QUEER NATION

A direct-action movement focusing on LGBT visibility and sexual freedom, Queer Nation first met in New York in April 1990. In one of the earliest articles about the group, the artist Tom Kalin claimed that the New York City Lesbian and Gay Anti-violence Project had reported a 95 percent increase in violence against LGBT people. In response, a core group from the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) declared that it was time to challenge the liberal LGBT rights movement's strategies of assimilation. At that year's gay pride march, anonymous activists distributed a confrontational manifesto titled "Queers Read This," which exhorted queers to take revolutionary action against heterosexism and included the rant "I Hate Straights." By 1991 there were sixty chapters of Queer Nation across North America. The last of these disbanded in Seattle in 1995.

Strategies, Style, Actions

In 1991, the activist Alexander S. Chee declared that Queer Nation "did not want … a history beyond our work in the street" (p. 15). To write the history of Queer Nation is therefore to violate its own anti-institutional spirit. Downplaying the idea of permanent and ghettoized safe spaces for LGBT people, Queer Nation encouraged parodic performance and sexual flamboyance in public, in the spaces of everyday life that had been de facto sexually segregated ever since homosexual identity had emerged. Just as many militant African Americans reclaimed the word "nigger" and sex-positive feminists reappropriated "bitch," Queer Nationals embraced the epithet "queer" and all of its connotations of eccentricity, oddness, and transgression. The name also captured a new sense of coalition among sex workers, transsexuals, practitioners of sadomasochism, nonmonogamists, and other sexual dissidents. The Boston chapter's mission statement described Queer Nation as a "loose federation of autonomous groups," but the author and activist Michael Cunningham most succinctly captured its spirit, calling it "the illegitimate child of Huey Newton and Lucy Ricardo" (p. 63).

Queer Nation's first two years saw a surge of angry and exuberant battles against sexual repression. On Mothers Day 1990, Queer Nation activists in Atlanta appeared at Cracker Barrel restaurants to celebrate the existence of LGBT families. By September 1991 the group was back for sit-ins protesting the company's firing of a lesbian employee. Later that year, Seattle and New York members trained under the Guardian Angels (the street patrol group), forming the Bigot Busters in Seattle and the Pink Panthers in New York. In May 1991, San Francisco Queer Nationals staged a "kiss in" on Gay Court street, while in Seattle, chapter members strolled through malls holding hands and kissing. California members rioted against Governor Pete Wilson's veto of Antidiscrimination Bill AB 101, organized a boycott of the Hollywood film Basic Instinct to protest its depiction of a bisexual killer, and took an all-gay trip to Disneyland. Seattle Queer Nationals appeared outside high schools with flyers urging heterosexual students to support their LGBT peers. New York members went on "queer nights out" to heterosexual bars, where they drank and kissed. New England chapters in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, and Massachusetts gathered for "queer water sports" at an aquatic amusement park, celebrated "Red, Queer, and Blue" on the Fourth of July in Boston, and protested at L. L. Bean outlets because of the mail-order company heiress Linda Bean's opposition to Maine's comprehensive civil rights law. The Midwest was no quieter. Iowan Queer Nationals leafleted the campaign speeches of U.S. presidential candidate Tom Harkin for his support of U.S. Senator Jesse Helms, drag queen Joan Jett Blakk ran for mayor of Chicago, and the working group Coalition for Positive Sexuality distributed sex-positive pamphlets and condoms outside of the Chicago public schools.

In short, Queer Nation performed civil disobedience in a variety of supposedly straight spaces, including businesses, schools, churches, and legislatures. In this respect it followed the legacy of earlier movements for social justice. But the movement also emerged in a newer context of global capitalism and distinguished itself most dramatically from its predecessors by its focus on consumerism. The name Queer Nation itself functioned as a kind of company logo, an umbrella name under which a variety of projects could form, merge, recombine, and move on. But as Kevin Michael DeLuca notes, unlike the corporations and national lobbying groups that it imitated and parodied, Queer Nation could not purchase media time to air its messages. Instead, the group used the tactic of "culture jamming," or reappropriating mass-produced images for its own purposes.

As Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Freeman have documented, Queer Nation's signature aesthetics and tactics emerged from ACT UP's clean black-and-white graphics and savvy use of fax and phone lines, and from the feminist, punk, and anarchist circuit of self-published magazines and wheat-pasted posters. Drawing upon the techniques of direct-action artist groups such as Gran Fury and the Guerrilla Girls, Queer Nation's actions called attention to the way advertisers erased queer eroticism even as they used it to sell their products. For instance, New York activists replaced the "P" in GAP clothing advertisements with a "Y" to point up that chain's appropriation of gay street styles. Appropriating the language and style of Absolut Vodka advertisements, they also decorated New York streets with a series of portraits of closeted actors captioned "Absolutly Queer." Seattle's and New York's mall actions featured models dressed as "go-go boys" and "diesel dykes," both parodying stereotypes and advertising queer styles. Seattle Queer Nationals sold Queer Scout Cookies, including "S & M & Ms" and "Transgender Snaps." Poking fun at ACT UP's working groups and corporate capitalism alike, working groups gave themselves extravagant acronyms, including GHOST (Grand Homosexual Outrage at Sickening Televangelists), UBIQUITOUS (Uppity Bi Queers United in Their Overtly Unconventional Sexuality), DORIS SQUASH (Defending Our Rights in the Streets, Super Queers United against Savage Heterosexism), and QUEST (Queers Undertaking Exquisite and Symbolic Transformation).

Fallout

Inevitably, of course, the contradictions inherent in Queer Nation emerged in a series of internal critiques. Directly after the formation of the San Francisco chapter, women and people of color formed focus groups such as LABIA (Lesbians and Bi Women in Action) and United Colors (a coalition of people of color). But according to Michael Cunningham, in 1991 a New York activist arrived at San Francisco meetings and outshouted women or people of color when they criticized racist or sexist remarks. Without a system to make decisions except on the basis of consensus, members were left with no way to handle tactics of majority-group intimidation, and membership declined. Writing in the influential journal Out/Look, several activists pointed out that Queer Nation had exactly replicated the problems of the official nation, claiming to include women and ethnic minorities but not changing its vision accordingly. Scholars such as Valerie Lehr and John Champagne have since pointed out that Queer Nation lost track of the institutional changes necessary to combat racism, sexism, and poverty, themselves interlocked with homophobia in complicated ways that the group had overlooked. Public intellectuals such as Allan Bérubé, Jefferey Escoffier, Lisa Duggan, and Michael Warner argued that even Queer Nation's brilliant parody of nationalism in the end depended upon the model of the national citizen who checked his or her differences at the voting-booth door. Notably, the Philadelphia chapter addressed this critique by calling itself "Queer Action." Other critics, including Matias Viegener and Steve La Freniere, highlighted the more liberatory possibilities articulated within independent media spheres, such as the handmade queer punk " 'zine" (a shortened form of "magazine"), distributed by mail for trade or a nominal cost, and the do-it-yourself, all-ages homocore music scene. And queer 'zines such as Bitch Nation published their own anti–Queer Nation manifestos.

By 1992, Queer Nation New York had few women or people of color. The Boston chapter faced allegations from within that a fundraiser was sexist. San Francisco disbanded when one member refused to agree to a written mission statement. According to the journalist Doug Sadownick, Queer Nation Los Angeles distributed a fax reading "We're here, we're queer, we're fabulous, we're finished." The Atlanta chapter sat in on a Christian Coalition meeting but did not mention abortion or homosexuality. Only the Seattle chapter continued with direct-action tactics until finally, in February 1995, Queer Nation Seattle announced that it too had closed. In 1996 a few cities saw revivals, but in general queer direct action continued under different names.

Retrenchment, Revival

Like all movements, Queer Nation was infused with the possibilities and limitations of its own moment, and Queer Nation's moment was the early 1990s. It was a product of the first Persian Gulf War era and the proliferation of global consumer markets, and its work was sometimes complicit with official nationalism and capitalism. But by the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Rights and Liberation, it was clear that the conservative drift of LGBT politics also contributed to Queer Nation's demise. Its campy, sexy nationalism was no match for a mainstream movement that, as Alexandra Chasin and Urvashi Vaid have demonstrated, was all too willing to abandon radicalism to focus on family and military issues. Kiss-ins gave way to marryins; the Pink Panthers faded from visibility as LGBT people ousted from the army and navy took center stage. The group was revived in San Francisco in 2000 to protest safer-sex educators who did not themselves use condoms but seems to have been dormant since then.

Nevertheless, the influence of Queer Nation can be seen directly in such organizations as Queers against Capitalism and Queers for Peace, and indirectly in gay-straight alliances in the public schools, queer theory in the academy, and a burgeoning queer independent cinema. According to the journalist Dave Ford, in February 2003 a new activist group called Gay Shame appeared in San Francisco; their web site claims that "we are dedicated to fighting the rabid assimilationist monster of corporate gay 'culture' with a devastating mobilization of queer brilliance." Pointing the finger at repressive state institutions and sellout mainstream movements alike, renouncing the simple model of "pride," Gay Shame may revive Queer National tactics for an even meaner millennium.

Bibliography

Anonymous. 2003. Gay Shame Mission Statement. Available at http://www.gayshamesf.org.

Berlant, Lauren, and Elizabeth Freeman, "Queer Nationality." boundary 2 19, no. 1 (spring 1992): 149–180.

Berubé, Allan, and Jeffrey Escoffier, eds. Out/Look 11 (winter 1991): 12–23. Special section on Queer Nation.

Champagne, John. "Seven Speculations on Queers and Class." Journal of Homosexuality 26, no. 1 (1993): 159–174.

Chasin, Alexandra. Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to Market. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Chee, Alexander. "A Queer Nationalism." Out/Look 11 (winter 1991): 15–19.

Cunningham, Michael. "If You're Queer and You're Not Angry in 1992, You're Not Paying Attention." Mother Jones, May–June 1992, pp. 60–68.

DeLuca, Kevin Michael. "Unruly Arguments: The Body Rhetoric of Earth First!, ACT UP, and Queer Nation." Argumentation and Advocacy 36, no. 1 (summer 1999): 9–21.

Duggan, Lisa. "Making It Perfectly Queer." Socialist Review 22, no. 1 (1992): 11–31.

Ford, Dave. "What's That Sound? Gay Shame, Aloud." San Francisco Chronicle, 14 February 2003, p. 2.

Galst, Liz. "Taking It to the Streets: Nationwide Queer Street Patrols Come Out Against Antilesbian and Antigay Violence." Advocate, November 1991, pp. 66–67.

Kalin, Tom. "Slant: Tom Kalin on Queer Nation." Artforum 29 no. 3 (1990): 21–23.

Kopkind, Andrew, ed. "A Queer Nation." Nation, 5 July 1993. Special issue on Queer Nation.

Lehr, Valerie. "Queer Politics in the 1990s: Identity and Issues." New Political Science, nos. 30–31 (summer–fall 1994): 55–76.

Penn, Donna. "Queer: Theorizing Politics and History." Radical History Review 62 (1995): 24–42.

Rankin, L. Pauline, "Sexualities and National Identities: Reimagining Queer Nationalism." Journal of Canadian Studies 35, no. 2 (summer 2000): 176–196.

Sadownick, Doug. "We're Here, We're Queer, We're Finished—Maybe." Queer Resources Directory. Available at http://www.qrd.org/qrd/orgs/QN/queer.nation.is.dead-LA.WEEKLY.

Slagle, R. Anthony. "In Defense of Queer Nation: From Identity Politics to a Politics of Difference." Western Journal of Communication 59, no. 2 (spring 1995): 85–102.

Smyth, Cherry. Lesbians Talk Queer Notions. London: Scarlet Press, 1992.

Vaid, Urvashi. Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation. New York: Anchor Books, 1996.

Viegener, Matias. "Kinky Escapades, Bedroom Techniques, Unbridled Passion, and Secret Sex Codes." In Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality, edited by David Bergman, 234–256. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993.

Warner, Michael, ed. Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

Elizabeth Freeman, with research by

Kara Thompson

see alsoaids coalition to unleash power (act up); coming out and outing; nationalism; queer theory and queer studies.

from "queers read this" (1990)

Being queer means leading a different sort of life. It's not about the mainstream, profit-margins, patriotism, patriarchy or being assimilated. It's not about executive directors, privilege and elitism. It's about being on the margins, defining ourselves; it's about gender-fuck and secrets, what's beneath the belt and deep inside the heart; it's about the night. Being queer is "grass roots" because we know that everyone of us, every body, every cunt, every heart and ass and dick is a world of pleasure waiting to be explored.