Queer Activism, Feminism and the Transnational Labor Movement
Article notes[1]
Globalization has reconfigured the opportunities for politics and the
repertoire for collective action available to transnational activist
movements concerned with economic and sexual justice. Transnational
forms of activism depend on domestic political contexts, the
availability of local actors, the existence of mobilizing structures,
the mobility of ideas and people, and the available discourses with the
power to frame the opportunities for activism.[2]
Transnational activism
can occur at various levels, at multiple sites both virtual and
physical, and take a variety of forms including networks, coalitions,
organizations, and movements. Some activists travel extensively, while
others can participate in transnational movements and campaigns without
leaving home. Elsewhere we have written extensively about the
constraints and opportunities globalization presents to union feminists
whose transnational activism is helping to build new political alliances
between women's movements and organized labor.[3]
Now we turn our
attention to transnational queer labor activism by focusing on how
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists are capturing
the resources, networks, and discourses of the transnational labor
movement to mobilize for labor rights in a global economy.
Much like women and other marginalized workers who are
underrepresented in "the House of Labor," LGBT workers are using
self-organizing as a strategy to build political spaces within unions
from which they can make claims for representation and participation.
Like feminism, queer activism has the potential to revitalize the labor
movement; but to do so, it will need to challenge the homophobia,
transphobia and sexual politics of organized labor and insist that
unions live up to their democratic ideals. In the past, feminist and
civil rights activists within labor had to leverage their alliances with
other activists, advocacy groups and grassroots organizations outside
the formal boundaries of unions in order to make their case for greater
representation and equity. Queer labor activists are borrowing these
strategies, but are also creating new approaches and discourses that
challenge unions to rethink how they mobilize their members for
collective action. In this paper, we draw on notions of sexual
politics, self-organizing, discursive frames, and mobilizing structures
to help us understand transnational queer labor activism, and to argue
for the value and necessity of queer organizing in the labor
movement.
Sexual Politics and Self-Organizing
The political opportunities available in the labor movement cannot be
realized without analyzing and challenging the obstacles of sexual
politics. We adopt the concept of sexual politics in this context in
order to re-engage with gender as relational and political, in the sense
of Kate Millet's early conceptual formulations (1969). Millet redefined
politics as "power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one
group of persons is controlled by another," and advanced the then new
claim that the sexes (as well as races, castes and classes) should be
seen as well-defined and coherent groups and thus subject to
politics.[4]
In analyzing the sexual politics of the labor movement, we aim to
sidestep the way that gender has since become coded to refer almost
exclusively to women. Instead we acknowledge that gender is an
ever-present relation of power, and thus best conceived in terms of a
sexual politics that engages and challenges power as domination,
resistance, alliances and pleasures. This conceptualization of gender
and sexual politics allows recognition, in the contemporary climate, of
the centrality and dominance of masculine, heteronormative
sexualities/identities, and reframes the analysis away from an
arithmetical "gender inclusivity" where women are merely slotted in and
LGBT people disappear.[5]
It is the dynamic and changing circumstances of
sexual politics, in which gender relations contest and shape political
opportunities and social identities, that produces the resources and
capacities for political action.
The sexual politics of trade unions is clearly challenged by the
interests and concerns of LGBT workers. Trade unions are dominated by
masculine heterosexuality—indicated by the alarming rates of discrimination
and prejudice in the workplace faced by lesbians, gay men and
transgender people. In the Australian study, The Pink Ceiling is Too
Low, over half of the respondents said they suffered from homophobic
behaviour or harassment, and eleven percent experienced verbal abuse,
including threats of physical and sexual abuse.[6]
Studies elsewhere also
find that LGBT workers' careers are affected by the culture of work
organizations and policies.[7]
Where trade unions themselves have begun to
collect data on the experiences of LGBT workers, they find that breaches
of labor rights are common.[8]
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