Against Equality: A Live Discussion with Yasmin Nair (Online Group Video Session)

“With gay marriage and the fight thereof, the argument was always, “People should be able to marry their same-sex partners in order to access tax breaks and healthcare, just like straight couples.” But this could have been a moment when we asked, instead, “Who came up with the idea that only married people deserve healthcare? And whom do these tax breaks benefit, besides the well-off?” When Trump tried to disallow trans people from serving in the military, there was much outcry and panic because, as many put it, the military is, for a severely marginalized group with little access to healthcare or any other benefits, one of the few places that affords its members anything like social mobility. But this ignores the crucial fact that we live in a society where people have to enter an institution that blankets the world in terror, including many LGBTQ people everywhere, in order to gain the basics. And […] we see that in our frenetic rush to include people in flawed systems we have lost the sense that the systems should not exist in the first place, or what could exist in their stead.”

– Yasmin Nair,  A Manifesto

Since 2009, the radical queer publishing collective Against Equality has published an impressive and incisive collection of writings that challenge the politics of inclusion in favour of queer revolution. Whether it is challenging the conservatism of gay marriage, the imperialism that is overlooked in calls for LGBT inclusion in the military, or the way calls for tougher hate crime legislation can strengthen institutions like the police and prisons. In this session we will be joined by one of Against Equality‘s co-founders Yasmin Nair. She is a writer, activist and academic.  Her work has appeared in publications like The Baffler, In These Times, Vox, and Electronic Intifada as well as in several anthologies including Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of Detention, Deportation, and Illegalization. She is currently working on a book entitled  Strange Love: How Social Justice Was Invented, and Why It Needs to Die.

During this session we will be joined by Yasmin Nair to discuss her work and how it relates to a plethora of cultural themes and political issues that seem increasingly prevalent in a period of political turbulence and social upheaval. We will discuss topics ranging from social media to renewed calls for police and prison abolitionism, and explore what radical activism might mean in a post-covid world.

This session will be run as part of the Exploding Appendix Avant-garde Art Practice and Research Group’s fortnightly meetup, which, in the event of the current lockdown, will be taking place online via Zoom (https://zoom.us/meeting/82183759142). The meeting ID is 8218375142. This session will be ran by Bradley Tuck and take place on the 30th June from 19:30 – 22:30 (British Summer Time). If you would like to join us for the session, or have any questions please message me at explodingappendix@gmail.com

Follow the event on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/events/641511333377866/