18:16
Re:Rubble-face – I’ll drink to that.
As for the article, I disagree with most of it, but as my campaign is over, I’m not interested in making a counter-argument. I like Alex Gabriel as a person and hope to remain friends when he returns from his year abroad. This whole affair has shown me the importance of friendship and people over political differences.
Yewtree
24/05/2012 at 16:58
It’s clear that Alex Gabriel is not advocating getting het up about language, but about homophobic and transphobic violence on the streets, in the education system, and from parents and peers.
Alex Gabriel
25/05/2012 at 03:32
That. And also, language matters.
Alice
10/06/2012 at 08:56
Ridiculous to think that people at Oxford can’t seem to see the importance in reframing how we talk about an issue. It’s never “just semantics” when we use language about a group of people.
Anon
10/06/2012 at 13:41
We can’t call people things they don’t want to be called! Misgendering people is evil! Yes, but… you just called every non-straight and non-cis person “queer”.
Fuck you. Actually fuck you.
Alex Gabriel
10/06/2012 at 13:49
Me and at least twenty years of established, influential, respected theorists and critics. Really, that’s pretty standard usage.