Framework for a Radical Queer Abolitionist Manifesto

The bastardization of the Pride movement from one rooted in the anger and refusal to be erased of Stonewall, Compton’s Cafeteria, and ACT UP to one that cozies up with cops, corporations, and institutions with settler-colonialist origins is a travesty. The Pride movement, as the effective most influential organization for queer folks to make themselves visible, has changed its trajectory from a radical one to one that favors assimilation with the very system and ways of being that would love for queerness to be erased and made impossible to survive. The origins of queer protest rightfully saw everything with settler-colonial origins as a threat to its existence and so explosively resisted its forces. I can empathize that such a resistance against colonialism, what with its claws deeply entrenched in most every corner of the planet, was an unsustainable and unwinnable battle at best. Naturally, the safest path for queer survival is proving to colonialist society that queers can be normalized and assimilated into normative culture. Some queers eventually were allowed into the fortresses of normative tradition, the legalization of gay marriage, for example. An incredibly difficult and hard-fought feat, this legislative change was seen as a victory for those who were satisfied with assimilation. I argue that showing the settler-colonialist world that queerness can be “normal” is not the way forward and may in fact be an eventual way backward for queer folks. Many other examples of queer assimilationist politics can and will be pointed out with the purpose being to show how antithetical to queer activism’s roots the contemporary Pride movement has become. Rainbow logos three weeks out of the year is simply a taste of the damage such politics have done to the queer experience. I believe that queer activism must move toward more radical politics. The demands of the contemporary Pride movement are not enough. We cannot settle for whatever scraps the normative world decides to feed us. We cannot survive on colonial continuity. No change in legislation, no matter how drastic, will guarantee queer existence. As long as we choose to remain within the settler-colonialist system, fighting for survival using colonialism’s own tools, we shall never know true queer liberation.

This framework’s purpose is to rupture assimilationist queer politics and center decolonial, abolitionist alternatives. This is not a mere policy proposal. We must unlearn the dominant queer assimilationist politics and learn that dreaming of brighter abolitionist futures is a possibility. This framework heavily incorporates vital groundbreaking queer theory pieces that all criticize a compromise with the structures that have and do seek our annihilation. I reference Gayle Rubin’s Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality with the purpose of identifying the social regulation of sexuality. Rubin’s unapologetically radical politics on sexuality are a refreshing moment lacking any self-censorship and fits perfectly within a radical queer abolitionist framework. I also call upon José Esteban Muñoz’s Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism as a way to teach queerness in a hopeful, ambitious way, in so doing invoking queer utopia as an educated hope, rather than an impossibility. I include Kim Tallbear’s Making Love and Relations Beyond Settler Sex and Family as a notable critique of settler sexuality, as well as an example of how modern dominant queer politics willingly ignores alternative kinship arrangements and sexualities that cannot be defined by colonialist terms. Alison Rose Reed’s “We’re Here! We’re Queer! Fuck the Banks!”: On the Affective Lives of Abolition shall also be included to further cement the need for abolition in pursuit of queer liberation by invoking Reed’s abolitionist affect theory.

The unfortunate drift of the queer movement from anti-police riots to cooperation with politicians and police is a key reason for this framework’s creation. Queer assimilationist politics may offer survival in a world of settler-colonial dominance but will sacrifice queer liberation to do so. Many of the “victories” achieved by such politics include the legalization of gay marriage and greater inclusion and visibility of queer individuals. The successful inclusion of queer lives into the dominant normative systems of colonialism, including but not limited to marriage, is no objective victory for queerness. Activism for gay marriage sought to prove to the heteronormative world that gay people are just as capable of performing the demands of the nuclear model of family. As a result, gay marriage is legalized but only for those of us who are privileged enough, white enough, and nuclear enough. More objectively, celebrating any change in legislation, no matter how inclusive for the queer community, dangerously legitimizes the power that governments and the rule of law maintain over society. By limiting queer liberation to legislation as the ceiling, we shall forever remain within the cage of settler-colonialism. Survival and legitimization in a world that tries to erase us was the goal, but we must not forget that our desires do not end with acceptance from the dominant powers.

Kim Tallbear’s Making Love and Relations Beyond Settler Sex and Family serves as a critique of the ubiquitous normalization of monogamy and nuclear kinship. As colonial tools for control and surveillance, monogamy and nuclear kinship are the only valid ways of living we may practice, any others are problematic or illegal. Tallbear presents the traditions of some Indigenous kinship relations and the logic behind them, doing her best to describe them using the limiting English language. The alternative sexualities and kinship relations she speaks of may offer healthier alternatives to the colonialist practices of monogamy and nuclear family, but at the very least prove that there are other ways of relating with each other outside of the normative systems of kinship. Tallbear also shows how state-sanctioned sexualities enforce colonialist and capitalist obsessions with the inheritance of property, and how inseparable worth and property are in the eyes of these systems (Tallbear, 2018). She also references certain conversations she has had with white feminists in regard to her description of open nonmonogamy as a way of living, noting that their associations with “polygamy” are with Mormon and Muslim polygamies, forms that are frequently stigmatized as unhealthy or abusive (Tallbear, 2018). Such associations are dangerous. Firstly, automatic reactions such as these are a prime example of how effective colonialist systems have implanted the idea that alternative forms of kinship and sexuality are debased acts. Such effective training leaves close to no possibility of explaining the logic and viability behind kinships that lie outside of traditional monogamy and nuclear family. Settler-colonialist systems have successfully planted the idea that monogamy is the “natural” course of life, that any deviations from it are unacceptable deviancies. Even with a track record of constructive success within Indigenous cultures for countless years, legitimization of alternative forms of kinship will never be accepted into colonialist worlds, as doing so would spell a step toward the end of the absolute power of colonialism over sexuality. This is precisely why knowledge on alternative forms of kinship and sexuality from an Indigenous background is vital to queer liberation. We cannot fight for queer liberation while remaining within the lane of monogamy.

Gayle Rubin’s Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality also investigates how the dominant systems determine sexualities as “good” or “bad.” Rubin shows the ambiguity in defining sexualities on moral grounds, and how the line that constitutes acceptable sexualities (those that are offered moral complexity) is defined to maintain settler-colonial norms (Rubin, 1984). She also identifies some queer lifestyles that have begun to become acceptable in normative society, but that these lifestyles are only offered this honor due to their mirroring and enforcing of norms; “acceptable” queer life must be cis, white, married, child-rearing, and patriotic, every queerness that fails to meet these requirements is “deviant” (Rubin, 1984). This hierarchy of sexuality is a crucial component of state control over queerness. Maintaining one extremely exclusive lifestyle (cis, white, married, child-rearing, patriotic) as the ideal de facto shoves every deviation down the ranking of moral worth, reinforcing the above-mentioned capitalistic obsession with worth, only in this scenario the possessions defining worth are not the partner you own, but rather the desires you have. Rubin published Thinking Sex in 1984, and the world was definitely not ready for such a radical idea surrounding sexual politics. Since its publication, the contemporary Pride movement has forgotten the impact of unpalatable voices for action like Rubin, instead leaning into the politics of sexual worth maintained by settler-colonialism. A journey toward queer liberation should keep Rubin’s radical politics of sexuality heavily in mind, using it as a reminder that as long as any sexuality is policed and devalued, no sexuality may truly be free.

Corporatization of Pride is a regrettable example of how queerness has been captured by the colonialist powers it once sought to escape from. Pride events all over the world now have corporate sponsors of every level of capital that wish to improve their public image by sponsoring Pride events. Such pinkwashing strategies are often effective. To so-called “progressive” left-leaning liberals, inclusion and assimilation is a victory for equality. Performative visibility of queerness has done little to actually support those who need it most, and any celebration of queer liberation at this point is comically naïve. The hypocrisy of queers to host events that celebrate their queerness while being in bed with police, having politicians speak at parades and hold a flag for a photo, and have corporate sponsors is palpable. Whatever happened to exposing the problems of normative identity and the powers of sexual repression? The politics of palatable Pride favor assimilation and tolerance over the dangerous path of queer liberation. Such gentle politics have facilitated pinkwashing’s success. Queers begging and showing gratitude for the bare minimum from the systems of power has allowed governments and corporations to celebrate and prove their progressiveness by providing menial things to queer individuals. Israel has successfully used its pathetic tolerance of gay people as a way to signal to the global powers that its genocide of Palestinians is justified in their moral superiority over these oppressed people (Puar, 2013). We may be angry at Israel and other colonialist powers that practice pinkwashing, but we must acknowledge the part that contemporary Pride has played in facilitating homonationalism as a virtue.

A more radical futurity for queerness includes rejecting the “straight time” that José Esteban Muñoz describes in Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism (Muñoz, 2009). Muñoz declares that queerness has not been reached yet, we do not know it in its entirety. We shall never know what queerness can fully be without achieving queer utopia. Within our current settler-colonialist world, queerness is nowhere near its true potential. Muñoz also points out the stagnation of queer thinking and the lack of thought oriented toward queerness as horizon, as opposed to remaining within the pragmatism of the here and now (Muñoz, 2009). I can empathize with the hesitance to completely reject the settler-colonialist here and now in favor of fighting for total queer liberation; it is impractical to sacrifice what little means of survival we have in a settler-colonialist world in pursuit of utopia. The bare minimum, though, should be to at least conceive of queer utopia. Failure to do so will continue our contemporary thought that straight time is the only path for queerness. Queer utopia can one day be achieved, but without breaking free from dreaming only within the here and now, it shall never come to fruition.

The Pride movement has not only surrendered to corporate interests and state institutions – it has also adopted the affective politics of these powers. Pride today demands pridefulness: not just the sanitized, rainbow-clad kind, but the obedience to be grateful for visibility, thankful for inclusion, and celebratory of tolerance. The affective landscape of Pride has been pacified. Gone are the righteous anger and explosive refusal of ACT UP or Queer Nation. Instead, we have police officers marching beside the queers they once brutalized, banks with rainbow logos offering mortgages while funding anti-trans legislation, and branded joy that asks for nothing and expects even less. Alison Rose Reed’s abolitionist framework in “We’re Here! We’re Queer! Fuck the Banks!” directly challenges the emotional compliance that contemporary Pride demands. Reed identifies the affective life of abolition not as one of gratitude, but of refusal, rage, mourning, and the ecstatic force of collective dreaming (Reed, 2022). These are not simply feelings – they are strategies. Queer rage is not a side effect of injustice but rather a tool of resistance. Grief is not a private matter but a communal ritual through which the dead are remembered and the living are fortified. Ecstatic joy, unlicensed by corporations or sanctioned institutions, becomes a rupture in the logic of normativity itself. This abolitionist affect is incompatible with the politics of modern Pride. Rage does not sell sponsorships. Mourning cannot be repackaged into Instagram–able content. And refusal does not build partnerships with banks. Reed reminds us that abolitionist queer politics must make space for the very emotions that the state and its corporate allies seek to erase or contain. If the dominant affect of Pride today is assimilationist celebration, then true queer liberation must come from the unruliness and unmarketable. Queer folks should not apologize for feeling too much, grieving too loudly, or demanding too radically.

I mentioned Israel’s pinkwashing of the occupation of Palestine above, as well as homonationalism. A further investigation of these topics is necessary to argue that queer complicity in national and corporate narratives of superiority is antithetical to liberation. Jasbir Puar, in Rethinking Homonationalism, develops the concept of homonationalism: how state-sanctioned queerness justifies war, occupation, colonial violence, and overall societal superiority. Homonationalism allows democracies to grant queer inclusion and use it as a distinguishing point between “civilized” progressive states and those accused of being oppressive, backward, or barbaric. North American nations are guilty of this as well, selectively tolerating queerness when it is white, cis, and monogamous but enacting violence and interference against the more underprivileged of us (the racialized, the poor, the migrant). The modern queer is thus mixed into the empire of colonialism – not tolerated despite their queerness but used for their performative value on the global stage. The modern Pride movement’s complicity in this narrative must be acknowledged. It has remained silent on genocide and settler-colonialism in general. Its focus has never lie on the U.S. military’s funding of regimes supporting queer erasure. Contemporary Pride seems to have no problem being used as propaganda by homonationalist regimes. Queerness has become another weapon in the arsenal of military powers to further empire expansion. In return, queer individuals are expected to be patriotic and grateful for what the powers above have graciously offered. Congratulations – queer folks may now enlist in the military and directly contribute to settler-colonialism. A movement whose ultimate goal is queer liberation cannot coexist with nationalism. The two are incompatible opposites. If Pride continues to serve as the stage for homonationalism, then it serves the state more than it serves the queer community.

If we are to speak seriously of queer utopia, then the first step must be to abandon the delusion that queer assimilationist politics will deliver it. It is ridiculous to expect liberation to come by parading with cops and colonizers. Our liberation cannot be purchased through compromise or by trading tolerance for obedience. What must come next is a revision of our pride. Our pride is not the affective politics of Pride, nor its entanglements with the capital of empire. Our pride must be pried from the grip of state legitimacy, of corporate sponsors. It must be rebuilt by those Pride has cast out. Our pride cannot afford to prioritize tolerance, inclusion, and visibility. We must center survival, refusal, and radical queer dreaming. This is where José Esteban Muñoz and other radical thinkers guide us. Muñoz’s concept of queerness as horizon refuses the tyranny of the now. He reminds us that queerness is not merely an identity but a trajectory toward a world not yet here – a world not legible to the logics of the state, the market, or normative time (Muñoz, 2009). Queerness, in Muñoz’s vision, is a utopian project: it is about imagining and creating otherwise. It does not settle for legal inclusion; it demands the abolition of the systems that make legality necessary. It does not ask to be seen; it asks what world we could build if we no longer needed to perform visibility to survive.

Acknowledgments

This framework was written on stolen land, in a time of surveillance and oppression, but also in a time of refusal and imagining. Here I give my thanks to the known and unknown ancestors whose resistance lives on in every word written.

I would like to thank every queer person I have ever known. Your existence has given me the confidence to not only exist in my own queer way, but to dream of a place and time where we may exist freely.

I cannot exaggerate the profound experience that was SOCI 4850. Queer theory has and will continue to change my thinking and my life. For this I thank Dr. Suzanne Lenon for teaching what has become my favorite class I have taken. The readings are remarkable and ordered so expertly. I have multiple friends who have asked for my course pack following the completion of the semester so they can be transformed by queer knowledge and thinking, as I have (some of them jokingly call me a queer terrorist with how radical my conversations have become).

I would like to offer my deepest gratitude to the dreamers whose work laid the foundation for this framework: Gayle Rubin, Kim Tallbear, José Esteban Muñoz, Alison Rose Reed, and so many more whose brilliance transcends citation.

I would also like to mention the late Jackie Jones, one of my dearest friends and someone who I owe every thanks and much more. Though your presence in my life was cut much shorter than I anticipated, your effect on my person is indescribable. Much of my work (including this one) would not have existed had it not been for your unceasing support and belief in my potential. I love you. Your relationship with me and every other person who had the honor of being in your presence is irreplaceable.

This framework is not mine. It belongs to the grassroots organizations, the community conversations, the protestors, the debaters, and those whose liberation and joy has been stolen from them. May we never seek permission to exist.

References

Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Queerness as horizon: Utopian hermeneutics in the face of gay pragmatism. In Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity (pp. 19-32). New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479868780.001.0001

Puar, J. (2013). Rethinking homonationalism. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 45(2), 336–339. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43302999

Reed, A. R. (2022). “We’re here! We’re queer! Fuck the banks!”: On the affective lives of abolition. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 28(2), 227–247. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-9608147

Rubin, G. S. (1984). Thinking sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. In C. Vance (Ed.), Pleasure and danger: exploring female sexuality (pp. 267–319). Routledge & Kegan Paul. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822394068-007

Tallbear, K. (2018). Making love and relations beyond settler sex and family. In A. Clarke & D. Haraway (Eds.), Making kin not population (pp. 145–164). Prickly Paradigm Press.