THOUGHTS ON OBJECTION!

In the late 1980’s, Miguel Castillo was convicted for the murder of former lover, Rene Chinea. The investigation and prosecution was lead by a perverse and violent narrative of gay men and criminal activity. Andrea Ritchie (2011) highlights the way this case was handled to indicate a clear discrimination against queer communities because of this common narrative in Objection!.

 What Ritchie (2011) proposed on the narrative of the violent gay killer, overriding other evidence presented, indicated to me a troubling frequency that still exists within and outside the criminal justice system. Queerness, like most deviances from societal norms, is still to this day highlighted in an almost criminal matter. We may act as though we live in a post-homophobic or even transphobic society, but at the end of the day, the criminal gay is still a common narrative. According the Williams Institute of Law, lesbians, gays, and bisexuals are three times more likely to be incarcerated than the general population (UCLA 2013). What this number indicates is that, despite strides in recent years with marriage equality, narratives of queer criminality still rule dominant ideology.

 In recent years, there has been a lot of discourse over trans people’s access to public restrooms. Whether or not trans folk should go to the bathroom of their identified gender or the sex of their birth has been much of debate. While one side argues for bathroom inclusivity, the other voices against it, many of the opposers claiming that trans people, especially transwomen are a danger to their children and their spouses. This, much like the narrative surrounding Castillo, goes back to the idea of queer criminality. Amongst dominant ideology, queer people have always been painted as pedophiles and rapists due to their sexuality being seen as something perverse. This is especially notable amongst discourse surrounding gay men and even moreso, transwomen. Because of this, people on the opposing side of the debate surround trans access to bathrooms feel threatened by simply going to the bathroom.

 I am a lesbian, however, I have never felt criminalized for it so I feel I have privilege in this sense. I understand on the other hand, the stereotypes surrounding each sector of the LGBT community and how these negatively affect public perception of queer folk. By criminalizing LGBT folks, there is this othering of queer identity opposed to cisgender or heterosexual identity. Sexual and gender identity outside the norm becomes this deviance, hindering dominant ideology. I think queer people often give in too easily to this when engaging with other queer folk, seeing them as “other”. More often than not, I see other lesbians go on tirades of who is and who isn’t a woman. This incessant transphobia is harmful to the queer community as a whole and it fails at looking away from this “othering” of trans-people.

My question is how do you suppose, we combat both the criminalization of queerhood in the dominant sector and the exclusionary ideology with queer communities? What are some tactics we could use to counter harmful perspectives such as these?