Queer kinks and the arc of justice: meditations on failure, persistence, and public education

ABSTRACT

The Trump administration has quickly rescinded some of the limited protections made available to some gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people – for example employment protections for LGBT federal employees – and has doubled down on a military agenda – proposing increased federal funds to the military. This political moment – a more nakedly visible endorsement of structures of oppression – falls on the heels of the neoliberal ‘gay-friendly’ military-lite Obama regime. Building on eight years of participatory observation in counter-recruitment movements and community mobilizations against the militarization of public schools, and participation in concurrent queer justice movements, this essay engages policy analysis and archival work, to map struggles against the military industrial complex (MIC) in schools against and with LGBTQ justice movements, offering meditations on failure, persistence, public education, and approaching organizing queerly.

KEYWORDS:

• queer
• LGBT
• discipline
• education
• justice
• militarization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. It is important to note that while President Obama didn’t make these flashy statements, he did not shy away from full participation in the military industrial complex. One facet: Drone strikes by driverless aerial vehicles, initiated by the Obama administration and endorsed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, killed thousands, including children, in Pakistan, Yemen, and other parts of the world, in attacks described as a ‘mass torture’ of residents of these and other countries (Olugbemiga 2015).

2. Throughout this article we use queer to signify identities, and politics and organizing, focused on a norm-critical stance and social transformation. We also use LGBTQ and queer when referring to non-normative gender and sexuality identity groups. When LGBT is used, this reflects institutional and other prior usage.

3. While this does not conform to a traditional research essay, we argue that participation in political and social movements, specifically narrative and analysis by people impacted by systemic forms of violence, often produces the most useful tools to understand and dismantle oppression. This proposition is a central tenet of movement-based popular education, shaping the curriculum of the Highlander School from the 1930s to the present; the Civil Rights era Mississippi Freedom Schools; and Paolo Freire’s 1970s pedagogical frameworks. Particularly related to challenging the MIC, see writings by Chelsea Manning (e.g. Manning 2015).