21/06/2025
Queer Spirit website this week carries a web essay by Shokti, entitled Pride in a Time of Crisis. Shokti reflects on their time in the Pride movement, and touches on the struggles of the past, the anti-trans prejudice of the present and touches upon queer luminaries, visionaries, dreamers and activists, from Joan of Arc to Marsha P Johnson. Shokti delivers a powerful riposte to radical feminism and right wing gay white men who would splinter the movement. Instead they say "
To those G, L and Bs who would split away from the Ts, I offer this quotation from gay rights pioneer Harry Hay: “Assimilation is the way you excuse yourself. It absolutely never worked at all. You may not think you are noticeable. But they know who you are. They know you're a degenerate, and they've never forgotten that.”
Historically, the persecution of same-sex attracted men and women has always been related to our threat to the established patriarchal order of society, which seeks to limit the gender non-conforming nature of gay sexual activities, and the expression of the quite-apparent-to-most mix of both masculine and feminine traits in us, (more apparent in some than others and most clearly expressed in the androgynous ones we nowadays call transgender). History has had many words for genderqueer people since ancient times– such as androgyne, epicene, hermaphrodite and in more recent centuries womanish-men, mollies, tommies and intermediate types.
The historical, religiously inspired origins of both homophobia and transphobia come from the efforts of the ancient Hebrews and then the Christian establishment from the 4th century to control the sexuality and gender expression of the population. Genderfluidity and same sex eroticism were both prominent and normal features of the ancient pagan faiths. “The Christian oppression of women and Gay people was no accident. Their freedom and high status in the old religion made them prime targets for the new religion, which was profoundly anti-sexual.” (Arthur Evans, Witchcraft and the Gay Counter-Culture, 1977)"
Read the full and illuminating essay here: https://queerspirit.net/blog/pride-in-a-time-of-crisis
