The Appeal of Victimhood And A Never-Ending Revolution
Society’s tolerance has been exhausted. It is no coincidence that after many years of steadily increasing, LGBT acceptance started to decline at the same time gender ideology and identity politics reached the peak of their popularity. People are realizing that activists are no longer fighting for legal equality and that their goalposts continuously move further away. While some of these activists have good intentions some are simply misguided or perhaps lacking in self-awareness.
I believe there are other reasons why some make their goals as unreasonable and unattainable as possible. Politicians, media outlets, and activists have realized there are many benefits to making sure LGBT people continue to see themselves as victims. Unlike LGBT activists of the past, many members of this new generation of Queer™ activists seem to actually want to be misunderstood and disliked, because their entire identity is centered around being an oppressed minority. Always having a cause to fight for gives them a sense of purpose and a community to be a part of, so they don’t want the battle to end.
When being a victim is your entire identity, no longer being victimized would lead to an identity crisis.
LGBT activists had very clear, reasonable goals they wanted to achieve- the right to get married, the right to adopt children, and protection from employment discrimination. They fought for legal equality and to be accepted in society. Rights were won after decades of using the common humanity approach to make people understand we are more alike than we are different. Activists did not force or expect anyone else to change their beliefs as long as those beliefs were not being used to keep them from having basic rights.
Queer activists, on the other hand, have no interest in being accepted in society. Unlike the common humanity approach, they use the common enemy approach to convince other LGBT people that straight cisgender people are their opponents in some imaginary social justice battle. They find a sense of purpose in being part of a never-ending revolution and have realized that there is great power in being a supposedly victimized minority in current-day America. Their main causes now consist of forcing people to believe in a regressive ideology and expanding or changing the definitions of words so that basic communication has become difficult.
Even the word queer itself has a very unclear meaning and seems to have very little to do with a person’s sexuality. Sociologist David Halperin defines queer as “whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant.” At one time used as an insult, activists have now changed the word into an “umbrella term” that encompasses everything from actual gay people to straight people who don’t conform to societal norms.
This vague label is appealing to people for several reasons. DEI has led to companies hiring queer people even if there are non-queer applicants who are more qualified for the job. With the constant discussion of privilege over the last several years, many people have realized their actions are less likely to be criticized if they assign themselves a label like trans or queer.
Wanting to avoid being called homophobic or transphobic, people feel uncomfortable responding negatively to anything said by someone in a minority group even if their critiques have nothing to do with the person’s sexuality or gender. These labels also automatically give people a community that will rally behind them and defend them no matter what.
And of course, escaping the “cisgender heterosexual men are the root of all the world’s problems” narrative obviously has its appeal. All of this can be achieved without having to actually change anything about who you date or how you look. It is essentially a way to get all the benefits of being part of the LGBT population without having to deal with any of the negative aspects.
Aside from redefining words like woman, queer, and even transgender, queer activists are also trying to normalize and spread gender ideology. This way of thinking is called gender ideology and queer theory for a reason- they are beliefs, not facts. For every follower of a belief system, there is an equal or greater number of people who do not share the same beliefs. But this ideology teaches its adherents that anyone sharing perspectives that don’t match their own is not just a different opinion but an “act of violence.”
Pointing out the many inaccuracies and contradictions in the tenets of gender ideology is met with responses such as “you’re denying my existence.” Providing sources that prove something they’ve said is untrue or more nuanced than they claim is called “harmful,” and dissidents are told they are participating in “trans genocide.”
Not only is this misuse of words completely disrespectful to victims of actual violence, but the fixation on external affirmation keeps ideologues in a state of perpetual victimhood. There is no possible future where they could be happy because there is no possible future where everyone has the same beliefs and perceives them the same way they perceive themselves.
It is an impossible goal, which ironically…is their goal.
This reinforcing of victimhood mentality is not only being pushed by ideologues. LGBT-focused organizations, social media influencers, and media outlets essentially make their living by telling young LGBT people that the whole world hates them and that their lives are inherently unfair because of their sexuality or gender.
Politicians fearmonger them into believing the opposing party wants to take their rights away because it almost guarantees them an entire group’s vote. Foundations such as GLAAD reinforce these fears because they would not be able to continue earning millions of dollars if LGBT people realized their fight was over. And of course, queer people themselves love it because their victim identity gives them a sense of power and belonging they never had before.
Many good-intentioned people are trying not to repeat the errors of the past. The mistreatment of gay people throughout history is a source of shame for a lot of Americans. In an effort to show how progressive they are now, they desperately try to appease this new generation of queer activists by going along with whatever they say. “It’s not my job to educate you” and “you need to do the work” are two of the most common phrases used by activists. Unfortunately, “the work” never ends.
There is no amount of educating yourself a person can possibly do to understand an ideology that doesn’t make sense and no amount of work you can do to appease a group of people who are determined to remain permanently outraged. You will never get it right because their sense of purpose, identity, and income depends on you getting it wrong. Their activism has no specific end goal that would have them declare victory because for identity-obsessed victims, being a part of a never-ending battle is the goal.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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If being queer is “whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant.” Then being conservative in a city like Seattle or Portland or SF is the ultimate of queer.
As well, being Queer allows the basic, middle of the road, white-bread suburbanite kid to claim the all important mythical victim status. Which is a nice trick.+
The unending revolution is baked into the cake of Marxism. It's a dialectic struggle all the way down, never ceasing. Progressives: Always progressing, never arriving.
I think that in order to be queer, you do have to change yourself. You need to uglify yourself, preferably with nose rings and ugly tattoos. Oh, and day-glo colored hair that is unevenly cut.
This is because The Marxist Left (and all queers are Marxists, oddly enough!) is continually at war with anything objectively true, beautiful, edifying and accurate. This is why "my truth" is all that matters.