Chapter 10 - New Alliances, New Kinship

Section Notes¶

Next Steps¶

• Beginning of 21st century: juncture for LGBT rights

  • Achieved protections against discrimination at work for gays and lesbians

  • What’s next? Trans rights? Shift focus to multiply marginalized? Fight at-will employment?

• By 2008 everything shifted towards marriage equality

  • Not a significant goal in the 1990s

  • Assimilation into the normative working class family form

  • Defensive maneuver against christians

  • At expense of all other goals

• 2006 manifesto: Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships

• Cathy J. Cohen, 1997: Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?

  • Advocated for radical coalition work

    • e.g. ACT UP needle exchange

  • Interconnections between varied movements

Coalition Struggle Beyond the Family¶

• Groups with family abolition struggle in common:

  1. Disabled people

  2. Trans children and adolescents

  3. People in abusive relationships

  4. People targeted by state violence

  5. People living in poverty

  6. Queer people, non-normative households

Progressive Anti-Family Reform¶

• Under nonrevolutionary conditions, progressive reforms can motivate and expand opportunity for struggle, win improvements in immediate lives, lessen intensity of daily coercion and violence

• e.g.: UBI, social democratic reforms, social services, Cuba family reform

Chosen Family¶

• Nonsanctioned alternative to nuclear family

• Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Revolutionary Mothering

• 1979 Mary Peña, Barbara Carey

  • “THEY WILL NOT BELONG TO THE PATRIARCHY; THEY WILL NOT BELONG TO US EITHER; THEY WILL BELONG ONLY TO THEMSELVES.”

• Ballroom scene: den mothers, etc.

Limits of Reforming the Private Household¶

• Policy failures of Anglo social democratic movement

• Coercion of welfare states

• Chosen families still under capitalism

  • Exclusive character (kicked out if no one likes you)

New Care, New Kinship¶

• Collective action can forge new bonds of care and solidarity

• Kin-making used by AIDS militants and Black feminists

  • Means of negotiating difference

  • Bridging radically different experiences

• NYC queer youth of color: FIERCE org

  • Fight curfews

  • Oppose police harassment

  • Expand police power of queer youth of color

Quotes¶

“Under nonrevolutionary conditions, progressive reform visions can motivate and expand opportunities for struggle, win improvements in people’s immediate lives, and lesson [sic] the intensity of daily experiences of coercion and violence. Moving a political vision beyond the rhetorical horizon of defending and prioritizing the family draw attention to the potential value of various progressive policies. These are potentially nonreformist reforms, in the sense that their implementation could expand many people’s ability to live under chosen circumstances and to be free of immediate violence, thereby allowing them to participate more fully in future social movement activity.” (pp. 170)