It is primarily through the critique of writers of the Independent Gay Forum (IGF), mainly Andrew Sullivan and David Boaz, that Lisa Duggan comes to assert that “freedom”, “equality”, and democratic politics through this neoliberal mindset are deeply perverted. \u00a0Sullivan’s exclusive targeting of the masculine gay limits the “equality” pushed for in his writings and also reinforces typical misogyny which exists throughout the heteronormative order. \u00a0Sullivan also suggests that gay people must simply ask to exist in a privatized space, where the only political victories are marriage equality and the right to serve in the military. \u00a0As Duggan notes, “…we have been administered a kind of political sedative — we get marriage and the military, then we go home and cook dinner, forever” (Duggan 62). \u00a0David Boaz, another neoliberal writer for the IGF, sees the family only as a gendered institution that is used for privatizing social costs, and again insists only that gays be included in this system.<\/p>\n
In “Boystown”, Blair demonstrates the power of social media in reproducing racism. \u00a0Under the guise of protecting the neighborhood from crime, Facebook pages were used as a channel of hate speech and racism, distanced from the “real world” and through uncensored white privilege were able to control a racist narrative about the city in which they lived. \u00a0These social media pages “allowed residents to public produce and engage with bigoted attitudes, ideologies, and discourses through photographs, videos, and concurrent threaded comments” (Blair 298) and therefore legitimized degrading and criminalizing people of color.<\/p>\n
Through the colonialist ideology of the “native”, Third World gay men are essentially positioned as a commodity, or an object to be consumed. \u00a0This of course is reinforced by capitalism and the notion of “gay” capital in which travel is one of the primary sources of revenue. \u00a0In this space in which Third World gay men are fetishized by white gay men on vacation, “gay capital becomes an active participant in the same processes of nativization and recolonization that heterosexual tourism helped to inaugurate” (Alexander 79).<\/p>\n
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Citations:<\/p>\n
Alexander, M. Jacqui. “Imperial Desire \/ Sexual Utopias: White Gay Capital and Transnational Tourism”.\u00a0Pedagogies of Crossing<\/em>,\u00a0edited by M. Jacqui Alexander, Duke University Press: 2005, pp. 67-88.<\/p>\n Blair, Zachary. \u00a0“Boystown”.\u00a0No Tea, No Shade,\u00a0<\/em>edited by E. Patrick Johnson, Duke University Press: 2016, pp. 287-303<\/p>\n Duggan, Lisa. “Equality, Inc.”.\u00a0The Twilight of Equality?<\/em>, edited by Lisa Duggan,\u00a0<\/em>Beacon Press: 2004, pp. 43-66.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is primarily through the critique of writers of the Independent Gay Forum (IGF), mainly Andrew Sullivan and David Boaz, that Lisa Duggan comes to assert that “freedom”, “equality”, and democratic politics through this neoliberal mindset are deeply perverted. \u00a0Sullivan’s exclusive targeting of the masculine gay limits the “equality” pushed for in his writings and … <\/p>\n