“The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions – to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide – it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which is ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap.” –Michel Foucault, “Discipline And Punish: The Birth of the Prison”
This being Pride month, I thought of gathering my thoughts on a theme that has recently become quite closely-linked with queer politics–the politics of visibility.
Indeed, we even have an official date to celebrate international transgender day of visibility–March 31. Around this time, I’ve witnessed several trans friends on Facebook change their profile pictures and add a special frame to mark the occasion.
We should be familiar with the arguments in favour of the politics of visibility–for any marginalised community to be better integrated into society, they must be made more ‘visible’. As more and more people from dominant groups become familiar with queer persons–their histories, their bodies, their lives—they learn to see that there is very little that separates them. And thus queer people are granted the status of ‘normal’ in their eyes and integrated into the folds of society. Sounds great, right?
The Paradox Of Queer Visibility
In an interview about visibility and surveillance, gender non-conforming poet and performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon says the following, “People think that trans visibility means trans justice – that making trans people visible is the goal. But, there’s also a really disturbing part to this that I’m trying to work through – the sinister forms of visibility. And that, people are just really not… receptive to. I have to do a lot of provocation and pushing, to be like, do you know what it’s like to feel surveilled every moment of your life? To have people pick apart your body offline and online, to constantly be stared at? Do you realize the psychological condition that that forces on you?”
Indeed, as Foucault’s metaphor of the panopticon demonstrates, the prisoners are always under the watchful gaze of the warden, regardless of whether the warden is watching or not. This leads to an internalisation of the gaze on the part of the prisoners and self-surveillance and self-discipline.
Let’s take the concept of ‘passing’ for instance. Trans people are said to ‘pass’ if they can successfully pull off what society imagines the gender they identify with looks like. But a more sinister portrait emerges here:
- Trans people are always under the gaze of society and to an extent, they need to internalise the gaze themselves to be able to mingle with society.
- Why do trans people need to ‘pass’ in the first place? And what happens to those who don’t pass?
In 2017, 28 trans people were murdered in the US. A year later, there’s been little improvement. Already, there have been 12 reported deaths of trans people in the US. In India, we don’t even have any proper mechanism in place to keep a track of the violence meted out to trans people. We already know that a large number of trans people are only allowed to exist on the margins of society in India. But even then, there were several incidents of violence against trans people this year, though they rarely made their way to mainstream news channels and papers.
For instance, on June 6, a gay man was harassed in Delhi for being seen with a trans friend. On May 26, a group of trans women were attacked by a mob who mistook them for child abductors based on a fake WhatsApp forward. One of them did not survive the incident. Once again in May, a 22-year-old trans man named Paachu was driven to suicide thanks to medical gatekeeping on the part of his doctors.
The stories are endless. The lesson is simple. On the one hand, there is an incitement on the part of society and several well-wishers for queer people to come forward so that they can be integrated into society’s fold. But on the other hand, queer visibility is often met with brutal violence.
While at times this violence is naked and visible, this is not always the case. Take gatekeeping for instance. We are asked to confess the darkest of truths to our therapists and psychiatrists, but in return for our vulnerability, we are often met with invalidation and gatekeeping.
Then there is the constant self-surveillance one must undergo to render oneself legitimate in the eyes of society–a process that is nothing short of intense psychological torture. As Vaid-Menon points out, “The most lethal part of the human body is the eye, not the fist.”
Queer Resistance And Normalisation
“Queer is a total rejection of the regime of the Normal.” – Mary Nardini Gang, “Towards the Queerest Insurrection”
Perhaps it is time to remember that ‘queer’ is a contentious term. While for some it serves as an apolitical identity moniker, queer is also used to denote a certain kind of political orientation, rooted in opposing what is considered ‘the normal’.
In an interview given in 1981 on the themes of homosexuality and friendship, Michel Foucault says, “I think that’s what makes homosexuality “disturbing”: the homosexual mode of life, much more than the sexual act itself. To imagine a sexual act that doesn’t conform to law or nature is not what disturbs people. But that individuals are beginning to love one another-there’s the problem.”
A new mode of life also implies new modes of affective relationships between people. Relationships that are not a mere mimicry of what is considered ‘normal’–and indeed, relationships that are much more difficult for the state to appropriate within its apparatus of intelligibility.
Foucault continues, “Institutional codes can’t validate these relations with multiple intensities, variable colors, imperceptible movements and changing forms. These relations short-circuit it and introduce love where there’s supposed to be only law, rule, or habit.”
The politics of visibility are ultimately geared towards seeking legitimacy in the eyes of the State. But can the State approve of that which is inherently opposed to it in concept without deforming it and robbing it of all its subversive potential?
Just like the feminist movement was appropriated by its most conservative and non-threatening elements, it is forgotten today that Pride began as a riot at the forefront of which were trans women of colour like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.
Today, the gay identity has become a harmless marketable commodity and a mere mimicry of heteronormative relations. This is the assimilating power of the state.
As Mary Nardini Gang state: “Assimilationists want nothing less than to construct the homosexual as normal – white, monogamous, wealthy, 2.5 children, SUVs with a white picket fence.”
The question of queer visibility cannot be seen in isolation to the question of assimilationist politics. For a long time now, queer people have had to come together as a community and forge their own friendships outside the confines of their homes and families, in ways that defy the idea of the ‘normal’.
If an end to violence towards queer people is what we seek, perhaps instead of placing the onus on them to become more ‘normal’, the onus should be on the very legitimacy of what constitutes this ‘normal’ in the first place.