R

RACISM — Fear of, or contempt for, people of color. Behavior based on those feelings. A system of oppression in which people of color are marginalized and subject to violence.

Racism is not necessarily overt. It is also an implicit bias, and assumes that whiteness is the default or raceless.

Race emerged as a “scientific” category around the late 18th century. Race analysis must be intrinsic to any decent queer theory because all queers are racialized, as white, non-white, people of color, Black, brown, and other terms which may or may not reflect a “truth” about their identity (and which certainly don’t reflect a truth about their biology). Further, Black feminists were the first to highlight that there aren’t single, stable categories of identity which are separate from others, and this analysis is a central aspect of queer theory. Critical race theory and decolonial theory are extremely compatible with queer theory.

Gender is also extremely racialized. Whiteness holds the hegemonic norms on gender: rational, strong, successful white men; and pure, beautiful, nurturing, innocent white women. Black men are stereotyped as hyper-masculine, aggressive, and dangerous; Black women as hyper-sexual and angry. East Asian men are assumed to be effeminate and non-sexual, and East Asian women are assumed to be submissive and docile. All people of color are subject to racialized gender stereotypes.

Queerness generally is whitewashed, and it’s assumed that people of color are straight and cis, because overwhelmingly the representation we see of queer people is white. People of color are also assumed to be more homophobic than white people, because whiteness is “progressive” and “liberal” in contrast to the “backwardness” and “incivility” unfairly attributed to people of color. Religion is a relevant factor here because religion is racialized too; for example, despite all relying on the same texts, Islam is assumed to be more queerphobic than Christianity, because Islam is associated with people of color and Christianity with whiteness.

Like all systems of oppression, racism intersects with other marginalizations: classism, agism, ableism, misogyny, queerphobia, transphobia, and fatphobia.

see also: CULTURAL APPROPRIATION; AAVE; ANTI-BLACK RACISM; FASCISM; VIOLENCE; WHITEWASHING; ISLAMOPHOBIA; ANTI-SEMITISM; OPPRESSION

RAINBOW FLAG — The iconic rainbow flag has been a symbol of the LGBT+ movement since its creation in 1978 by artist Gilbert Baker.

The rainbow flag is an instantly recognizable symbol for LGBT+ and queer people to rally around. It is also flown by allies to show their support for LGBT+ people and LGBT+ rights.

Depending on its context, the rainbow flag can be a very contentious, politically charged symbol, or a tepid, palatable symbol of “love” stripped of its political meaning and history. The White House lit up with the rainbow colors to celebrate the legalization of same-sex marriage in the US in 2015 (I’ll let the reader decide if this falls into the former category or the latter, or both).

Baker was living in San Francisco and an active part of the gay community, and designed the flag at the request of Harvey Milk and other community members who wanted a symbol for the LGBT+ movement. Part of Baker’s inspiration for the rainbow design was the story of Noah’s ark, where God sent the rainbow to show that the flood was over.

In 2017, a version of the rainbow flag was used in Philadelphia. It included one black and one brown stripe at the top, to highlight people of color in the LGBT+ community. It has since gained traction elsewhere, such as on Lena Waithe’s 2014 Met Gala rainbow flag cape. There are many additional flags since Baker’s first rainbow flag, but the one for Black and brown people is the one everyone gets mad about, in a perfect display of the racism and anti-Blackness still rampant in LGBT+ spaces.

see also: PRIDE; ACTIVISM; PINKWASHING

RAPE CULTURE — The systemic normalization of rape, the encouragement of people to rape, and the dismissal of survivors of rape.

Queer and trans people are more likely to be targeted for rape, sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and familial abuse.

Rape culture makes survivors feel doubt, guilt, and fear about their experiences and the idea of disclosing or reporting. This is made even more difficult because rapists and abusers are afforded more protections than survivors, both socially and legally.

The best immediate intervention anyone can take to interrupt rape culture is to believe survivors.

see also: CONSENT; PATRIARCHY; POLICE (n.); SURVIVOR; TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE

REAL-LIFE EXPERIENCE TEST (RLE) — A barrier to accessing trans healthcare by which the healthcare provider requires that the trans person “live as” their gender for an arbitrary (but long) period of time before allowing treatment, usually one or two years.

Proof of “real-life experience” is arbitrary. Wearing traditionally gendered clothing, being out, using a new name; none of these things indicate gender or transness, or “commitment” to a new gender expression/identity, or have any bearing on regret rates.

The real-life experience test undermines the concepts of informed consent and bodily autonomy, and does more to ease cis fears about trans people transitioning than to do anything positive for trans patients.

see also: TRANS HEALTHCARE; GATEKEEPING; CONSENT

REN, RENNY, RENTHERHOOD — Gender neutral shortened words for parent and parenthood. Renny is an alternative to “Mommy” and “Daddy.” Rentherhood is an alternative to “motherhood” and “fatherhood.”

see also: GENDER NEUTRAL LANGUAGE

REPRESENTATION — When we see people, real or fictional, who reflect an aspect of our own life experience back to us.

“Good representation” shows these people as being complex and whole. “Bad representation” shows them as being flat, reduced to this single aspect of themselves, often through an unflattering stereotype.

Representation is important, because “you can’t be what you can’t see” (a quote by Marie Wilson speaking about the representation of women in tech). If people, especially young people, don’t have any positive representation of themselves in their lives or the media they consume, they might feel alienated and abnormal and ashamed of the things that make them different. They might not even know that being different is a possibility.

Queer children who don’t have access to representation don’t grow up not being queer; they grow up not knowing that being queer is okay.

In the 42,000-member Facebook group “sounds gay, i’m in,” they did a poll: “What is gay culture?” The top result was “taking literally any word, gesture or clothing choice, of literally any person, as proof that they are also gay.” Gay culture is filling the void of representation by creating our own (and calling everything gay).

Historically, queer representation was disallowed and censored. The Motion Picture Production Code, or Hays Code, was in effect in the US from 1930 to 1968; it implicitly forbade same-sex couples on screen through disallowing “any inference of sexual perversion.” The Hays Code also explicitly forbade the portrayal of mixed-race couples.

The first American film representation of bisexuals, and maybe trans people, is A Florida Enchantment, directed and produced by Sidney Drew in 1914. This is a historic piece of art and representation, but it also employs blackface; art can be both important and racist, and should be appropriately critiqued.

see also: QUEER CODING; FETISHIZE

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS — The rights for people to have autonomy over their own bodies, especially regarding contraception, abortion, reproductive healthcare, family planning, and sex education.

Reproductive rights are a site of struggle for all women and all trans people. All queer people are denied comprehensive sex education and family planning.

Reproductive rights are about bodily autonomy as much as they are about reproduction, and therefore have a great deal of overlap with other trans and queer rights issues.

Reproductive rights should also consider all aspects of family planning, including pregnancy prevention (sex education, access to a variety of contraceptives), abortion, fertility treatment, and adoption.

Healthcare providers must consider that many of their patients will be trans and queer, which means that they will have a variety of bodies, non-cisheteronormative relationships, and concerns. There are men with vaginas and women who will store sperm. While reproductive healthcare is a very gendered issue, we must endeavor to divorce body parts from gender.

One aspect of family planning and contraceptives is sterilization. Trans and queer people have been historically (and in some places, continue to be) forcibly sterilized, either explicitly or implicitly; for example, being forced to have bottom surgery before they can change their gender markers, thereby effectively being sterilized. In the UK, unlike other procedures which affect fertility (e.g., chemotherapy), trans people are denied public healthcare for storing their eggs or sperm, and private storage is prohibitively expensive.

Forced sterilization violates basic human rights and bodily autonomy. Likewise, many people who have uteruses want to be voluntarily sterilized but are denied treatment on the patriarchal assumption that they will someday change their minds, or “find a man” who wants to use them to bear his children. Rather than simply deny adults the right to decide whether or not they reproduce (it is very common for sterilization to be denied to anyone under the age of 30), doctors should ensure that patients have given informed consent.

see also: BODILY AUTONOMY; SEX (n.); TRANS HEALTHCARE

REPRODUCTIVE SEX — Sex which can result in pregnancy, not necessarily between a cis and heterosexual couple.

see also: REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS; SEX (v.)

RESPECTABILITY, RESPECTABILITY POLITICS — The notion that people must be “respectable” in order to deserve dignity and basic human rights.

Respectability politics are weaponized against all marginalized people to suggest that we are too angry, too violent, too aggressive to be afforded equal rights. The suggestion is that we would be deserving if only we didn’t make people uncomfortable about it. This is a tactic used to encourage oppressed people to be docile, forcing us to be polite and articulate in demanding that people stop discriminating against us and killing us. It undermines the whole concept of human rights being fundamental to all people, regardless of how agreeable or respectable they are.

Some allies will suggest that angry or violent protestors are “hurting the cause,” or “giving bigots ammunition.” If people only want to give us rights when we’re “good” protestors, they aren’t real allies. These are false flags used to deny us legitimacy, when in reality the standard of “good” is deliberately impossible to reach—it doesn’t matter how good we are, because they aren’t interested in our liberation.

In modern “post-factual” debates, it doesn’t matter how correct or respectable we are; the people who propagate hate speech are not interested in facts or being reasonable. They don’t care how much evidence we throw at them because their ideology is fact-proof; it’s about feelings (read “fragility”). They “just know” that men have penises and are violent and dangerous, they “just know” that Black people are scary and angry, they “just know” that fat people are lazy and unhealthy.

Giving them “ammunition” is irrelevant because even if we are on our most reasonable “best behavior,” they will invent ammunition to use against us.

Instead of politely engaging hateful bigots in “debate,” we should be asking why we are debating the validity of trans women’s lives, of Black peoples’ right to basic safety in public space, of queer peoples’ right to bodily autonomy.

see also: ASSIMILATION; POLICE (v.); ACTIVISM

RLE — Acronym for “Real-Life Experience.”

see also: REAL-LIFE EXPERIENCE TEST