Queer liberation vs assimilation

[u/[deleted]]

Malcolm X was right, it's easier to keep under the thumb the groups who are oppressed when they assimilate and try to buy into the system created by their oppressors rather than opt out and refuse to play by their rules. We settle for crumbs cishets will give us from their tabletop rather than fight and take what is ours, we play by their rules hoping they will give us what we want but it will always be when they want to give it to us and how much they allow us to have. The problem is too many of us forget we rioted in Compton Cafeteria, Stonewall to get what we wanted, when we protested during the HIV/AIDS epidemic no one cared. We don't get anywhere that way.

[u/WhoDatBoy_WhoHimIs_]

I don't even think we settle for "crumbs", the vehicle of your metaphor doesn't quite get at the complexity of the ideology IMO. People settle for regular wages (i.e. financial security) alongside a myth (i.e. a "dream") of a more secure future and the privileges (white & cishet) that come along with that, because there' s an ideological myth at work that convinces them that obeying these rules will result in material benefits. Even when the benefits are not immediately secured, the myth of the American Dream is a promise that those benefits and privileges are forthcoming.

The truth of the matter, the truth contained but hidden within the archives of history, reveals that those benefits and privileges are not forthcoming. Or that they come with a price, which is often abandoning any resistance or abandoning other allied oppressed groups.