Here is the secret of all this “LGBTQ community” language. Why call it “the community”? It’s because the actual hallmark of community is *belonging,* in both senses. They pretend they’ll make you belong *with* them, but they’re really demanding that you belong *to* them. Thread.

In a real community—a church for example—you both have things in common with the other members, and owe them things. Ideally those ties of mutual obligation strengthen and enrich your relationships. You belong with them by belonging to them, and vice versa.

I can’t just shrug off the demands of a fellow parishioner the way I can those of a rando on the street, because we have agreed to care specially for one another *on the basis of our shared values, goals, and beliefs,* which are what make us belong together.

Political claims of community based on overbroad categories of identity, by contrast, pretend to offer you all of the “belonging with”: inclusion! Togetherness! Support!

But once you commit yourself you realize you actually have very little in common with these people.

Why should you? You don’t share common beliefs or goals. You just share a vague and poorly formulated idea of yourselves as “United” because of some one demographic fact about yourselves.

So you get none of the “belonging with” in any real sense, and all of the “belonging to.”

“You must think what we think, vote how we vote, act the way we act, or you’re betraying the community.” Surprise surprise: they don’t want to love you. They want to own you.

It’s right there in the name: identity *politics*. Power is what this is about. Don’t give them yours.