Decolonizing Queer Identities and Experience

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a first year success series entitled “Decolonizing Queer Identities and Experience”. This event took place on October 25th, 2018 in the Tanya Rutner Hartman Room in the Ohio Union.

This session was particularly informative, and I was able to learn about how decolonization is affecting the queer identity here in the United States in regards to Native Americans and their views on sexuality and gender. Native Americans traditionally did not work with the binary male-female system we have today, but had myriad gender identities, as well as openly accepting homosexual relationships. Colonization has effectively “washed” Native American history of this face, and thus, has wiped it from Native Americans’ own interpretation of their history, as they have internalized this colonization. Thus, we have the process of decolonization. This involves being critical of self and questioning why we think the way we do, amongst other methods, in order to tackle colonizations effects. I think this topic is particularly useful not only to first year students but to all citizens of the United States, because the process of decolonization has to happen on an individual level. We cannot begin to tackle the problems systematically until more people or on the bandwagon. It requires a complete paradigm shift, and thus, will not be easy. I will use the information I have learned from this session to actively work to decolonize my mind and make sure those around me are not contributing to these toxic mindsets.

Earlier in the seminar, we studied Queer Migrations and the LGBT communities in Russia as well as reading an article about Queer Migrations globally. Queer Migration relating to the fleeing of one’s country due to persecution based on sexuality or gender identity. Guest Speaker Randall Rowe, in sum, let on that the way we see LGBT persecution represented in the media, and our interpretations of the stories, are not necessarily Russia’s take on the matters.  “… some of the Russian speaking immigrants, with whom I spoke, noted a tension in having to adopt a victim narrative as an LGBT immigrant from the former Soviet Union due to expectations fostered by media coverage” (Randall Rowe, Queer Migration: Identity and Representation Challenges). We find that although queer identities are not celebrated or expressed openly, they are tolerated and allowed to exist within the community with relatively low consequence. This, however, cannot be said about some countries in which migration was necessary for some members of the LGBT community, in order to continue living their lives without fear of persecution. And even so, queer folk such as author Reinaldo Arenas were denied access to a safer country to the U.S. because homosexuality was not considered a valid reason for immigration.

It’s quite ironic that the United States has had such a battle with queer rights, much as it is ironic that we have such an issue with immigration, seeing as how not only was this country founded on slaughtering and redistributing countless natives, but these very tribes had their own gender and sexuality identities that were akin to conversations we are just now beginning to have in the 21st century, the late 2000’s. This resistance to queer identity due to colonization is projected upon Native Americans, and thus, they completely lose part of their culture. This is why we must actively fight colonization so that we can allow both the native and queer identities to coexist.