Queer

Being queer means constantly questioning what’s considered “normal” and why that norm gets privileged over other ways of being. It means criticizing who sets these norms and recognizing the privilege that comes with being able to identify as “normal.”

Being Queer Means… | HuffPost Voices

“Queer” can be used to describe someone’s sexual orientation or stand as a political statement. Its definition has many dimensions, from gender identification to a resistance against structural rigidity to a strange sensation or state of being. “Queer” isn’t a word that many people clearly understand when used to describe yourself. Allow me to elaborate what being queer personally means to me, as “queer” means different things to different people.

Being queer is first and foremost a state of mind. It is a worldview characterized by acceptance, through which one embraces and validates all the unique, unconventional ways that individuals express themselves, particularly with respect to gender and sexual orientation. It is about acknowledging the infinite number of complex, fluid identities that exist outside the few limited, dualistic categories considered legitimate by society. Being queer means believing that everyone has the right to be themselves and express themselves without being judged or hated because that doesn’t fit in with what’s normal. Being queer means challenging everything that’s considered normal.

Being queer means ceasing to think in binaries like “male” or “female,” “gay” or “straight,” “monogamous” or “non-monogamous,” because there are more than two sides to every person and every context. It means being aware of and OK with the fact that our own identities and sexualities are always in flux, never static. Being queer means recognizing that there are alternate gender identities, such as transgender or genderqueer or androgynous folks, and respecting that these identities are just as legitimate as those that are visible.

Being Queer Means… | HuffPost Voices

“Queer,” in any case, does not designate a class of already objectified pathologies or perversions; rather, it describes a horizon of possibility whose precise extent and heterogeneous scope cannot in principle be delimited in advance.

Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography

Queer has to do with being different. And how everyone is different from everyone else. Some people are different because they are gay or because of their gender. You can be different in lots of ways. We are all a little different, or weird, or even strange. And that’s a good thing.

UNICORNS are QUEER HORSES!! – Queer: QUEER KID STUFF #3

The universe always turns out to be more complicated and queer than we think it is.

The Disordered Cosmos : A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred
It opens at a young age
That all-protective closet
Just lock the door
And settle in among the raincoats
The longer you stay in there
The more you'll get distorted
The more contorted all your lies will have to be

Don't wait a moment longer:
Stand up and turn the doorknob
And I'll tell you my secret
If you will tell me yours

--Compulsive Liar by Ezra Furman

“That there are so many forces that would have all of us queers be less free, if not dead, makes us a community by default. Pride is a torch that needs only to be lit because of the darkness, and the darkness is not going away any time soon. I wish I didn’t have this in common with all these various people. But I do.”

Ezra Furman’s Summer of Pride Mix: Listen | Billboard – Billboard

Further reading,


Posted

in

by

Tags: