Evidence Link: You can look toward the Affirmatives Miller 2k Card which only

registers violations in privacy when guards and inmates from two biological
categories of sex are involved: male and female. This transphobic behavior
conforms to societys belief that you are non-human if you do not identify as either
male or female.
Darryl B. Hill and Brian Willoughby, The Development and Validation of the Genderism and
Transphobia Scale Page 533-534. 2005
In the last few years, researchers have begun to conceptualize anti-trans prejudice. For example, Hill (2002) in an analysis of a trans communitys
experiences, suggested that three key constructs can be used to conceptualize hate against trans persons:

transphobia, genderism, and gender-bashing. Transphobia is an emotional disgust toward

individuals who do not conform to societys gender expectations. Similar to homophobia, the fear or
aversion to homosexuals (e.g., Weinberg, 1972), transphobia involves the feeling of revulsion to masculine
women, feminine men, cross-dressers, transgenderists, and/or transsexuals . Specifically, transphobia
manifests by itself in the fear that personal acquaintances may be trans or disgust upon
encountering a trans person. Note that the use of the -phobia suffix does not imply that a transphobic person suffers clinical
phobic reactions; nor does it imply that the transphobic person is suffering from a disorder. The phobia suffix is used to imply an irrational fear
or hatred, one that is at least partly perpetuated by cultural ideology. Genderism is an ideology that reinforces the negative evaluation of gender
non-conformity or an incongruence between sex and gender. It is a cultural belief that perpetuates negative judgments

of people who do not present as a stereotypical man or woman . Those who are genderist believe that people who do
not conform to sociocultural expectations of gender are pathological. Similar to heterosexism, we propose that genderism is both a source of
social oppression and psychological shame, such that it can be imposed on a person, but also that a person may internalize these beliefs. Finally,
gender-bashing refers to the assault and/or harassment of persons who do not conform to gender norms (Wilchins, 1997). Thus,

genderism is the broad negative cultural ideology, transphobia is the emotional disgust and fear,
and gender-bashing is the fear manifest in acts of violence (Hill, 2002). The above findings readily suggest a
conceptual framework central to the study of discrimination and violence against trans persons. The goal of our first study was to develop a
questionnaire to assess genderism, transphobia, and gender-bashing. STUDY 1 The goal of this study was to develop a short psychometric
questionnaire to assess negative attitudes toward trans persons. We sought to develop a scale that would tap into affective, cognitive, and
behavioral expressions of transphobic and genderist attitudes, along with tendencies to act violently toward trans persons (i.e., gender-bashing).
This first study describes the initial development of this scale and provides some preliminary psychometric evidence of its reliability and validity.
Method Participants Research assistants administered a questionnaire to 227 volunteer undergraduate students at Concordia University in
Montreal; they were re- cruited primarily from undergraduate classes in psychology. Eighty-seven men and 140 women completed the
questionnaire. Race/ethnicity was not asked of participants, partly to increase a sense of anonymity, and the statistics for race/ethnicity on the
campus as a whole were not known. This particular campus is well-known for its racial and ethnic diversity (e.g., for admissions in the year
2000, 59% claimed English as their language of origin, 16% were French, and 25% stated other). Participants ranged in age from 18 to 50, with
an average age of 22 years (SD = 4.6). All participants were currently working on an undergraduate degree; none had completed a degree. Most
of the sample identified as heterosexual (94%); some (4%) identified as bisexual, and the remainder (2%) identified as lesbian or gay. All
participants were entered into a raffle for a prize of $100 as an incentive.

Solvency Takeout/IL: The system of heteropatriarchy is one that is at the very

foundation of United States Society. By endorsing in transphobic language and
ideology they make it IMPOSSIBLE to sufficiently challenge systems of white
supremacy which lays down the framework for the Prison industrial complex.
Smith 6 (Heteropatriarchy and the three pillars of white supremacy, from Color of Violence: the
INCITE! Anthology)
Heteropatriarchy is the building block of US empire. In fact, it is the building block of the nation-state form of
governance. Christian Right authors make these links in their analysis of imperialism and empire. For example, Christian Right activist and
founder of Prison Fellowship Charles Colson makes the connection between homosexuality and the nation-state

in his analysis of the war on terror, explaining that one of the causes of terrorism is same-sex
marriage: Marriage is the traditional building block of human society , intend- ed both to unite couples and bring
children into the world ... There is a natural moral order for the family... the family, led by a married
mother and father, is the best available structure for both child- rearing and cultural health. Marriage is not a private institution designed
solely for the individual gratification of its participants. If we fail to enact a Federal Marriage Amendment, we can expect not just more family
breakdown, but also more criminals behind bars and more chaos in our streets. Colson is linking the well-being of US empire to the well-being
of the heteropatriarchal family. He continues: When radical Islamists see American women abusing Muslim men, as they did in the Abu Ghraib

prison, and when they see news coverage of same-sex couples being married in US towns, we make this kind of freedom abhorrent-the kind
they see as a blot on Allahs creation. We must preserve traditional marriage in order to protect the United States from those who would use our
depravity to destroy us. As A n n Burlein argues in Lift High the Cross, it may be a mistake to argue thac the goal of Christian Right politics is to
create a theocracy in the United States. Rather, Christian Right politics work through the private family (which is coded as white, patriarchal, and
middle class) to create a Christian America. She notes that the investment in the private family makes it difficult for people to invest in more
public forms of social connection. In addition, investment in the suburban pri- vate family serves to mask the public disinvestment in urban areas
thac makes the suburban lifestyle possible. The social decay in urban areas that results from this disinvestment is then construed as the result of
deviance from the Christian family ideal rather than as the result of political and economic forces. As former head of the Christian Coalition,
Ralph Reed, states: The only true solution to crime is to restore the family,10 and Family break-up causes poverty. Concludes Burlein,
The family is no mere metaphor but a crucial technology by which modern power is produced and exercised.* As I have argued elsewhere ,

in order to colonize peoples whose societies are not based on social hierarchy, colonizers must first
naturalize hierarchy through instituting patriarchy.13 In turn, patriarchy rests on a gender binary system
in which only two genders exist, one dominating the other. Consequently, Charles Colson is correct when
he says that the colonial world order depends on heteronormativ- ity . Just as the patriarchs rule the
family, the elites of the nation-state rule their citizens. Any liberation struggle that does not challenge
heteronormativity cannot substantially challenge colonialism or white supremacy . Rather, as Cathy
Cohen contends, such struggles will maintain colonialism based on a politics of secondary
marginalization where the most elite class of these groups will further their aspirations on the backs
of those most marginalized within the community. Through this process of secondary
marginalization, the national or racial justice struggle takes on either implicitly or explicitly a
nation-state model as them! point of its struggle-a model of governance in which the elites govern the rest through
violence and domination, as well as exclude those who are not members of "the nation." Thus, national
liberation politics become less vulnerable to being coopted by the Right when we base them on a model of liberation that fundamentally
challenges right-wing conceptions of t h e w . We need a model based on community relationships and on mutual

respect. Conclusion, Women of color-centered organizing points to the centrality of gender politics within antiracist, anticolonial struggles.
Unfortunately, in our efforts to organize against white , Christian America, racial justice struggles often
articulate an equally heteropatriarchal racial nationalism. This model of organizing either hopes to assimilate into
white America, or to replicate it within an equally hierar- chical and oppressive racial nationalism in which the elites of the community rule
everyone else. Such struggles often call on the importance of preserving the Black family or the

Native family as the bulwark of this nationalist project, the family being conceived of in capitalist
and heteropatriarchal terms. The response is often increased homophobia, with lesbian and gay community members con- strued as
threats to the family. But, perhaps we should challenge the concept of the family itself. Perhaps, instead, we can reconstitute alternative ways
of living together in which families are not seen as islands on their own. Certainly, indigenous communities were not ordered on the basis of a
nuclear family structure-is the result of colonialism, not the antidote to it. In proposing this model, I am speaking from my particular position in
indigenous struggles. .Other peoples might flesh out these logics more fully from different vantage points. Others might also argue that there are
other logics of white supremacy are missing. Still others might complicate how they relate to each other. But I see this as a starting

point for women of color organizers that will allow us to reenvision a politics of solidarity that goes
beyond multiculturalism, and develop more complicated strategies that can really transform the
political and economic status quo.

Normativity Link/Impact: Queer Bodies face discrimination in society for being

non-normative. The Affirmatives ideology reinforces that status quo violence and
only serves to bolster the suffering that they face because of their chosen gender
identity.
EMILIA LOMBARDI, PhD Varieties of Transgender/Transsexual Lives and Their Relationship
with Transphobia 2010
Transphobia is the feeling of unease or even revulsion towards those who express nonnormative
expressions of gender identity and expression (Hill, 2002; Hill & Willoughby, 2005). Studies have found that many
transgender/ transsexual people have experienced some form of discrimination or harassment
because of their gender identity or presentation sometime in their life. A study of transgender individuals
within the United States found that approximately 60% had experienced some form of harassment and/or violence,
and 37% had experienced economic discrimination (Lombardi, Wilchins, Priesing, & Malouf, 2001). Reback et al. (2001)
found that approximately half of their sample reported employment discrimination, 30% reported being fired from their job, and 29% reported
discrimination in housing. A study conducted in San Francisco found that approximately 80% of transgender/transsexual men and women

experienced verbal harassment, 50% experienced job discrimination, and 30% experienced physical abuse (Clements, 1999). A community

health study conducted in Boston found many transgender/transsexual individuals have experienced
problems accessing health care and many received blatant discrimination from health care
providers (GLBT Health Access, 2000). The idea that ones genital sex can be distinct from ones social and psychological gender is a very
difficult idea for many people to accept, Downloaded by [Dartmouth College Library] at 17:38 23 July 2015 980 E. Lombardi especially for
people whose beliefs are based on traditional ideas of who men and women are. Studies examining anti-transgender/transsexual attitudes found
opposition to transgender/transsexual peoples civil rights were correlated with heterosexism, authoritarianism, a belief in only two sexes, and a
belief that gender is biologically based (Tee & Hegarty, 2006). Similarly, a belief in traditional gender roles were found to be correlated with Hill
and Willoughbys (2005) genderism and transphobia scales. Transphobic individuals voice concerns about the appearance

of transgender/transsexual individuals and to see them as being potentially disruptive and threatening ,
which is used as a reason to discriminate against such individuals (Bettcher, 2006). Gender segregated services like
homeless shelters have been known to exclude transgender/transsexual women who have not had
genital surgery from accessing their services . A spokesperson for such a shelter stated, We can certainly handle inappropriate
behaviour that might be aggression or alcoholism or anger management or those types of things. Its the other behaviour that relates to
[nontransgender] women feeling uncomfortable around pre-operative transgender clients, related to sexuality, that is the issue for us (Benzie,
2004). The same person further stated that post-operative transgender women would continue to be welcomed at the centres. Traditional
attitudes about biological sex and social gender are the basis of transphobic attitudes and beliefs, but the question remains as to how experiences
of transphobia may differ between gender variant people. Sugano, Nemoto, and Operario (2006) found that Latina and African-

American transgender women of color reported experiencing higher levels of transphobia

compared to Asian/Pacific Islander transgender women . They also found those who self-identified as female had higher
levels of self-esteem compared to those who self-identified as preoperative transsexual/transgender women. Experiences of transphobia
may be influenced by many factors that may or may not be directly related to ones identity or expression .
For individuals who are gender variant, ones presentation may influence their experiences with discrimination. As such, those who have used
hormones for many years or those who have utilized surgical interventions to change their gendered appearance may experience lower levels of
discrimination. Having legal documents that match their social presentation may also reduce peoples experiences of discrimination. The issue
being ones ability to live ones life without being seen as gender variant in any way; in this sense, gender presentation and legal sex is as
important as ones gender identity. This study examined the association between gender (presentation, identity, legal sex status, etc.) and nongender (race and class) related characteristics and peoples experiences with transphobic events. The purpose of this exploratory study was to
examine different social characteristics to see how they were related to peoples experiences with transphobia.

Violence against queerness results in the annihilation of identitythis is a form of

soul murder
Yep, Lovaas, and Elia 03 Professors, San Francisco University (Gust, Karen, and John,
Journal of Homosexual Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2/3/4, pp. 18,)
These are the internal injuries that individuals inflict upon themselves. Very early in life children learn from
interpersonal contacts and mediated messages that deviations from the heteronormative
standard, such as homosexuality, are anxiety-ridden, guilt-producing, fear-inducing,
shame-invoking, hate-deserving, psychologically blemishing, and physically threatening.
Internalized homophobia, in the form of self-hatred and self-destructive thoughts and
behavioral patterns, becomes firmly implanted in the lives and psyches of individuals in
heteronormative society. Exemplifying the feelings and experiences of many people who do not fit in the heteronormative mandate,
Kevin Jennings (1994) tells us his personal story: I was born in 1963. . . . [I] realized in grade school that I was gay. I felt absolutely alone. I had
no one to talk to, didnt know any openly gay people, and saw few representations of gays in the media of the 1970s. I imagined gay people were
a tiny, tiny minority, who had been and would always be despised for their perversion. Not once in high school did I ever learn a single thing
about homosexuality or gay people. I couldnt imagine a happy life as a gay man. So I withdrew from my peers and used alcohol and drugs to try
to dull the pain of my isolation. Eventually, at age seventeen I tried to kill myself, like one out of every three gay teens. I saw nothing in my past,
my present, or (it seemed) my future suggesting that things would ever get any better. (pp. 13-14) Heteronormativity

is so
powerful that its regulation and enforcement are carried out by the individuals themselves
through socially endorsed and culturally accepted forms of soul murder. Soul murder is a
term that I borrow from the child abuse and neglect literature to highlight the torment of
heteronormativity (Yep, 2002). Shengold (1999) defines soul murder as the apparently willful abuse
and neglect of children by adults that are of sufficient intensity and frequency to be
traumatic . . . [so that] the childrens subsequent emotional development has been
profoundly and predominantly negatively affected (p. 1). Further explaining this concept, Shengold (1989) writes,

soul

murder is neither a diagnosis nor a condition. It is a dramatic term for circumstances

that eventuate in crimethe deliberate attempt to eradicate or compromise the separate
identity of another person (p. 2, my emphasis). Isnt the incessant policing and enforcement, either
deliberately or unconsciously, by self and others, of the heteronormative mandate a
widespread form of soul murder?

The alternative is to engage in queering languagequeer slangs offer an

opportunity to resist systems of power while still engaging within a safe space
Tzini 14 (Tzini, Anna [Anna Tzini, also known as Anna T. studied Photography, Video and New Technologies in Athens and obtained her
MA in Queer Studies in Arts & culture from Birmingham City University in 2010. PhD in practice. Her work mainly deals with the relation
between private / public, identities and the ways the interactions between time and space form them.]. 12/2014 The Opacity of Queer
Languages, E-flux Journal #60, accessed: 7/15/2015. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/the-opacity-of-queer-language-2/)//ALepow
These communication

codes allowed for an easier exchange of information that to some extent shielded
group members from potential aggressors: at the same time, these languages did not render group
members completely invisible. It is exactly this position between visibility and invisibilitywhich can
perhaps be described as opaquenessthat interests me in relation to the particular political stance of
passivity. David Van Leer, an American scholar who researched queer cultures in the US from the 1920s to the 2000s, says that often minorities
speak most volubly between the lines, ironically reshaping dialogues the oppressor thinks he controls or
even finding new topics and modes of speaking to which the oppressor himself lacks access. Languagebeing
5

regulated by the state, taught in educational institutions, and used to discipline, inform, educate, or structurally violate, among other usesis frequently subverted by
minorities in an attempt to bypass authority. In this case in particular the new topics and modes Van Leer refers to are perhaps illegal pleasures, embodied
performances, irony, and disguised (or not-so-well-disguised) social critique. While trying to stay safe and communicate, individual subjects start forming a
community based on a common culture. In her essay Qwir-English Code-Mixing in Germany: Constructing a Rainbow of Identities, Heidi Minning argues that the
resulting sociopsychological function is one of constructing group membership and a sense of the self as a participant in larger gay and lesbian local and transnational
cultures.6 Lexicon These

slangs with vocabularies ranging from six hundred words (as is the case of Polari) to
more than six thousand documented words (as in Kaliarda) and different lifespans (four hundred years
and counting in the case of Lubunca, or thirty years in the case of IsiNgqumo), constitute mini-universes
where their users freely circulate and through which they are able to connect. They do not only include
terms to describe the particular practices/interests of the groups which might be dangerous to publicly
describe in a noncoded way. They also include words or phrases to describe everyday household objects, professions, toponyms, and activities. They
are patchworks of several other languages, including etymologically untraceable neologisms.7 For instance, Polari consists of English, Italian, Yiddish, and
Mediterranean Lingua Franca (a composite itself),8 while Kaliarda is made up of Greek, English, Italian, French, Turkish, and Romani.9 Bajub or Pajub seems to
have its roots in Africa and is based on several Bantu and Yoruba African languages outfitted with Portuguese syntax.10 Swardspeak is a mixture of Tagalog, English,
Spanish, and Japanese.11 Lubunca consists of Turkish, Romani, French, Greek, English, Armenian, Arabic, Italian, Bulgarian, Kurmanji, Russian, and Spanish.12 The
multicultural linguistic loans seem to indicate a certain degree of mobility on the part of the speakers, who seem to have come in contact with foreigners beyond their
immediate border neighbors, perhaps through working the seas, or through unsuccessful attempts to find better employment options abroad, but also due to dealing
with sailors and seamen as sex-workers themselves. And as Paul Baker says, we shouldnt throw out the possibility of the use of foreign languages as a way of coming

Much like the several spatiotemporal paradoxes that surround the closet,
the languages that could be its product seem to predate it in certain cases. Furthermore, who speaks or
spoke these languages long before the emergence of any contemporary understanding of homosexuality,
the homosexual, and notions such as trans* or queer becomes an even more sensitive topic in light of
queer modes of communication. Social Queetique As I can only fully access Kaliarda and to a certain extent Polari, one of the things I have noticed
is their lack of political correctness (or any sense of self-censorship for that matter), and the pejorative
terms used for both those who are socially looked down on by society (including the speakers themselves)
and their oppressors alike.14 This seems to indicate a certain adoption of the mores of the general
population in addition to their own, no matter how contradictory the two may be. 15 For instance, the words for an
across as more sophisticated and well-traveled.13

effeminate homosexual or the receptive partner in penetrative sex are always pejorative, and the same cannot be said of the terms for the insertive partner. The word
Kaliarda () itself has only negative meanings: mean, ugly, weird, with the verb kaliardevo () meaning to speak ill of someone.16 In
addition, there are pejorative terms for other groups that seem to already be looked down on by Greek society, and for whom there already exist several offensive
terms, like for the out-of-towners, the obese, the old, and the non-able-bodied. At the same time, there are plenty of derogatory terms for legal, religious, and political
authorities. This

points to the counter-cultural elements of the subculture that to some extent could be the
result of the constant friction with said authorities. It seems that at least by allowing for a mocking of
those seen as oppressors, or by placing themselves somewhere other than the lowest position in the social
hierarchy, queers can afford a moment of pleasure that derives from their deviance itself and their
organizing around it. So beyond the importance of a safer space, and the practicalities of communication
between precariously living subjects, another element of these languages is the proximity they produce
between the speakers, and most importantly the moments of humor and joy they allow for . For instance, small

moments of pleasure among fellow deviant subjects seem to be the case with much of Kaliarda and the way it is used, which sadly remains untranslatable. I can only
guess that this might well be the case for some of the other languages as well. As Elizabeth Freeman suggests ,

we might be able to glimpse in our

archives historically specific forms of pleasure that have not been institutionalized, and a deeper look at
queer language can definitely provide a confirmation of that. Sara Ahmed states: To be happily queer
might mean being happy to be the cause of unhappiness (at least in the sense that one agrees to be the
cause of unhappiness, even if one is not made happy by causing unhappiness), as well as to be happy with
where we get to if we go beyond the straight lines of happiness scripts. 18 Kaliarda also manages to make a somewhat
17

humorous social critique with terms like the Vatican () to mean a gay mens brothel; a word referring to London that translates as faggville/sisterville
(); Moutsemeni (), a word referring to the Virgin Mary as having been naively tricked; and smartasses gangbang
(),referring to a political party; and the Acropolis being referred to as tourist trap ().19 Such social critique is not unique to queer
slangs though; it is a phenomenon common among subcultural languages, as the same is true for hobo slang, spiv cant, magkika and so on. Paul Baker writes that in
anti-languages the social values of words and phrases tend to be more emphasized than in mainstream languages, a phenomenon termed sociolinguistic coding
orientation,20 while Nicholas Kontovas points out that the

slang of marginal groups betrays an alternative sociolinguistic

market, in which the value of markers from the majority market is neither intrinsically positive not
negative, but reassessed based on an alternative habitus which is particular to the field in which that group
interacts.21 Both Baker and Kontovas point to the specificities of the social universes these languages
produce, which much like the words themselves are borrowed, reappropriated, and creatively adjusted to
reflect the ever-changing needs and positions of the speakers . The overlapping of marginalized groups that operate with those slangs
offers an interesting insight into their intersectionality. Circus performers, sailors, prostitutes, and criminals, for instance, also used Polari. Polari also incorporates
elements of Thieves Cant from the seventeenth century and Hackney rhyming slang.22 Similarly, Kaliardaused primarily by (trans*) sex workers and effeminate
homosexuals, according to researcher Elias Petropoulosis also spoken by actors. It has borrowed and loaned lemmata from magkika and rebetika, two different
slang varieties used by other Greek subcultures.23 Pajub, apart from being used by the LGBTQ and queer community, is used by Candombl
practitioners.24Although

all of the above categories are in one way or another marginal, perhaps illegal, with
intense minoritarian traits, and although socialization between them could explain this transcultural
permeation of terms, it definitely evokes the issue of intersectionality within single subjects as the reason
that terms traveled so widely within large communities of deviants and outcasts. OpacitySome Passivity
Subjects do not become invisible when talking in these languages; they can actually attract more interest
from the public. But at the same time, the content of their discussion remains somewhat sealed and
opaque. It is through this practice, which is not vocal (although it is verbal) and which does not actively
disrupt the status quo (and yet builds an alternative social space), that passivity is generated as a political
action. I am referring to passivity not as a synonym for inactivity, but rather as a variety of tactics that
manage to subvert norms in ways that are not initially intended. While such cultural productions
(language, music, dance, performativities, etc.) are not created with the intent to take over or substitute
normative or mainstream culture, as other active modes of questioning would, they are forms of
resistance. They refuse to be assimilated and normalized, choosing instead to produce an alternative
that provides a safer space of expression and whichby the wayalso has the potential to mock and
subvert the norm. As Jonathan D. Katz says in reference to John Cages silences: Closeted people seek to ape dominant discursive forms, to participate as
seamlessly as possible in hegemonic constructions. They do not, in my experience, draw attention to themselves.25 Thus, finding opaque ways of
resisting seems to be a somewhat efficient option. The mannerisms and vocabulary of these slangs are
flexible and made to be customizable so they can better serve the speaker. Creation and use of queer
slangs is not a forceful destabilization of the status quo and the official/mainstream languages, but at the
same time, using them is a refusal of complete silence. Silence here refers both to not speaking and to not
speaking audibly against the regime. Queer slangs remain in a rather liminal space between inactivity and
straightforward revolutionary action. It is a form of creative resistance, a way of producing a parallel
social space of expression whose existence might in some ways indirectly affect the mainstream as well,
without that being the primary concern or objective behind them. These languages, when used in the
vicinity of outsiders, are indeed audible but not transparent; they remain opaque, allowing the
nonspeakers to identify the speakers as belonging to a certain group, but not being able to pinpoint what
group that is. This creates a rift in the homogenous social fabric. Katz addresses a similar paradox when he speaks of the irony in
the work of John Cage, a composer who made the loudness of silence his hallmark: Ironys distinction between what is said and what is meant opened up a space of
otherness that was not understood as specifically oppositional. As a readerly relation, irony is recognized, not written, understood not declared. And irony would
prove to be a means through which resistance could figure in a culture of coercion.27 Cage used silence as a means to not be silent/silenced, and in a very similar
manner queer subjects opt out of mainstream modes of communication and produce a separate sonic space with with a specific membership. While art is made in
order to be public and communicated (at least in most cases)and Cages art was very much sothese languages are supposed to be communicated within certain

I think the way they operate in producing rifts in wider society is by the
casual, perhaps accidental moments they engender. They dont need to be translated, and one does not
limits, those of the social space they help to produce.

need to be fully aware of the speakers subjectivities, but the sheer fact that certain nonconforming
individuals are speaking an unfamiliar dialect might be all it takes to create the impression that there is a
very much present, active, and creative community producing its own subculture , and that might already
be enough. These queer languages do not produce new, politically informed revolutionary terminology.
But they are very much present, occupying a terrain between explicit action-oriented politics and
compliance. They operate under cover of opacity and empower the marginalized, giving them space for
existence, expression, and safety. Queer languages are anti-authoritative and as such, according to Katz
says, they reveal the power of the individual to construct meaning unauthorized by dominant culture
and all the while, under its very nose.28 Its not by accident that during the Greek military dictatorship of the late 1960s and early 70s, popular
satirical theater used Kaliarda as a way to avoid censorship. For precarious words, they substituted Kaliarda words, introducing these words to a general audience
and letting this audience figure them out for themselves. In the UK a few years earlier, between 1965 and 1968, a BBC radio show that aired on Sunday afternoons
and addressed the entire family featured two out-of-work camp actors who used Polari at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in the UK. Kaliarda is
nontransparent not only because of its neologisms and semantically altered Greek words, but also because it is spoken very fast. The words acquire meaning and
specificity thanks to the contextualization offered by performative gestures and body language. Kaliarda is seen as the quintessence of camp performance, which itself
is often referred to as a method of resistance that, according to David Halperin, resists the power of the system from within.29 As Nicholas De Villiers writes: In an
insistence of Camp as a queer strategy of political resistance Moe Meyer clarifies his use of the term in the following way: What

queer signals is
an ontological challenge that displaces bourgeois notions of the Self as unique, abiding, and continuous
while substituting instead a concept of the Self as performative, improvisational, discontinuous and
processually constituted by repetitive and stylized acts. 30 I think queer languages could be one of the
answers to De Villierss questions in the preface of his book: What if we were to look at speech as
nonrevelatory, outside the parameters of confession and truth, the humanist desire for reflection, and the
ideal of transparency? What if we were to attend to its opacity? What would such an opacity look or
sound like, and what would be its function?31

Solvency: Queering language solves

Koerner 11. Michelle Koerner, professor of womens studies at Duke, Lines of Escape: Gilles Deleuzes Encounter with George
Jackson, Genre, Vol. 44, No. 2 Summer 2011 pg. 164

Writing On the first page of the provocatively titled essay On the Superiority of Anglo- American
Literature, Jacksons line is once again deployed, but here it is in reference to the idea that the highest
aim of literature is to escape (Deleuze and Parnet [1977] 2006: 26). An interesting convergence occurs here
between political and aesthetic practices, suggesting an indiscernibility between the two insofar as both
effectuate becomings. Genet had already made a similar point in describing Soledad Brother as a poem of love and combat,
but deploying Jackson with respect to the question of literature as such, this essay invites us to rethink a more profound relation between
blackness and writing. At some distance from traditional Marxist theory, Deleuze and Parnet insist we reject any account

of
literature as an imaginary representation of real conditions (literature as ideology) in order to consider
writing as a production at the level of real conditions .10 Writing, which is to say the unleashing of the
creative force of becoming in language (a line of flight), is not finally reducible to already existing
historical conditions, because such an act involves the production of new conditions. Literature, as they
underscore, is driven by a desire to liberate what existing conditions seek to govern, block, capture; as such,
it asserts a force in the world that existing conditions would otherwise reduce to nonexistence . Such
formulations enable a radical assertion: Soledad Brother, insofar as Jacksons letters defy the prison system and the
arrangement of a social order defined by the criminalization and capture of blackness, escapes what
would otherwise be thought of as the historical conditions of its production. Jacksons writing gains its real force by a
total refusal to adjust to existing conditions of capture, enslavement, and incarceration. And it does so concretely by rejecting the
subjectivity produced by the structures of what Genet, in his introduction to the letters, called the enemys language
(Jackson [1970] 1994: 336). Jackson (ibid.: 190, 305) himself underscores this dimension of the letters several times, remarking, I
work on words, and more precisely describing an operation by which the intensities of black resistance come
to be expressed in writing: We can connect the two, feeling and writing, just drop the syntax (ibid.: 331). The
specific feeling invoked here is linked first to Jacksons total rejection of the terms of captive societythe feeling of capture . . . this slave can
never adjust to it (ibid.: 40) but it further affirms a connection to the uncounted generations of enslaved black

labor: I feel all they ever felt, but double (ibid.: 233). In dropping the syntax, Jackson describes a method
for rearticulating the relationship between the historical experience of capture (and the multiplicity of

feeling carried across the passage) and the feeling of that experience. In his introduction to Soledad Brother, Genet
focuses almost entirely on how Jacksons use of language could be understood as a weapon precisely because
Jacksons lines were shot through with such violent hatred of the words and syntax of his enemy that he
has only one recourse: to accept this language but to corrupt it so skillfully the whites will be caught in
his trap (ibid.: 336).11 In corrupting the words and syntax of domination, one directly attacks the
conditions that destroy life, because language is here considered a mechanism by which ones thought,
agency, relations, and subjectivity are caught by Power . As can be seen, this idea is not one that Genet
imports into Soledad Brother. Rather, these are ideas that Jackson himself has already emphasized. Jacksons minor use of
a standard, major language thus contributes to Deleuze and Guattaris understanding of literature . This is to
say that, while commonly associated with Franz Kafka, the very notion of minor literature is also linked
to the encounter between black radicalism and French philosophy in the early 1970s . The connection forged
between writing and feeling in Jacksons letters sug- gests that the production of resistant subjectivities always involves a
dismantling of the dominant order of language. To drop the syntax names a strategy for forcibly
rearranging existing relations. But such a strategy also implies that one releases something else,
specifically the affective force of what resists those relations . Writing here becomes the active discharge
of emotion, the counterattack (Deleuze and Guattari [1980] 1987: 400). Or put differently, writing becomes a weapon.12
When Deleuze (1997: 143) states that in the act of writing theres an attempt to make life something more than
personal, of freeing life wherever its imprisoned, he seems to refer to something exceedingly abstract,
but Jacksons letters concretely assert writing as a freeing of lifeof blacknessfrom the terms of racist
imprisonment. As we will see, Jackson twists and pulls on the joints of language itself, quite literally seizing
on the standard syntax until it breaks. In doing so, what Jackson describes as his completely informal style
makes language an open field shot-through with fugitive uses (Jackson [1970] 1994: 208). Writing becomes an
expression of thought on the run, a way of mapping escape routes and counterattacks that cannot be
adequately understood in terms of structure or an understanding of language as an invariable system. But
escaping the existing dominant social order on lines of flight given the volatile intensities they assert in the world
carries a real danger. In A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari ([1980] 1987: 229) note the risk of the line of flight
crossing the wall, getting out of the black holes, but instead of connecting with other lines and each time
augmenting its valence, turns to destruction, abolition pure and simple, the passion of abolition. Here, a
restricted concept of abolition, understood simply as the destruction of the existing social order, runs the
risk of transforming the line of flight into a line of death. For this reason the issue of escape must not stop at
negation pure and simple but become one of construction and the affirmation of life. And it is for this reason
that the effort to connect lines of flight and to compose consistencies across these lines becomes a matter
of politics: an affirmation of a politics of reconstruction as the immanent condition of abolition . Jackson
([1970] 1994: 328) wrote from prison: Dont mistake this as a message from George to Fay. Its a message from the
hunted running blacks to those people of this society who profess to want to change the conditions that
destroy life. A collective imperative determines the reading of these lettersnamely, the necessity to put them in connection with other
lines. The circulation of these letters in France during the 1970s offers a compelling example of how
Jacksons message insinuated itself into what would seem an unlikely arrangement of French philosophy
in the 1970s. Yet it is precisely in understanding that moment in French thought as an effort to change
conditions that destroy life that we gain a sense of how Jacksons book arrives at its expressly stated
destination. In making the connection between Jacksons line and the lines of Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, Deleuze and his coauthors can be said to have gotten the message.