Israel/Palestine and the Queer International by Sarah Schulman

It is impossible to seriously address sexual and intimate partner violence within communities of color without addressing those larger structures.Īs we struggle for freedom, justice, and equality together, we can work to liberate our own minds by “queering our politics”: shifting our thinking away from seeing the world through binaries: white supremacy, heterosexism, and other forms of oppression operate by defining one right and “normal” way of being (straight, cisgender, white, male, Christian, able-bodied, etc.) contrasted with everyone else, who is “Othered.” The forced assignment of people as either male or female (sex), or either man or woman (gender), are examples of these oppressive binaries, which are scientifically ungrounded. In cases of settler-colonialism, such as Palestine and Turtle Island (present North America), Indigenous women, and queer, trans, and gender non-conforming folks-and especially those at the intersections of those identities-bear the brunt of the nexus of these systems of oppression. Oppression becomes compounded because state violence-including militarism, occupation, the proliferation of prisons, and economic neocolonialism-is both gendered and racialized. One cannot advocate for queer and trans people in the US while supporting Israel’s daily aggression against queer and trans Palestinians, whose oppression is compounded by multiple marginalized identities.

– Ghaith Hilal, AlQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian SocietyĪll systems of oppression reinforce one another, and none can be fought in isolation. It’s important to target the connections of these oppressive forces.” “You cannot have queer liberation while apartheid, patriarchy, capitalism and other oppressions exist.

Israel/Palestine and the Queer International by Sarah Schulman