Closing 2025: Humiliation and the Reclamation of Power
The year queer progress stalled. Humiliation returned to our politics and lives. A reflection on how we reclaim power amidst our crisis of unity, leadership and imagination.
Yearly retrospectives can feel dull. Years are an artificial way to measure time—especially when it comes to queer liberation. Change for us happened gradually, through conversations at family dinners and in the office. Sometimes, though, progress felt like it leaped: when a law, a TV show, or a dramatic event captures the public’s attention and seems to change hearts and minds. I learned this protesting California’s Proposition 8 in 2008, celebrating marriage equality in 2015, and seeing India recriminalize homosexuality in 2009 before repealing Section 377 in a 2018 Supreme Court decision. Progress is uneven. Perspective matters. You have to look at the overall trend. But many of us seem to agree that 2025 was a turning point.
As I reread my writing this year, especially my every‑other‑Sunday reflections, I was struck by how erratic it sometimes felt. In March, I argued for a global LGBTQ+ virtual nation; by September, I suggested queer Americans might need to arm themselves. Today, writing from the calm of a much-needed break in the mountains, I feel less isolationist and more pacifist. Still, I remain convinced that this moment demands a gigantic shift in our approach to queer liberation.
Much of my reflections this year stems from a feeling of humiliation. Larry Kramer once wrote, “Humiliation is so essential to Catholics. And to faggots!” I happen to be both, so this year felt grimly familiar and enraging. The U.S. Government’s abrupt disengagement, our erasure from the public eye in Russia and China, the corporate retreat, calls for a global ban on surrogacy, and the relentless denunciation of trans youth and their parents all reignited feelings of shame.
Our fight for dignity, joy, and the chance to contribute has been labeled as “woke,” weak, and self-indulgent. Labels that reflect the way the majority still perceives us: as undeserving. Society’s renewed obsession with masculinity and “warrior mentality” felt like being sent back to middle school, where being queer was the worst thing one could be - a trend that might be coming back, the resurgence of vintage homophobia (see my post titled “A Queer Life”). Our symbols and heroes in the U.S.—Harvey Milk, Admiral Rachel Levine, the Pride flag, World AIDS Day, the Orlando memorial, rainbow crosswalks —were trampled. And we did nothing about it.
Being gay has always meant confronting powerlessness. In Angels in America, Roy Cohn defines “homosexuals” not by desire but by their lack of power- those with “zero clout.” This year reminded us how little that dynamic has changed. Even friends and family members hinted that we had flown the rainbow flag too high and were now being “right-sized.” Our modest gains—2 percent representation in the U.S. Congress, 1 percent in the Fortune 500 Boardroom, the HRC Corporate Equality Index, the comfort of Will & Grace reruns, or the success of “Heated Rivalry” —proved to be very little power compared to our opponents’ dominance of media, political and judicial institutions and the alliance of billionaires and evangelicals. The tools that once gave us power—rage, visibility, cultural relevance—are suddenly yielding diminishing returns. What we built was not enough.
I also wrote about a crisis of unity. Faced with an unflattering reflection of our community, too many of us instinctively said, “That’s not me,” and quietly checked out.
Our champions also unraveled. We had outsourced our liberation to Democrats, corporations, and the human rights framework-none of which have figured out their role in the new world order. Democrats struggle to articulate a clear vision for citizens; corporations are retreating to a narrow view of shareholder primacy; and Americans have driven the final nail into the coffin of the human rights framework.
I also addressed our crisis of leadership. Acknowledging that we played a part in this: lack of direction, vested leadership interests, and a scarcity mindset that holds us back. I questioned our relationship with elites and donors, and our tendency to shame the very gays who led our movement (see my recent piece on the A-Gays). I also wrote about queer loneliness as a symptom of our inability to take care of each other. l I argued that purpose, community, and honesty—not guilt or orthodoxy—must guide us forward. I also wrote about biology and consciousness, arguing that LGBTQ+ people are not just a coalition but a people, capable of uniting across geography, class, and identity.
To me, that is the fundamental truth emerging from 2025. We are a people. Or at least we can decide to be a people that transcends geography, class, identities, and borders. And we must make it attractive to be a people. We are intelligent, talented, and capable. Technology is on our side; it bridges our physical dispersion. Pride has curdled into shame once again, but reclaiming it will require discipline, consistency, and courage. Not seeing this potential is our third crisis: the crisis of imagination.
To me, the LGBTQ+ journey, both collective and personal, is still just beginning. At 47, I am still figuring out what a queer life is. I think we collectively are a very young People, and we are still figuring out our purpose. 2025 marked the end of borrowed progress and the beginning of authentic self-determination. The next frontier demands that we act as one, invest in our leaders, and imagine new forms of power for our global community. I opened the year by writing, “Knowing our North Star will be key to staying optimistic and effective”. That remains my wish.
Fabrics has a lot of wisdom here, but unfortunately without historical regard.
Harry Hay was the first person to publicly declare that gay men were an “oppressed class.” He did this in the 1950s, and got this language from his years in the American Communist Party, which was the first major political organization in the US to openly be for Black civil rights. He started the Mattachine Society in LA and then was quickly booted from it because of his “Commie” ties.
The Gay Liberation Front, the first and most radical LGBTQ group to form after Stonewall, wanted a complete dismantling of political power: it had always been held against us, why expect anything from the Democrats, the Socialists, or the Communists? I was in GLF, and realized that our fears and subversive attitudes towards power would destroy the organization. You need power at some point to organize. But the early LGBT movement feared and distrusted it—with good cause. What we need to do, and must always remember is: put the people first and the power will follow. You don’t need millions of people, just a few hundred, even dozens, who are committed to the cause, and who know how to elicit the support necessary to function.
I have long contended that all of us in the far-flung queer community have some things in common, but that doesn’t mean we have to love each other—just respect each other. That has been a hard thing for queer people of my generation to do, after so many centuries of hiding, personal ruin, and pain. But we need to band together again like we did in 1970 when the first Christopher Street Liberation Day March brought out about 11,000 people, openly gay, for the first time in the history of the world.
Perry Brass
President of the Gay Liberation Front Foundation. glf-foundation.org
Well written, as always. You provide such an essential voice, especially in this time of such duress and so many threats.
From my perspective as a (very) out and proud transgender woman, 2025 has taught me how challenging and at times impossible it is for the transgender and nonbinary community to communicate to cisgender people the sense of authenticity, meaning, and liberation - joy - in finally "arriving" in the gender identity we claim and live. Cisgender people just don't get it, and many of them continue to feel threatened or indignant that we have the audacity to stray from the sex and gender assigned to us at birth. While I do not know who is tracking this phenomenon, it certainly felt to me that online hostility, vitriol, hatred, and threats toward my community accelerated greatly this past year, starting with Trump's declaration on his first day in office that we simply do not exist - leading to a very real threat of removing our authentic gender markers from our passports (and possibly other legal documents too). The eviction without cause of trans folk from the armed forces, and the subsequent revisions to their military service records to erase their transgender status, seemed to elicit little more than a shrug from the public, and not much more from our allies in the LGB community.
Since so many cisgender people show very little inclination to open their minds and hearts to our existence, our remaining tactic (such as it is) for inclusion, safety, and respect is simply to claim that we pose no threat and cause no harm to cisgender folk (of any sexual orientation), and as such a non-threatening and tiny (less than 1% of the population), can't you just ignore us and leave us to live our lives as we see fit. It is a very modest (and minimalist) request, but with the current right wing political "usefulness" of blaming all matter of social ills on transgender people, I have little hope of even this tactic gaining ground in 2026.
We are left with an earnest need for principled leadership in this country to recognize and respect our humanity, our dignity, and our authenticity. We will need strong and persistent support from allies - gay and straight - to move the dial on this goal. Allies such as Fabrice.