"Our invisibility is the essence of our oppression. And until we eliminate that invisibility, people are going to be able to perpetuate the lies and myths about gay people"
About this Quote
Invisibility isn’t just absence here; it’s a political technology. Jean O’Leary frames oppression as something that thrives not only on violence or bad laws, but on a vacuum of representation that lets everyone else author the story. If you don’t show up in the public record, you don’t get to correct the record. That’s the knife edge of her claim: the closet doesn’t merely protect individuals from harm, it also protects society from accountability.
The line is built like a chain of causality. “Essence” is an uncompromising word, a refusal to treat erasure as a side effect. Then O’Leary pivots to consequences: invisibility is what makes “lies and myths” sustainable, because myths require distance. They need gay people to remain an abstraction - a rumor, a punchline, a pathology, a scapegoat. Visibility, in her framing, isn’t personal branding or confessional culture; it’s epistemic power. It’s forcing reality into the room so that propaganda has less oxygen.
The context matters: O’Leary came of age in a movement split between “respectability” and confrontation, and she helped found Lesbian Feminist Liberation and worked with the National Gay Task Force. In the post-Stonewall era and through the AIDS crisis, public silence wasn’t neutral - it was policy, it was media practice, it was family pressure. Her message is a strategic rebuke: you can’t win rights while letting opponents define you. Visibility becomes both shield and weapon, a demand to be seen so the myth-makers lose their monopoly.
The line is built like a chain of causality. “Essence” is an uncompromising word, a refusal to treat erasure as a side effect. Then O’Leary pivots to consequences: invisibility is what makes “lies and myths” sustainable, because myths require distance. They need gay people to remain an abstraction - a rumor, a punchline, a pathology, a scapegoat. Visibility, in her framing, isn’t personal branding or confessional culture; it’s epistemic power. It’s forcing reality into the room so that propaganda has less oxygen.
The context matters: O’Leary came of age in a movement split between “respectability” and confrontation, and she helped found Lesbian Feminist Liberation and worked with the National Gay Task Force. In the post-Stonewall era and through the AIDS crisis, public silence wasn’t neutral - it was policy, it was media practice, it was family pressure. Her message is a strategic rebuke: you can’t win rights while letting opponents define you. Visibility becomes both shield and weapon, a demand to be seen so the myth-makers lose their monopoly.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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