The Polical Technology Free Speech has become.

I saw this tweet on my wall and it got me thinking about recent events and how free speech has indeed become a technology. It is LGBT history month and I have heard several talks on how we are now in a better place than we were. Invariably when someone complains they are told at least we are not the 3^rd world they still criminalise homosexuality there. I admit the 3^rd world isn’t perfect but neither is the first world. This comparison does have an element of truth in it however it is dismissive tactic. It is the same tactic parents use to get their children to eat ‘don’t you know there are children in Africa who have no food?’ The 3^rd world is used as the dumping ground of the world’s problems.

What comes out in a lot of talks about LGBT history in the UK is how race can be used to valourise ones achievements. Race and sexuality seem to be two identities that are used to drive home a message of superiority. In India I have heard about how superior we are as a heterosexual nation protecting ourselves from the western invention of homosexuality. In the west I have met white LGBT people who have insisted I am homophobic simply by existing in brown skin. I have heard lots of nasty arguments used by both groups to prove their superiority. I have witnessed divisions amongst the LGBT community which is engaged in the politics of respectability. This politic is a convenient way of seeking favour from a more powerful majority by discarding perceived embarrassments within the community. Being a persecuted minority does not exclude the possibility or being a persecutor of another community.

An example that struck me recently was the way race and sexuality collided in the film Pricilla Queen of the Desert. It is a small scene but a vital one. The film is wonderful in the way it portrays the dangers of being transgender in Australia yet when it comes to portraying race the film fails. A Filipino woman in the film is shown in a negative sexualised manner. While gaining audience sympathy for one group the film demonises another. Artistic licence allows one to make a film as one wants however it is interesting how that was the choice the writers made. LGBT rights have come to signify a benchmark of liberal progressive society, societies that do not agree with this are automatically labelled backward. Non-conformists in the LGBT community are labelled as troublemakers. Recently a white gay man was discussing the issue of sexuality with me and said ‘transgender people must have some disorder when you think about it’. While his words are deeply offensive think about his privilege he is white, male and gay he is the cream of LGBT society. It was amusing when I pointed out how only a few decades ago he would have been locked away and chemically castrated on those same grounds.

The freedom to call other people names from one position of marginalisation does not make it freedom at all. To call transgender people shouty troublemakers, or to use derogatory language around race is a means of controlling people. It is then only a political technology and not a transformative one.