InfoShop.org – Liz Highleyman
Queer Activism and the Global Justice Movement
… One of the most visible factions of the contemporary radical queer milieu is the transgender (TG) movement, which has taken many people by surprise with the sheer speed and magnitude of its growth in the 1990s. Although it is in many respects an identity-based movement for transgendered, transsexual, and intersex people, some activists (such as GenderPAC) advocate an expanded scope that includes all people affected by gender-based oppression. While the gender movement has its assimilationist elements, activist groups like Transexual Menace and TransAction have followed in the footsteps of ACT UP, engaging in direct action and street protest to call attention to issues such as violence and police brutality against gender-variant people.
The post-Stonewall gay liberation movement advocated a broad sexual and gender liberation agenda, which shared similarities with the “sexual revolution” of the same era and with the “free love” movement dating back to the late 1800s. But today there is little emphasis on sex within most of the GLBT civil rights movement. Repeal of sodomy laws has been accorded a low priority by the GLBT establishment. A group called SexPanic! formed in 1997 to counter the demonization of queer sex–attacks that were often coming from assimilationist gay men and lesbians as well as from the religious right and the straight establishment (see Shepard and Eigo in this volume). But the group never succeeded in mobilizing large segments of the GLBT population.