What is behind the PSOE’s rejection of the term ‘queer’?

In its last federal congress, the PSOE has declared the acronym Q – of – banished from its documents. queer– and the + –which includes other identities– in the LGTBIQ+ acronym. It has also approved an amendment aimed at limiting participation in women’s sports to “people with the biological female sex.” Although the moment is not the same, the message is similar to the one launched by the party during the processing of what is known as the trans law. At that time, the dispute with Podemos over the political capital of feminism led the socialists to adopt conservative positions in relation to gender self-determination – depathologization, that is, that a person can identify with their perceived gender without the need for a report. medical as was the case until the passing of the law.

In the last legislature, the original meaning of this battle was a fight to hinder the government action of Irene Montero at the head of the Ministry of Equality, a ministry that the feminists of the PSOE considered their property. But it was also a very ambivalent moment for feminist politics in a broad sense: of incredible strength in the streets with sometimes very radical content – just look at the manifestos of many assemblies organized by the 8M – but also of indisputable emergence of conservative ideas that have been gaining ground in this movement. Not only in relation to the struggles of sexual and gender dissidence, but also to sex work, pornography – which they want to criminalize or prohibit – or even with respect to a certain vision of sexuality that shines through in some media treatments of violence. sexist –as we saw in the Errejón Case–. It is as if once the enormous political capital of feminism has been identified, its contents had to be clearly demarcated to see who gets what part and which ones can activate certain electorates. In this case, it is not very difficult to discover a commitment to this centrist, or rather conservative, feminism.

It is as if once the enormous political capital of feminism has been identified, its contents had to be clearly demarcated to see who gets what part.

The position of the PSOE is a message: as Marina Sáenz pointed out in Bluesky“the PSOE amendments buy the argument against trans women, they are reactionary, they ignore the law and the access protocols to sports competitions and open the way to possible segregation in children’s, grassroots, federated or locker room sports.” Beyond this issue, the fight over acronyms is still a certain cultural war without, for the moment, very clear specifications. Grandiloquent statements while banging on the table seem to be already part of the landscape of institutional politics and have proven useful in agitating and rallying one’s own bases. Few issues are capable of stirring up so many moral panics and generating so many keyboard warriors, demonstrations and activism like this one. This dispute in feminism between inclusive and trans-exclusionary feminism – or TERF – has also occurred throughout Europe, and even with more virulence than in Spain, and has been adopted by many institutional feminisms, including the right in government, as happened with Rishi Sunak and the tories English. Other amendments to the presentation, which were not approved, proposed going further, also removing the T – for trans person – from the acronym.

The fight over acronyms is still a certain cultural war without, for the moment, any specifics.

With this war against queerwhat they mean is that, like the right, they are committed to more defined gender boundaries. If for the extreme right, which wants to compose anti-feminism as a political position, “feminism has gone too far”, we can say that for the PSOE – and the conservative camp – the struggles of sexual dissidents have also “gone too far”. They have gone too far when they question precisely the need to clearly identify with one of the letters of the LGTBI acronym – lesbians, gays, trans, bisexual and intersex people.

One feminism to rule them all

If at any time the battle against queer It has been a dispute with the younger feminism coming out of the 15M generation and its fight against a generational blockage in places of social power, today for the PSOE it also implies distancing itself from this radicalized legacy, and is a clear marker of political centering. It seems that the surveys show that a part of society – and not only men – are in favor of equality but show rejection of certain essentialist positions that could be summarized in feminism that makes statements such as: “All men are rapists.” “potentially.” What the president called his friends’ “discomfort” with feminism. This is the reading of the PSOE and it is not so far from what the PP makes.

Carlos Aragonés, former chief of staff of José María Aznar, and PP deputy recently recognized the political importance of feminism: “It is possibly the most powerful political force. In Spain, its evolution will be decisive in defining the parties’ strategies. If the left maintains the feminism of Podemos, we will have room to propose our own program. But if the PSOE adapts its discourse towards more moderate positions, the PP may become sandwiched between the left and Vox.” That is to say, the fight here is for a centrist feminism, that is, a conservative one marked by some elements that the PP and PSOE share right now. On the one hand, both say they are working on their own laws against trafficking – apparently based on forced prostitution – and against the consumption of pornography in minors. And both Feijóo and the feminists of the PSOE question the trans law for the same reason, for generating “legal insecurity.” Last November 25th, on the international day against gender violence, This conservative leader claimed this fight as his own and criticized the use “partisan” that the left makes of these issues “isolating the right from the feminist movement”.

Acronyms don’t matter

Whether the PSOE uses or does not use the Q does not matter in the least to the people who claim to be queer. It queer In reality, it comes from an anti-identitarian position, from those who do not fit or want to fit into one of the boxes available and represented by these acronyms. The content of their demands, furthermore, is associated with more radical political positions, also in relation to the redistribution of wealth, the rights of migrants, or sex workers or even anti-prison struggles, something that I tried to explain in this article. . Yes, it queer It implies a more transgressive position with respect to gender, more anti-identitarian and more radical in its political proposals, and that is the main difference with the PSOE. Of course, the collectives or struggles for the rights of trans people in their plurality do not necessarily identify with these postulates, or even reject them outright, which is why we say that this amalgamation of issues has taken the form of a cultural war where truth does not matter, but rather it is constructed.

The main argument of the socialists to reject what queer –which they mistakenly identify with gender self-determination– is the defense of public policies that are made “in the name of women”; that is, those that they decide we need and under whose banner they govern – and that would supposedly be threatened by gender fluidity. However, the sociocultural background is the same that drives the extreme right: a policy aimed at propping up fixed identities in moments of maximum uncertainty, where many people feel their living conditions are threatened by indeterminacy in many fields: by the economic situation, climate change, war, cultural or social changes.

The elements that support these PSOE speeches increasingly resemble those made by Vox or the fundamentalists

For this reason, the elements that support these PSOE speeches increasingly resemble those made by Vox or the fundamentalists: the threat to childhood, the danger of the differences between men and women “collapsing”, the fear of the end of civilization. “All of this adds up to a deeply disturbing but exciting image,” says researcher Sara Garbagnoliabout the battle against “gender ideology.” We can trace the origins of these arguments to the Vatican, but we also find them in ultra groups such as the World Congress of the Family, which in its First Declaration of 1997 called for “respect for the distinctive features of masculinity and femininity as determined biologically and not as socially constructed.” “There is no other sex other than the biological one, there is no such thing as felt sex,” says Sonia LamasSecretary of Equality of the city of Madrid. Same narratives as fundamentalists who increasingly invoke the idea of ​​sex essentialism as trans and non-binary people become more visible – which is causing an expansion of sexgender identification possibilities.

While left and right partisans fight over the political capital of feminism, the extreme right and fundamentalists met these days in the Senate in an event organized by the Political Values ​​Network. When these anti-gender actors say they oppose “gender ideology,” they often do not distinguish between women’s rights or sexual dissidence and can attack everyone equally. This ultra ecosystem has proven to be a powerful political engine that helps encourage anti-feminist politicians in much of the world: from the United States to Europe, including Brazil and Argentina. And that it has important material consequences in the lives of women, of sexual dissidence, but in reality of everyone, since its political projects are destined to reaffirm class, race and gender hierarchies. We should not forget that the appeal to biologicalism has always been functional to the naturalization of inequality.

Because the extreme right clearly identifies gender issues as fundamental in maintaining existing social structures. The construction of the masculine and the feminine, along with mandatory heterosexuality and the normative family model, are intertwined with racial and colonial systems to configure a certain reproductive and gender order. This naturalization of differences – which serves to legitimize an entire system of inequality – is deeply inscribed in our perception of reality and is one of the pillars that sustains it. Autonomous feminist struggles, trans rebellions and sexual dissidence challenge this framework by questioning the roles assigned in social reproduction and show that inequalities are neither natural nor divine, but contingent and, therefore, can be changed. As Judith Butler saysthe essential thing today is to realize that “gender politics is operating in the midst of war politics; of the new nationalisms; of racism and the new immigration policy; and the question of refugees.” Thus, a movement capable of confronting current political conditions “would involve men and women and other people of all sexes, because the most important thing would not be ‘our identities’, but the world that we try to make, undo and remake together.” .

In its last federal congress, the PSOE has declared the acronym Q – of – banished from its documents. queer– and the + –which includes other identities– in the LGTBIQ+ acronym. It has also approved an amendment aimed at limiting participation in women’s sports to “people with a female biological sex”….