The struggle for queer liberation should not only oppose increasingly vocal conservative demands to roll back hard-won LGBT+ rights, but also the seemingly well-intentioned neoliberal capitalism, which is the common denominator of the many social, political, and ecological crises we have witnessed over recent decades.

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1.

We tend to experience our romantic affections and sexual attractions as entirely personal matters, devoid of political connotations and exempt from mechanisms of social control and power. However, if we recall that reproductive rights for women and LGBT+ rights are areas of intense and ongoing political and ideological conflict, we will recognize the truth in the feminist slogan "The personal is political" and understand that our most intimate experiences are not isolated from the social processes and hegemonic structures that shape our daily existence and interactions with those around us.

In recent years, we have witnessed frequent attacks on queer individuals[1] globally, ranging from isolated acts of hate to legislative efforts aimed at curtailing queer people’s freedom of speech and action. At the same time, there has been a systematic effort to limit women’s control over their reproductive health, manifesting in Croatia, for instance, as the so-called conscientious objection of healthcare workers. A particularly concerning issue within this complex system is the irresponsible and sensationalist media coverage of violence against women and against sexual and gender minorities—two groups whose most intimate experiences have always been inherently and politically significant, inseparable from norms and standards of sexual behavior and "proper" gender performance.

In official narratives, heterosexuality is framed as normal, natural, and morally superior. Its unquestionable dominance is reinforced by numerous romantic clichés and stereotypes that also define socially sanctioned, clearly delineated gender roles. The heteronormative system labels any deviation from rigid norms as unnatural and morally questionable deviance. Individuals whose sexual orientation or gender expression fall outside these norms are systematically stigmatized, pathologized, and pressured into assimilation. Only in 1973, after sustained protests by queer activists, was homosexuality removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) by the American Psychiatric Association, and forty years later, the diagnosis of gender identity disorder—which primarily affected trans and nonbinary individuals—was also removed.

In this context, we must remember that the pseudo-scientific practice of so-called reparative or conversion therapy was until recently accepted as a legitimate approach to "treating" homosexual and transgender individuals. It was based on the belief that sexual and gender minorities were sick, damaged, and deficient, and that they could be "cured" and realigned with heteronormative standards through so-called therapeutic procedures. According to a December 2022 report by the esteemed UK mental health organization Mind, conversion practices constitute torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, meaning individuals cannot legally consent to them[2]. In other words, people do not enter into conversion practices entirely voluntarily—they are usually coerced by their surroundings, especially families and religious authorities. Under such conditions, queer individuals may completely internalize the negative attitudes of an environment that constantly pressures them to feel broken or damaged due to their sexual and/or gender difference. Survivors of conversion practices frequently report struggling with depression, anxiety, and self-destructive or suicidal impulses caused by the so-called "therapy."

As of today, conversion practices are banned in 23 countries, including bans on psychiatric diagnoses based solely on sexual orientation or gender identity—yet another victory won through the tireless protests of activist groups around the world against the stigmatization and dehumanization of queer people.

Sexuality regulation is closely linked to normative practices rooted in a biological determinist or bioessentialist understanding of gender. Under such a framework, gender is imposed as a clear, binary category that demands strict and precise rules for regulating gendered expression and behavior. The purpose of this binary system is to establish clear boundaries between male and female social subjects, defined according to biological determinism, which interprets gender solely through biological causality, assuming that gonads and chromosomes unequivocally determine gender identity and its "proper" performance aligned with one’s sex assigned at birth.

American historian and gender theorist Joan Wallach Scott, in her now-classic essay "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," first published in 1986 in American Historical Review, challenges the interpretation of gender as a static biological necessity manifested in specific, immutable male and female essences. She opposes any attempt to consider gender identity outside historical, social, and political contexts. Scott primarily understands gender as a process of meaning-making and the construction of experiences based on those meanings—a semantic and epistemological process that is inscribed on our bodies, reflecting dominant narratives and shaping our experience of being in the world. Simply existing as a body is not enough; one must inhabit a body that satisfies the criteria of the sexual and gender binary matrix. Deviations from this narrow framework are noticed, sanctioned, and controlled. It is not just the body that must be disciplined; behavior must also be regulated in line with heteronormative understandings of gender and the gender expression that emerges from it, which label certain expressions and practices as essentially male or female. We are not born with a fully formed gender independent of external social influences—it is, above all, a complex process of learning the social rules that govern the "correct" performance of gender roles and functions.

In his 1976 book Gender Advertisements, American sociologist Erving Goffman analyzed 500 advertisements and concluded that gender is a socially conditioned performance containing a repertoire of facial expressions and body postures portrayed as "typically female" and "typically male," always seen through the eyes of a heterosexual man. Gender performativity is a concept extensively developed by American philosopher Judith Butler in her 1990 book Gender Trouble, where she interprets gender not as a biologically determined category but as a set of socially defined and learned behaviors meant to produce bodies that are unmistakably male or female.

In the case of intersex individuals—whose sex at birth is difficult to determine due to the presence of both male and female reproductive organs and glands—sexual and gender regulation is enacted through surgical procedures aimed at "correcting" children's genitalia to conform to the norm. Today, it is widely accepted among experts that such interventions violate the human rights of children who cannot consent and are not informed about their condition. Intersex medical interventions, which have been carried out since the 1950s, are increasingly being referred to as intersex genital mutilation, which often results in severe physical and mental health consequences for intersex individuals.

Somewhat less invasive—but still problematic—regulatory procedures around sexuality and gender are primarily enacted on the bodies and minds of women who have internalized patriarchal stereotypes, misogynist attitudes, and unattainable beauty ideals requiring the disciplining of unruly and messy bodies. The binary gender matrix operates in perfect symbiosis with the world of neoliberal capitalism—particularly the vast industry of cosmetics, dieting products, weight-loss aids, and cosmetic surgery. In analyzing how these disciplinary mechanisms shape and define women’s existence, American philosopher Sandra Lee Bartky, in her essay "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power" (1990), interprets specific procedures of regulation and control that construct perfect, disciplined female bodies. While Foucault assumed that discipline and surveillance were embodied in the functioning of institutions like schools, prisons, and psychiatric hospitals, Bartky argued that we must not ignore "unofficial" disciplinary procedures that are not institutionally defined or enforced but whose influence in shaping femininity is undeniable.

Fashion and unwritten rules about appropriate clothing can be seen as an extension of the ideal body and an essential part of gender performance, aiming to create a certain effect in the eyes of the observer and secure validation of our identities. The pressure from one’s environment and ubiquitous advertising messages that remind us our faces and bodies are flawed—and thus in need of enhancement through products and treatments—are mechanisms of regulation, surveillance, and discipline that do not require a specific institution to operate; they are decentralized and dispersed. Compared to direct, unidirectional institutional control, these dispersed forms are subtler and reciprocal: throughout their lives, women are continuously under surveillance, but they can also surveil, criticize, and regulate other women whose appearance and behavior do not align with the ideal of the obedient female body. The anonymity and institutional independence of these forms of control significantly shape our understanding of femininity: the absence of formal institutional authority enforcing these directives creates the illusion that femininity is entirely voluntary or natural[3].

Challenging the heteronormative, binary gender matrix consistently provokes strong reactions from conservative forces who view the concept of gender as an attack on the traditional family and an attempt to erase the differences between men and women, seen as unchangeable and natural. Collective fears, anxieties, and frustrations fueled by climate change, increasing existential insecurity, and a severely diminished capacity to imagine a radically different world manifest in fierce xenophobic, sexist, transphobic, and homophobic attacks on migrants, foreign workers, women, and queer people. These are not isolated incidents, but a systematic effort to discredit and demonize the historically and contextually grounded concept of gender as a destructive force that threatens the natural order and the foundations of society. Attacks on gender derive legitimacy from the public statements of politicians and religious authorities. Questions of gender identity and sexuality are unjustly pushed into the private sphere and are often falsely and maliciously dismissed as marginal concerns of identity politics that distract from "more important" issues. Yet the realization of freedom—to form meaningful relationships and feel at home in our own bodies—is an essential part of a monumental political project of liberation from the multiple, intertwined forces of oppression that constrain and impoverish our existence.

2.

The 1960s are undoubtedly etched into history as a period of unprecedented significance and the wide expansion of counterculture, which sociologist Benjamin Perasović defines as a collection of social movements and actors seeking to build a completely alternative society. Within a single decade, a multitude of movements emerged across the globe, all aiming at radically transforming existing modes of thought and behavior: the American civil rights movement boldly confronted the deeply rooted system of racial segregation; the so-called second wave of feminism began rethinking the roles assigned to women in society and problematizing social conventions that systematically upheld gender discrimination; the anti-war movement forcefully condemned the colonial and imperialist tendencies of U.S. foreign policy; and environmental initiatives increasingly drew attention to pollution and human-driven extinction of plant and animal species.

This effort to at least sketch or imagine a radically different way of being—one no longer accepted as the only natural or possible form of existence—was joined by a series of both spontaneous and organized protests by the LGBT+ community. These actions would lead to tangible legislative and material changes, significantly improving the living conditions of gender and sexual minorities. A pivotal moment in the struggle for queer rights is considered to be the uprising at the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in New York’s Greenwich Village, which began with a fierce clash between queer patrons and the police in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. Like many other clubs frequented by members of the LGBT+ community, Stonewall was owned by the mafia, as widespread homophobia and the criminalization of homosexuality meant that club owners who welcomed gays, lesbians, and trans people were rare. The mafia generally showed little concern for the safety of patrons in queer spaces, and frequent raids and police brutality had already sparked uprisings prior to Stonewall.

During a planned routine raid aimed at arresting transvestites who gathered at the club, a crowd assembled in the street witnessed an extremely violent arrest and clashed with the police—throwing coins, beer bottles, and bricks—openly defying police brutality and initiating a spontaneous rebellion that lasted for three days. After Stonewall, queer activism shifted significantly, aligning itself with the values of the counterculture, which rejected assimilation into a flawed society and instead sought to expose and dismantle it in order to create radically different ways of surviving and living. The LGBT+ community began to organize politically, clearly positioning itself in opposition to the established hegemony and rejecting passivity as a legitimate option.

A particularly striking and important form of resistance can be observed in the choice of vocabulary and iconography that gender and sexual minorities began using to describe and visually represent themselves. For instance, the word queer—meaning strange, deviant, eccentric—had long been used as a slur against anyone who didn’t fit into the heteronormative matrix or whose gender expression was deemed suspicious by social gatekeepers. In the 1970s, however, members of the LGBT+ community began increasingly reclaiming this originally pejorative term to describe their experience of sexuality and gender—experiences that differed from conventionally accepted sexual attractions and narrowly defined, imposed gender roles. In doing so, they transformed one of the weapons of discrimination into a symbol of pride and resistance.

This period also saw increased historiographical interest in LGBT+ history, which had long been systematically ignored and silenced. Historical awareness empowered the queer community and legitimized the existence of gender and sexual minorities as a historical fact recorded across the globe and present in radically diverse societies. In 1972, the book The Men with the Pink Triangle by Josef Kohout—writing under the pseudonym Heinz Heger—was published in Germany. It was the first complete testimony of a homosexual man who had survived Dachau, and his account spurred historians to investigate, through numerous books, articles, and documentaries, the decades-long neglected persecution of homosexuals during the Nazi attempt to exterminate undesirable social groups.

Men imprisoned for their "unnatural" inclinations were forced to wear a pink triangle as a marker among the other prisoners—a symbol of their "deviance" and "perversion," as defined by Nazi ideological framers. However, the winners of the Second World War were by no means free of the homophobia that had characterized their enemies. Many camp survivors were forced to continue serving out their sentences after liberation, thanks to the infamous Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code, which had criminalized homosexuality since 1871. In both East and West Germany, the state continued to arrest and imprison homosexuals into the 1950s and 1960s. It was only after heated debates and parliamentary sessions that homosexuality was finally decriminalized, and the governments of East and West Germany stopped incarcerating their citizens under Paragraph 175.

After society was forced to reckon with these forgotten Holocaust victims—whose stories had been suppressed or denied for three decades—queer activists reclaimed the pink triangle from the Nazis. What was once a brand of shame and dehumanization became a symbol of resistance and of a community that refused to passively assimilate into a society that did not guarantee it a dignified existence or a life without fear.

3.

The history of the relationship between the LGBT+ community and capitalism is complex, messy, and at times contradictory. The role of wage labor in the formation of queer identity is of undeniable importance. Historian John D’Emilio, whose work focuses particularly on LGBT+ history and sexual politics, argues in his 1985 essay Capitalism and Gay Identity that we should not think of queer identity as a continuous and stable subject throughout history, but rather as a construct that emerged at a specific historical moment—once the material, political, and social conditions allowed for its development.

The expansion of capital throughout the 19th and 20th centuries redefined and transformed the family from a self-sufficient unit of production into something very different. Within the traditional family structure, individuals lacked the language to articulate desires and experiences that did not conform to heteronormative expectations. While history records countless trials for sodomy and acts of persecution driven by sexual behavior, it was only when wage labor radically altered family structures that a specific queer identity began to form—an identity shaped by individuals whose desires and gender expressions did not obey heteronormative norms.

In other words, it was capitalism that created the conditions under which homosexual desires and acts began to be understood as integral parts of personal identity—experiences that could be articulated and communicated. Neoliberal capitalism, however, has consistently destabilized the family by eroding its material foundations and privatizing the socially produced stresses tied to increasing existential precarity. At the same time, capitalism depends on the heteronormative family and binary gender roles—as a source of new labor and new consumers, and for the social reproduction necessary for capital accumulation.

Since the 1990s, with the growing visibility of LGBT+ people in the media and increasingly vocal demands for legal and social equality, industries and multinational corporations have begun targeting queer people as a new market demographic—through products, advertising campaigns, and more recently, corporate social media engagement. During this same period, the mainstream LGBT+ movement began gradually distancing itself from its countercultural roots, increasingly seeking assimilation into the existing social order, rather than fighting for the creation of a radically different and more just world—one in which the rights and privileges of the few are not built on the backs of the many.

The term pink capitalism or rainbow capitalism describes the capitalist appropriation and commodification of queer identity into products aimed at a specific social segment with identifiable tastes and sensibilities—sensibilities that can be manipulated. While the importance of representation—the presence of queer voices in public discourse—cannot be denied, it is equally necessary to ask to what extent that visibility is accompanied by concrete efforts to improve the material and legal conditions of LGBT+ lives.

Every June, during Pride Month, corporate logos on social media are routinely decorated in rainbow colors in a show of solidarity with the LGBT+ community, and stores are flooded with rainbow-colored clothing and accessories. Some celebrate this as clear proof of progress, while others (including homophobes who ceremoniously swear off these products) see it as a threat. But it would be naïve to believe that corporations—whose primary goal is profit and market expansion—are altruistically committed to LGBT+ rights. One can hardly be accused of cynicism for questioning the motives behind corporate interest in the queer demographic and interpreting it instead as a strategic maneuver to capture new, lucrative markets.

Companies like Amazon, Google, General Motors, and Walmart, to name just a few—among the most vocal Pride supporters—have simultaneously funneled large donations to the campaigns of conservative politicians who aggressively push anti-LGBT+ agendas. This hypocrisy reveals that the fight for queer liberation must confront not only the growing chorus of conservative efforts to roll back hard-won LGBT+ rights, but also the seemingly well-intentioned neoliberal capitalism that underpins many of the intersecting social, political, and ecological crises of our time.

The struggle for queer rights is also a struggle for racial, gender, and class justice—a fight to dismantle the legitimacy of the current hegemonic order, which still treats deviations from heteronormative existence as abnormalities, degenerations, or threats to society at large. Anti-LGBT+ paranoia and hysteria are particularly fixated on children, whom conspiracy theorists claim are being targeted by the so-called “gender ideology” and exposed to content that will encourage them to identify as gay or transgender—with the supposed goal of destroying the heterosexual, monogamous family structure built on traditional patriarchal gender roles.

Given that women’s and queer rights are continually treated as bargaining chips by powerful political and corporate interests—with very real consequences for health, safety, and freedom from violence—there is no longer any credible reason to claim that gender and sexuality are secondary concerns compared to economic production, private property, or capital accumulation. The desire to build a world where people no longer die without adequate housing, vital medicine, or sufficient nutrition is inseparable from the desire to build a society where everyone has the inalienable right to feel at home in the body they inhabit.

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Footnotes:

1. Queer is used here as an umbrella term for all people whose sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expression do not fit within the heteronormative binary framework.

2. Conversion ‘therapy’ ban: legislating to protect the mental health of the LGBTQIA+ community. Mind: London, 2022.

3. Bartky, Sandra. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. New York: Routledge, 1990.

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Verica Rekić is a translator and publicist. She holds an MA in Croatian Language and Literature and History from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Split.