Queercore: How to Punk A Revolution is an oral history about the Queercore punk scene and it’s creation. Below are a series of quotes about the assimilation of the gay rights movement into the mainstream that I thought were interesting.

The goal of gay liberation was to expand what is possible for a human being, to open up the society and make all different ways of living, and all different ways of being sexual and being in a relationship and being in a community, accessible and possible for all people. Eventually this movement, as the country and the world became more reactionary, was replaced by a gay rights movement. And that’s an entirely different idea. It’s not about social transformation; it’s about gay people fitting into already-existing social concepts of what is acceptable. So what we have now is that instead of gay people, or queer people, changing the world, the world has changed us. Now we become acceptable to the degree that we resemble the dominant culture.
When Barack Obama says that we should respect gay people because we should respect love, what he’s talking about is gay marriage and gay family structure, which is what love means to him. He is not talking about sexual liberation at all, and he’s not talking about even the basics of antidiscrimination laws. He’s talking about us fitting exactly into his concept of how a citizen should behave. Herbert Marcuse called that repressive tolerance-when you’re tolerated, which keeps you in a position of subservience and inferiority at the will and whim of the dominant group. And this is being touted, hours after Obama’s speech, as this revolutionary concept that shows that gay people have arrived. But actually it shows that we’re in terrible trouble. Because on our own, in the places where we are different from dominant culture, there’s no acceptance at all.

Sarah Schulman (writer)

Tom Jennings had a giant banner up in his house at 666 Illinois in San Francisco that said No Assimilation Ever. Now… TV shows like Will & Grace and Glee are all about, Look how cute we are. We’re gay-don’t you love us? We’re so cute. If God hates fags, why are we so cute? Which is one way-and it’s a very important way-to bring visibility and awareness about queers, to be like, Look, we’re charming. We’re cute. We’re just like you. Look how adorable we are and how sexy.
But we were like, Yeah, we’re queer; you hate us, right? Yeah, we’re that. We’re that thing you hate. And people… I guess it’s the same reason you pay money to go on a rollercoaster, because it’s scary-we pay to be scared. And people wanted that. Sometimes you want Will & Grace, sometimes you want Tribe 8. Like we always say, there’s room for Melissa Etheridge and there’s room for Tribe 8, but you need both. You come at the problem from all directions, y’know; from the mellifluous sounds of Melissa Etheridge, singing about climbing through some babe’s window, to us being like, Suck my dick, motherfucker! You need both.

Lynn Breedlove (member of Tribe 8)

I always talk about the luxury of normality. The first time I experienced the luxury of normality was in the late ’90s, when I went to a Radical Faerie gathering. I was not well known to the Radical Faeries-I hadn’t starred on Broadway, hadn’t been nominated for a Tony, hadn’t played Carnegie Hall, this was before all of that. So I went to a Faerie sanctuary, it was my first night there, and I put on this gold lamé dress to go to dinner. And as I was walking through the camp, there were all these people dressed in amazing, outlandish, gorgeous ways, and nobody batted an eye when I walked past. I was used to being stared at, my whole life-either the object of misogynistic comments or homophobic comments, sometimes twice in ten minutes, by different people who perceived me in different ways. No one batted an eye, and I was so shocked, because I had never been invisible before. I burst into tears-it was such a profound thing, to understand what it’s like for most people to just walk down the street and not cause a stir.
So I understand the desire to assimilate. I understand the desire to be a man who lives with your husband and your children in a suburban neighborhood. It’s a comfortable, safe lifestyle, and I wouldn’t begrudge anyone a comfortable, safe lifestyle. I mean, I would like to have a comfortable, safe lifestyle myself; and maybe someday I will be more invisible. I think as I get older and I read more as a sort of well-off, middle-aged white woman, I am more invisible, which I like. But that doesn’t change people’s reactions to finding out my truth, and for me, my truth is the most important thing.
And that has nothing to do with assimilation or queer politics; it’s a demand that I put on myself to be honest, and to grow, and to be able to change, and to not be stuck in an idea that someone else has of me-whether it’s my parents, or a current lover, or what I think a future lover might want from me, or my public, as an artist. So I think the idea of being assimilationist is vilified unfairly. But I also don’t think that demanding a space to be yourself should be considered a threat to anybody. I call it, like, expanding the circle of normality.

Justin Vivian Bond (actor/singer)

Nothing irks me more than seeing-like, my Wikipedia page says American songwriter. I was never an American songwriter! I want to be known as the Jewish lesbian folk singer. I want to say the word Jewish; I want to say the word lesbian; I want to be known as a dyke the minute I walk out the door, every single day. Because I feel like being myself is the most political thing I can do.

Phranc (Jewish lesbian folk singer)

From a different chapter, but worth mentioning.

By its very nature, queercore is a herd of cats. People who call themselves queer tend to be aggressively individualistic, y’know? I don’t want to be male or female. Why do I have to fit in your paradigm? I want to be who I am, and that might be some of both or neither or something else at any given moment. My gender, my body, my expression is mine to define. But that’s the thing; for all the differences, there is that unifying idea, that unifying unmet need. None of us can be that or do that alone, because it leaves us too isolated, which leaves too many of us vulnerable-which leaves too many of us dead at the hands of haters. So we come together. Not just despite but because of our differences, because together we can do things that we can’t do alone.

Deke Nihilson (co-creator of Homocore zine)