Queer Country Wisdom No. 5: Working-Class Queers are NOT Happy (or Shouldn't Be)
If you force some Trumper to use our preferred pronouns BUT we still have nightmares about losing our homes, being bankrupted by medical bills, etc...who's really won?
Hey Queer Country Wisdom,
As a gay working-class Vermonter, I feel torn between supporting candidates who represent my queer identity and those who seem to ACTUALLY care about the struggles us working-class people have…and I’m not sure what to do about it. Like, is Bernie Sanders the only person in the DNC that doesn’t expect me to choose what’s more important - being gay, or being able to afford groceries?
Honestly, this election broke my heart…and not just because Trump won. It really broke me because working-class people lost (even though a lot of them seem to think they won). My identity as a gay person is important to me…but what’s the point of the democrats focusing on identity if it doesn’t change the conditions I’m living in? And what’s the point of having people (begrudgingly) use my preferred pronouns if I have to live with nightmares about losing my house, going bankrupt if I break my arm, not being able to afford clothes for my kids, etc…all while Elon Musk has enough money to colonize mars? I work too hard for this shit.
I don’t want to feel smug or superior - I just want to fucking WIN. I want to feel secure. I want to imagine that I might be able to retire someday. I want to be able to afford groceries at the co-op instead of buying “processed cheese product”. Some Trumper in Wheelock can call me “he” all he wants - eight days a week, I could NOT care less about his opinion of me. The people I care about use my preferred pronouns and that’s what matters to me…along with being able to pay my bills and sleep at night.
This CAN’T be as good as it gets. Please tell me this isn’t as good as it gets? If identity politics divides us and new, ever-more-specific groups of people pop up to demand righteous recognition every year (me previously among them)…but we all live tenuous lives while the rich get richer…have we really won? I’d take working-class solidarity over this shit any day.
So…what do we do? How do I figure out where to put my energy and my hope, especially when both sides disappoint and third-party options are hardly an option in national elections?
Thanks. Ugh.
—Fed Up in the Fields
Hey Fed Up,
I feel you, my friend. Right now, a lot of us are stuck in a no-man’s land between leaders who represent the immutable aspects of who we are (identity) and those who actually seem to get what we’re going through (working-class struggle). As you pointed out, Bernie seems to be one of the only legislators who gets it (“it” being the need for a working-class revolution that transcends party lines, because anything else makes the billionaires smile).
For too long, it feels like we’ve been forced to choose between championing our lived identities or championing the issues we’re facing every day—putting food on the table, paying bills, keeping our towns afloat when more tax revenue is clamored for every year. Biden did a lot for the working class, even if his PR team did a terrible job of helping him take credit for it in the eyes of swing and centrist voters. And Kamala would have certainly done more for the economic prosperity of the working class than Trump will. And for the record, I don’t totally agree with Bernie’s statement that the Democratic Party “abandoned working-class people” and that’s why the left lost. There’s a seed of truth there, but the full story lies in the heart of your question: why do we have to choose between identity and prosperity, between culture and economics?
It’s because the Democratic Party sort of did culturally abandon the working class…and they did it by ramrod-ing identity politics down the throats of people who were simultaneously being primed for divisive thinking by the American right. Those folks have been taught to believe that we hate them simply for who they are (but unfortunately, they don’t see the irony in that). And sadly, the Establishment Left™️as a whole has done little to disabuse those folks of that belief. In this way, politically, the Establishment Left™️ has chosen to sacrifice very possible, very tangible working-class prosperity for merely-perceived cultural and intellectual superiority. I don’t know about you, but feeling culturally and morally superior does me no good if I can’t keep the lights on, can’t feed myself, can’t afford medicine. Don’t get me wrong - obviously, I want folks on every point of the political spectrum to acknowledge that you and I have a right to safely exist, love who we want, etc etc. But cultural nourishment is not enough - we need actual food. We need working-class prosperity. And whether the Establishment Left™️ likes it or not, aloof derision and redneck-bashing isn’t a strategy - unless the goal is to get right-wing working-class folks to dig their heels in further. We need a better strategy - one that gives us an actual win instead of just superior feelings. And I don’t know about you but right now, I don’t feel very superior. The only thing that’s going to make me feel better is a strategy that sets ego aside and reunites the working class - even if it means me personally doing the tedious emotional labor of being the token queer friend to some lady who votes blue for the first time ever in 2028.
Somewhere on Yale’s campus, a queer Gender Studies Ph.D. student smoking a clove cigarette and drinking natty wine while reading The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory just felt a shiver run down their spine. But this doesn’t have to be the case; that Ph.D. student is just as marginalized by their academic working & wage conditions as the textile factory worker in rural north Georgia is by her working & wage conditions. But for some reason, neither of them feels like that commonality is as important as the fact that one of them goes to kundalini yoga on Sundays while the other goes to church. But it is. Those two characters have more in common with each other than either of them will ever have in common with Donald Trump, Elon Musk, etc.
But someone - some political movement - has to make them see it.
The truth is, solidarity and identity don’t have to be at odds, even if national politics tries to make them look that way.
In Vermont, where so many of us know each other personally, we see how people can embrace who they are while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with neighbors who vote differently. Hell, one of my favorite neighbors is a former Republican state legislator who co-sponsored the bill to legalize recreational weed. (He makes great apple cider and has some damn good stories, too.) But nationally, Americans keep getting sold this idea that we have to pick between our queer selves, our working-class selves, our rural selves—as if we can’t be all of those things at once. That’s just not true. Heck, we can’t be anything else! Vermont is proof of that. Sure, there’s that one asshole in St. Johnsbury that flies a “Fuck Your Feelings” flag from the trailer hitch of his coal-rolling pickup truck that’s never seen a single gahtdamn day of actual work for farm or forest…but that guy is an anomaly. And I’ve sat next to guys like that in dive bars, drinking domestic draft beer, shooting the breeze about hunting season or a great barn rebuild someone is doing up the road. Even they are not irredeemable people, as long as they get to know you-you before you start foregrounding queer-you or making them feel stupid for one reason or another. I know, I know - it shouldn’t matter. But it does. And like you, I don’t just want to feel righteous - I want to WIN.
One of the most powerful things about being a queer working-class Vermonter is that we are living proof of the intersection between identity and class issues. People might look at us and think that “identity politics” only means rainbows and parades…but here, it means trying to live authentically while working our asses off (likely at more than one job), dealing with rural isolation, shoveling snow, and making ends meet - just like anyone else. If a politician can’t understand that my queerness and my class struggles are equally important to me, they’re missing the point.
So how do we use our votes, time, and voices? Let’s insist that our politicians - from the bottom of the ballot to the top - understand their mandate: give us prosperity now, and peace will follow. I’m not suggesting that anyone go shake hands with a Proud Boy. What I AM suggesting is that economically prosperous people with access to quality education, dignified housing, and affordable healthcare simply do not become Nazis…unless they’re a member of the über-wealthy looking for peons to control. We have to address this reality urgently because any other strategy - including and perhaps especially identity politics - is the equivalent of mopping water up from your kitchen floor before fixing the pipe that’s sprung a leak.
So, regarding leaders who run on identity platforms, we need them to understand what rural life is actually like, what working-class struggle is actually like…and then we need them to make real economic policy moves for us. Optics will not do. And regarding leaders who claim to speak for the working class, we need them to see, believe, and accept that the working class includes queer folks, women, and people of color. It’s both/and, not either/or.
So, the next time you vote, think about who’s showing up for you and your community. Who’s talking about workers’ rights and LGBTQ rights as linked issues? And who’s putting boots on the ground and money where their mouth is? Those are the people worth your support because ultimately, we shouldn’t have to choose between standing up for our community or standing up for who we are. It’s all connected. We’re all connected. Some folks have forgotten that. We need to help them remember, for all our sakes.
Hang in there, Fed Up. You’re not alone in this frustration and every time you share your voice, you’re helping people see that we’re more than a one-dimensional box to check in someone’s campaign speech. So say we all.
Yours in solidarity,
Jack
Yes. They always trick us into hating each other when we all should be on the same side against the oligarchs and power-hungry who are stomping on us all.