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During Pride month, let’s remember the events that marked June 28 as a benchmark of struggle for the LGBTIQA+ community, a catalyst for a group identity driven by the conviction that other worlds are possible and by the organization that would give strength and life to rights that would materialize later. June has become a month of remembering and celebration.
After decades of organizing and resistance, many of the gains in awareness began to materialize in the 1990s. One was the removal of homosexuality from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) list of mental illnesses. Although the social stigma continued – and continues – recognizing the historical error of having classified it as such was a significant watershed. It allowed us to realize that our biases permeate science and knowledge. Correcting that mistake was a significant milestone in the history, social representation, narrative, and experiences of millions of people.
Over time, a wave of great advances swept the globe. From the 1990s to the mid-2010s, we saw breakthroughs become a reality in some countries and contexts, such as same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, the criminalization of hate crimes, and dignified representation in the media. But for whom were these breakthroughs? Who got left out of those memorials, of those celebrations? Did the entire community really achieve those rights?
This generated a false sense that things were fine. Some organizations and collectives were losing their autonomous political strength, their disruptive vocation. It began to be politically incorrect to speak from bias. Companies realized that they could sell more products and services if they portrayed themselves as “inclusive,” so they began to join the narrative, especially around June —rainbow washing—, hyping diversity and its colors, but forgetting everything that happens in the lives of the community in the other eleven months of the year.
Most of the efforts were superficial, failing to consolidate the foundations for profound and sustainable change. Little by little, narratives were filtered again, each time with greater force, expressing that “it was already a lot”: “a lot of pride,” “a lot of visibility” … a lot… Who defines that amount?
It seemed that a certain part of society was permitting the LGBTIQA+ community to be and exist… but measuring the limits. It invited the community to exist as long as it adapted to heteropatriarchal and capitalist traditions; anything was fine as long as it fit into the pre-established mold or generated profits for someone.
Thus, inclusion was rarely built critically, where society genuinely broke molds and saw others authentically, daring to reconstruct dynamics, processes, and ways of being. What happened was the inclusion of functionality to integrate people into the spaces so they could assimilate into the dominant culture.
Not only that, but the rights won in those decades were not secured equitably. Those who really benefited were those who, in addition to belonging to the LGBTIQA+ community, had access to class, whiteness, and formal citizenship. So if access came to only a few, did we really win?
For some time now, we have experienced a consistent setback in the struggles for the rights, actions, and visibility that had been won – backlash – and this is not an accident. The current setback occurred because inclusion was never solid, critical, or collective enough. We now see that the concept of inclusion is being made invisible and literally disappears because “it was already a lot.”
Those who study history and politics, and those who have walked this earth the longest, know that these movements are always cyclical. The continuous wars, uncertainties, and crises that we have experienced contribute to the emergence of fears of the “other” and divide us again. In this division, the anti-rights systems and narratives win. In this divide, some people attain, and others fall behind. In this division, some people continue to be criminalized, and in certain spaces, some return to being, for belonging to sexual and gender diversity.
In contexts like the current one, I cling to a combination of voices that give me hope. Alok Vaid-Menon reminds us that the problem was never our difference: it was the fear we learned to feel in the face of it. And Brené Brown shows us that the only way to pass through that fear is through vulnerability. If the system is designed to divide us, then organizing ourselves from what we are—without molds, without permissions—is the most political act that exists. The urgency is now. Our hope, also.
Translation by Daniel Wetta
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
