Following is the text of the editorial in the last 1998 issue of Queensland's Brother Sister magazine commenting on an action reported in Green Left Weekly #341. It is accompanied by a response from Resistance.
Brother Sister editorial
The recent furore over Lidia Box's performance at the Wickham Hotel and the ensuing protest highlights some interesting issues for us as a community.
Incidents and reactions like these need to be put in context and have those contexts analysed for their validity and importance and while racism and sexism need to be addressed in whatever form they take, addressing these issues needs to be balanced with a sense of realism that protects against pointless acts of censorship.
This matter speaks particularly of the misguided and patronising approach to our community the Left have traditionally pursued. The reporting of the story in the Green Left Weekly was disgracefully simplistic and incorrect and why was Resistance involved in the protest anyway? There is something particularly audacious about straight people and straight organisations criticising queer culture, a culture they are largely ignorant of and can not expect to have an appreciation of.
Further let's consider what may really be motivating this reaction. It would seem it would not be a genuine concern about racism and sexism, because anyone who knows our community at all knows it is largely an example against prejudice and that there is dramatically less bigotry within it compared to the rest of society. Even with a moment's analysis one would see that the source of racism and sexism in Australia is not the queer community, especially not someone as marginalised (even within our community) as drag queens.
What's more, where were Resistance and Green Left Weekly a month ago when our community was being slandered in State Parliament and any chance of us being treated equally to heterosexuals flushed away yet again? Rather than picketing one of the few safe places we have and disrupting our entertainment over such a trivial matter, perhaps the Left should consider demonstrating more than a tokenistic and indifferent approach to our oppression.
Most people in our community would view Ms Box's jokes (however tasteless) with the sense of humour appropriate to the context in which they occurred and would afford this whole matter the (very little) importance it deserves. Of far greater importance to us is our rights and in our venues, the ongoing invasion of straight people constantly compromising the integrity of our culture. It is safe to assume that most of those at the Wickham that night found Ms Box's comments to a woman in the crowd vastly less offensive than the uninvited groping of gay men that the very same woman was engaged in all night.
Plus, large sections of the Left have spent recent months expelling transgenders from their women's organisations. The Left should look at their own record on our issues before they start attacking us.
Resistance: confronting and overcoming divisions
By Zanny Begg, Andy Gianniotis and Sean Healy
On November 6, a group of activists participated in a protest at the Wickham Hotel over a performance by drag queen Lidia Box. The protest was organised by Griffith University co-education officer Kate Carr because of comments made by Box which denigrated lesbians, women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The protest was supported by Resistance members and other activists.
The Brother Sister editorial which condemned the protest (see above) singled out Resistance's participation and Green Left Weekly's coverage of the action in an attempt at red-baiting.
The most substantive point it made was the claim that Resistance is a "straight" organisation and that the left has a "tokenistic and indifferent" approach to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender oppression.
These allegations are untrue. Resistance is not a "straight" organisation: it neither is made up of all "straight" individuals nor advocates a particular sexuality for its members or anyone else.
Furthermore, Resistance has a long history of involvement in the struggle against homophobia — from the first Mardi Gras demonstrations in the 1970s to the democratic rights campaigns in the 1980s, and the sex diary campaign, Pride marches and campaigns for the establishment of queer rooms on campuses in the 1990s.
It is incorrect for Brother Sister to insinuate that Resistance has campaigned against the participation of transgender women in feminist organisations. Resistance has been at the forefront of the campaign to include transgendered women in the National Organisation of Women Students Australia (NOWSA) conference and in women's rooms on campuses.
The central issue raised by both the protest and the Brother Sister editorial is how to counter prejudices within and between oppressed groups.
It is incorrect for Brother Sister to claim that sexism and racism are not an issue within "queer culture": anyone who spends a Friday night at the Wickham can attest to its largely white, male patronage, and Box's performance illustrates the sexist and racist assumptions that exist.
But it is correct for Brother Sister to point out that the queer "community" is not the source of sexism and racism. Racism and sexism are caused by the system which profits from the super-exploited labour of non-English-speaking migrants, the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the unpaid labour of women in the home. It is also this system which perpetuates homophobia.
Resistance believes that the liberation of any oppressed group can be achieved only by a mass movement of those who suffer that oppression fighting for equality.
Capitalist ideology will attempt to divide us against each other — male worker against female worker, black against white, straight against gay. It is in the interests of all oppressed groups to overcome these divisions and develop bonds of solidarity between oppressed groups in our common struggle for liberation.
Resistance believes it was in this spirit that the protest was organised and we fully support such intentions.
We do not think it was the intention of the protest to censor Lidia Box. Rather, it was to challenge sexism and racism. However, we do acknowledge that the way the protest was organised (occupying the same stage as Box) left it open to such an interpretation.
Resistance does not believe censorship has ever been a useful way of campaigning against sexist, racist or homophobic ideas. Instead, what is needed is a discussion about how progressive campaigners can link their activities to build a movement strong enough to successfully challenge these prejudices.
Contrary to Brother Sister's assertions, the real record of Resistance has been to challenge sexist, racist and homophobic ideas wherever they are expressed, and to involve people in a struggle against the system that perpetuates them.