The University of Ottawa’s NDP campus club held a “Leftist Lit” event to honour LGBTQ pride month which featured literature discussing furries, kinks as well as gender ideology and police abolitionism, True North has learned.
The readings also criticized advocating for gay marriage, and said families are a “way to advance capitalism.”
“We will be having a Pride themed Leftist Lit in honour of June being Pride Month,” notes the description for the June 12 event. “We will be reading three short chapters from ‘Against Equality: Queer Revolution Not Mere Inclusion’, a collection of letters and essays edited by Ryan Conrad.”
The three chapters read were titled “Open Letter to LGBT Leaders Who Are Pushing Marriage Equality”, “Against Equality, Against Marriage: An Introduction” and “Their Laws Will Never Make Us Safer.”
The first reading, “Open Letter to LGBT Leaders Who Are Pushing Marriage Equality” notes that “Looking into the community of people who base their lives on sexuality and gender, there’s a lot of door-opening to do.”
“Beyond L, G, B and T, there’s also Q for queer and Q for questioning. There’s an S for sadomasochists, an I for intersex, an F for feminists, and another F for furries,” reads the literature. “Our community is additionally composed of sex educators, sex workers, adult entertainers, pornographers, men who have sex with men, women who have sex with women, and asexuals who have sex in whatever manner they define their asexuality.”
“You want to create some real change? Make room for genderqueers, polyamorists, radical faeries, butches, femmes, drag queens, drag king, and other dragf**k royalty too fabulous to describe in this short letter.”
The literature also claims that “marriage equality is an incorrect priority for the LGBTQetc communities,” noting that “when lesbian and gay community leaders whip up the community to fight for the right to marry, it’s a further expression of America’s institutionalized greed in that it benefits only its demographic constituency.”
“Marriage is a privileging institution. It has privileged, and continues to privilege people along lines of not only religion, sexuality and gender, but also along the oppressive vectors of race, class, age, looks, ability, citizenship, family status, and language,” the literature claims.
“Lesbian and gay leaders must cease being self-obssessed and take into account the very real damage that’s perpetrated on people who are more than simply lesbian women and/or gay men, more than bisexual or transgender even.”
The second reading, titled “Against Equality, Against Marriage: An Introduction” also criticizes marriage.
“(Marriage) remains the neoliberal state’s most efficient way to corral the family as a source of revenue, and to place upon it the ultimate responsibility for guaranteeing basic benefits,” claims the literature.
“In short, the family is the best way to advance capitalism, as the base unit through which capitalism distributes benifits our reliance on the marital family structure, emphasized and valorized by the push for gay marriage, we allow the state to mandate that only some relationships and some forms of social networks count.”
The third reading called “Their Laws Will Never Make Us Safer” offers an abolitionist critique of prosecuting hate crimes.
“We are told by gay and lesbian rights organizations that passing (hate crime) legislation is the best way to respond to the ongoing violence we face that we need to make the state and the public care about our victimization and show they care by increasing surveillance of and punishment for homophobic and transphobic attacks,” says the reading.
“Hate crime laws are part of the larger promise of criminal punishment systems to keep us safe and resolve our conflicts.”
“This is an appealing promise in a society wracked by gun violence and sexual violence. In a heavily armed, militaristic, misogynist, and racist society, people are justifiably scared of violence, and that fear is cultivated by a constant feed of television shows portraying horrifying violence and brave police and prosecutors who put serial rapists and murderers in prison.”
The literature also claims that “jails and prisons are not full of dangerous people, they are full of people of color, poor people, and people with disabilities,” and that “the most dangerous people, the people who violently destroy and end the most lives, are still on the outside – they are the people running banks, governments, and courtrooms, and they are the people wearing military and police uniforms.”
The NDP club touched on the concept of “homonationalism,” defined as “the favorable association between a nationalist ideology and LGBT people or their rights.”
The uOttawa NDP club says its mission is “to educate and organize students and young people into a community of progressives in order to promote the election of New Democratic governments across Canada.”
“Our goal is to transform our state, society, and economy along democratic socialist and social democratic lines and promote progressive politics across Canada.”
True North reached out to the campus club to ask how far-left literature on furries and kinks contributes to fulfilling their mission, but they did not respond in time for publication.
