WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #340 - Antipatriarchy, Pride Marches: Pride by Night, Pride by Day (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 While marriage for all is celebrating its tenth anniversary, cis

lesbians have access to PMA, rainbow flags are painted on our pedestrian
crossings, some consider that LGBTI struggles no longer have place to
be. Really? ---- Like every year, the month of pride opens a period when
intra-community LGBTI life is particularly effervescent : festive
events, massive demonstrations (on the scale of the LGBTI population)
and obviously a large wave of pink- wahsing, a strategy that consists,
for companies, in giving themselves an " LGBT-friendly " image with
great rainbow flags.

However, the festive atmosphere and the grim recovery of the "
progressive " fringe of employers do not make us forget the lamentable
state of the situation of LGBTI people in France and abroad : incomplete
PMA, discrimination in employment and to housing, street attacks,
harassment, intra-family violence... All this against the backdrop of a
broad transphobic offensive. There is therefore no shortage of reasons
to revolt for LGBTI people.

2023: where are the prides?
Pride marches are generally organized by depoliticized and
depoliticizing collectives whose sole purpose is to produce festive
events. Sometimes they are even directly managed by social democratic
town halls... With all that entails: members of the police in the
service of order, impossibility of making social slogans heard,
prohibition of trade unions and political organizations. However, they
remain events that largely attract and bring together a large LGBTI
audience, many of whom have simply come to celebrate their pride.

Faced with this observation, part of the organized and politicized LGBTI
community decided for about a decade in France to organize " radical "
prides or alternative " nights  prides", thought of as demonstrations
against the current of pride marches liberalized areas where LGBTI
people just come to dance.

Over the years, these radical prides have made it possible to strengthen
the links between the autonomous feminist movement and intra-community
LGBTI groups. They have also helped to forge links, until now almost
non-existent, between a fringe of the radical anti-racist movement and
specific LGBTI groups.

However, if these positive effects cannot be taken away from them, they
have always been doomed to marginality. Animated by ultra-radical
slogans above ground and organized as forms of counter-rally, they are
condemned to attract only a tiny part of the anti-patriarchal militant
milieu, critical of bourgeois recoveries and the loss of combativeness
of the official prides. A similar strategy consisted in forming radical
processions within the prides with die-hard and ostracizing slogans. It
has also had the unfortunate consequence of reinforcing the barrier
between combative LGBTI activists and non-politicized protesters.

Have a strategy
It would be unthinkable for libertarian communists, as activists aware
of the need to bring down the system of patriarchal domination, not to
intervene on LGBTI issues. The immediate improvements to LGBTI living
and working conditions to be won are many, and these gatherings provide
opportunities to champion the revolutionary necessity for large swaths
of the oppressed.

But, to do this, we should be able to determine revolutionary objectives
in the parades, beyond the moral arguments. And, on the basis of our
desire to convince as many of the exploited as possible of the
revolutionary hypothesis, we should also bring out class consciousness
and defend social slogans: progress for the proletariat is often
progress for LGBTI workers.

Criticism of liberalism, whether right-wing or radical, is necessary but
not enough, and that is why it is vital to develop proposals in line
with the needs of LGBTI people mobilized to get into (social) movement.
beyond a walk every year.

Creating and defending class unity should also go through the
intensification of ties with the autonomous feminist movement [1]and
obviously with the trade union and associative movement [2]of struggle.
LGBTI people should join women's struggles to overthrow patriarchy, and
to defend their rights today as well as to destroy the capitalist
society that doubly oppresses them. This fight could also be done in
connection with combat unionism.

Unity against fascism
However, these alliances cannot be made at any price and also require
the specificities of LGBTI struggles to be taken into account by these
organizations. And this evolution cannot be done by the autonomous
organization of LGBTI within them.

Based on the determined goals, the revolutionaries should reach as
widely as possible. We would have to be audible while working for unity
with sometimes recalcitrant militant forces. It is always possible to
ensure a presence in the radical prides for their positive aspects, but
the main aspect of the intervention of the revolutionaries should be
where the movement is massive. The construction of processions of
struggle (and not " radicals ") in the official pride marches should be
considered and studied in unitary frameworks combining the forces of
trade unions and associations of struggle, combative political
organizations and the autonomous feminist movement.

In all cases, whether radical or liberal, the pride marches have in
common that they are a prime target for fascists, for whom violence
against LGBTI people represents the spearhead of their patriarchal
ideology. Given that in their eyes, sexual and gender minorities embody
a civilizational danger, we can expect a multiplication of physical
attacks on prides or on LGBTI community places[3]in the months and years
to come.

To defend ourselves from homophobes, we know that we cannot count on a
police force that is content to violently disperse the aggressors as
well as the attacked.

This is why the unification of methods, adapted to local contexts, to
form a combative, unitary and class LGBTI movement should be a priority
in the anti-patriarchal struggle.

Lou (UCL Grenoble)

To validate

[1]That is to say "autonomous" from political organizations and trade
unions. In France it is mainly represented by the feminist coordination.

[2]We are thinking of concrete solidarity associations such as family
planning or the right to housing (DAL).

[3]See the info bulletin D gender D sexuality, spring-summer 2023 from
the Gender and Sexuality commission of Solidaires for an inventory of
past attacks.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Marches-des-fiertes-Pride-de-nuit-Pride-de-jour
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