queeranarchism:

““Queer” arose as a critique of the assumptions that underlie identity politics. These assumptions were that oppressed groups were well-defined, had clear borders, that all members of the oppressed group have common desires and needs, and that a small portion of that group could thus speak for the entirety of the group. However, queer liberation movements remaining rooted in identity politics have led us down the road of debating the precise boundaries of queer and arguing over whose concerns are legitimate, all the while pretending that we were not participating in identity politics. By generalizing “the straights” as a coherent group that hegemonically oppresses “the queers,” and that the reason we don’t want to assimilate is because we don’t we like them, it becomes both too easy for us to ignore struggles that do not directly touch the entire queer community and to reduce anti-assimilation into nothing but a way to police the desires and identities of other queers. We need to oppose the institution of state-sanctioned marriage because it strengthens the nuclear family as the consumptive and reproductive unit of capitalism, not because many straight people get married. Trying to invert the relationship hierarchy to shame people who are happy with a long-term relationship and shared household with a partner does not bring us a step closer to ending capitalism and ending oppression. If anti-assimilation is to be of any value, it needs to be founded on the idea that we want to destroy the current order and help build a better world, not keep ourselves separate from “the straights” because queers are somehow a well-defined group that do not find themselves as part of any other groups and can be kept apart from the rest of the world. While an understanding of intersectionality helps us to understand that some queers face issues that other queers do not, intersectionality is not enough as it does not address the fact that the interests of bourgeois are in direct contradiction to the interests of the majority of queers and this conflict can only be resolved through furthering class struggle, and ultimately by social revolution. We also need to be wary of a politics that has us make alliances with the people in power rather than with members of other marganilized and exploited groups.”

— Gayge Operaista – Radical Queers and Class Struggle: A Match to be made. In: Queering Anarchism (2012) 119-121.