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alvizbeldamarcos · 6 years ago

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Bi, Bi, Bi: Bisexual Invisibility in the Philippines

by Jessica Alviz

History and Background

Bi Flags at the NYC Pride March from Medium

In this more progressive world, people are increasingly letting go of traditionalist views and accepting that the world is not in black and white: Caucasians are no longer deemed as the superior race, it is now relatively acceptable for boys to wear skirts and makeup, and girls who like girls and boys who like boys? Completely normal. However, the world isn’t as pleasant for those who like both. Until today, bisexual erasure and invisibility remains a problem. Bisexual erasure is when “the existence or legitimacy of bisexuality (either in general or in regard to an individual) is questioned or denied outright” (GLAAD, 2014). Bisexuals have described their experience as being neither here nor there, as they are attracted to more than one gender. Others—whether they are heterosexual or from the LGBTQ+ community themselves—have thought that bisexuals are either not straight enough to be gay, or not gay enough to be straight. A bisexual has narrated about this cognitive dissonance in Bisexual Blues (Hase, 2005) stating that she finds it easier to define her sexuality through the people that she dates, and because she is dating a man, she feels as if she does not belong in the LGBTQ+ community, because she is deemed as “straight.” She mentioned that she “feels as though she has to exchange an entire community to be with one person.” Furthermore, bisexuality is commonly described as a “phase” for people before fully discovering that they are actually either gay or lesbian (San Francisco Human Rights Commission, 2011). Some even believe that bisexuals are actually just heterosexuals who are experimenting with their sexuality (Serano, 2010).

The marginalization of bisexuals within the LGBTQ+ community is not new: during the first LGBTQ+ movements, bisexuals were excluded because they were being accused of “reinforcing the gender binary” (Serano, 2010). Serano states that this discrimination is not surprising. Because bisexuals can be attracted to the opposite gender, homosexuals find the existence of bisexuals threatening to their own identity. This is due to the heteronormative notion of homosexuality being phase and the notion that homosexuals can become straight if they try. This also explains why bisexuals are accepted only conditionally in the LGBTQ+ community. For instance, if a bisexual man is in a relationship with another man, he is included in the community. However, once that bisexual man dates a woman, especially if this woman is cisgender (identifies as the gender they were assigned to at birth), the man would be ostracized and marginalized.

Philippine Context

Although the LGBTQ+ community is slowly getting more recognition in the country, bisexuals remain invisible. This is most probably due to the following reasons: first, majority of Filipinos hold traditional and conservative views rooted in the teachings of the Catholic Church. Second, the Philippines has its own cultural perceptions about the LGBTQ+ community.

Homophobia is not as widespread or intense as one would expect of a predominantly Catholic country. However, Christian views on homosexuality remain almost adamant. After all, in theory, Catholics believe that following the Church’s teachings is key to being a good member of their religion, and the Church portrays homosexuality as something immoral. Sharing the Bible’s heteronormative outlook and existing gender order, the Church views homosexuality as an ethical concern, a medical condition, and/or a sexual misidentity (Joaquin, 2014). Though homosexuals are not outright excommunicated from the Church, they are discouraged from acting on their homosexual desires. Homosexuality is treated as something that needs to be corrected or cured, and the Church uses prayers, sacraments, celibacy, and guilt in order to “fix” a person’s homosexuality. And because bisexuality, in simplest terms, can be understood as being straight and gay at the same time, of course believers of the Catholic Church would urge bisexuals to “turn” heterosexual.

Vice Ganda from ABS-CBN

With the Church’s dominant ideologies of heteronormativity, as well as the Western dichotomous view on gender and sexuality brought about by the Spaniards (de Jong, 2017), there is a good amount of cultural shame linked to being homosexual in the Philippines. In the first place, there are no Filipino terms for “sexuality,” nor categories for sexual orientation (Ceperiano, Santos Jr., Alonzo, & Ofreneo, 2016). There are only street words--which might even be considered as derogatory--to describe such categories, because homosexuality is not talked about at all (Joaquin, 2014). Furthermore, the concepts of sexuality and gender are merged. While the Westerners’ concept of a gay man is a man who is sexually attracted to other men, it is not quite the same for Filipinos. In the Philippines, the closest local term for “gay” is bakla, which is an effeminate man attracted to other men (de Jong, 2017). The bakla is even often described as “having a woman’s heart stuck in a man’s body,” a representation much closer to the Western concept of a transgender rather than a gay man. The concept of bakla is also heavily attached to certain stereotypes, most of which come from mainstream media (Justiniani & Sierras, 2015). Typically, the bakla is portrayed as a man who dresses and acts like a woman, a flamboyant and theatrical man, or comic relief. This entertainment factor of a bakla--seen also in the most prominent bakla figure in the Philippines, comedian Vice Ganda--is perhaps one of the reasons why they are tolerated in the society.

The Philippine concept of a lesbian is also mixed with gender expression. The local term for this is tomboy, which, from the name itself, is also attached to the image of a masculine woman (Tiempo, n.d.). A tomboy is characterized by being boyish, tough, and manly, with cross-dressing as a major feature of their personality. Compared to the bakla, they are not as present in Philippine media.

Butch (Masculine Lesbian) and Femme (Feminine Lesbian) Wedding Picture from Pinterest

Given these, the only Philippine concepts for gays and lesbians are stereotypes. Once they act outside of these societal expectations, they are not considered socially acceptable. This is also possibly due to the heteronormative beliefs that the country has. Heteronormativity is the concept in which heterosexuality is the norm and homosexuality is deviant (Joaquin, 2014). To justify homosexual relationships, the Philippines has attached gender to sexuality. This enables homosexual relationships to fit into a heteronormative standard: because the bakla is effeminate, and the tomboy is masculine, the concept of a man and a woman in a relationship still exists if the bakla or tomboy’s partner is of the opposite gender expression.

Since Philippine homosexuals are subjected to this stereotyping, it is only natural for those that lie in between the homo-hetero spectrum to be the same. The Philippines already has misconceptions about homosexuals themselves--what more for bisexuals, those who love both? They have no concept of this at all, evident in how there is general confusion about who Filipinos perceive as bisexual (Tan, 1996). Sometimes, gay men identify as bisexual even though they are only attracted to men to indicate that they are the “straight-acting” type of gay. Bisexuality is not a concept written into Filipino language and culture. An example of bi-invisibility is in the following passage:

Sam (24 years old, F): Sam’s mother, upon hearing about how her boyfriend sexually abused Sam, told Sam that her boyfriend would not harass a “lesbian” like Sam even though Sam explicitly came out to her as bisexual. Sam’s friends also ask her questions like “Why can’t [you] just date a guy” and “Why can’t [you] just date a girl?” (International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, 2015), implying that they only consider “lesbian” and “straight” as the legitimate sexual orientations.

There is also a lack of research about bisexuals in the Philippines, as seen in how there is a lack of data and respondents in interviews (Rainbow Rights Project, 2014). Available research is primarily about gays or lesbians. To make up for the lack of available research, short interviews were conducted with teenage Filipino bisexuals. The questions in the interview mainly focused on perceptions about being bisexual, bisexual acceptance, and bisexual visibility.

Several of the respondents mentioned that there have been times when their bisexuality was accused of being a phase, or otherwise an illegitimate sexuality. A participant said that when she came out to her peers, they did not believe her at first, as she had only ever talked about her male crushes around them. They even accused her of only calling herself bisexual for the sake of being trendy, as she mentioned her sexuality when “coming out videos” were popular. Another participant, who came from an all-girls high school, mentioned that when she talked about her female crushes, her friends would merely laugh along but insist that it was merely a phase and that she would become more attracted to men in college.

A respondent mentioned that due to the notion of bisexuality being a phase, she herself found it difficult to accept her sexuality:

My acceptance of my bisexuality was difficult because I feared it would mean that my identity up until that point would be rendered invalid. So in the past, when people were doubtful about my sexuality, it was because people didn’t think I was gay, and it made me very conflicted because I had a feeling they were somewhat right. Deep inside, I still feel like it’s a bit of a loss that I accepted being bisexual, and that currently I’m dating a guy. But I always tell myself that my sexuality is a part of a spectrum, and that I don’t have to prove myself to anyone. I understand my sexuality, and that is enough.

Again, it can be seen that there is cognitive dissonance: this bisexual is defining her sexuality through external factors, i.e. the person that she is currently attracted to at the time. There is confusion because of the false sexuality binary that was socially constructed by people, leading them to believe that one can only either be gay or straight.

As for the visibility of bisexuality in general, the respondents agree that it is not acknowledged much. One respondent mentioned that most people are skeptical about bisexuality, often saying that it is not a legitimate sexual orientation and that bisexuals are merely “confused” about their “real” sexuality. Another participant said that she feels that bisexuals are not represented enough in media--the LGBTQ+ community in general is underrepresented, but she mentions that compared to the more “definite” sexualities of gays and lesbians, bisexuals are barely seen on television and film. A third respondent lamented the extreme underrepresentation of bisexuals. She said that even in a school as liberal as the University of the Philippines, being heterosexual is the norm (it is a co-ed school after all). She also mentioned the situation of the LGBTQ+ people: “If people are gay, they either represent a spectacle or the movement. There’s no in-between region for bisexual people, we’re not defined by a certain institution [and] not even by a stereotype.”

The participants had differing views about the situation of bisexuals in the Philippines. When asked if bisexuality is accepted or at least acknowledged in the Philippines, a respondent mentioned that it is acknowledged but not accepted. She blames on the patriarchal and traditionalist values that majority of the country hold. Another participant agreed with this, saying that it is not accepted, though she says this is mostly due to Catholicism. She also said that it is mostly the older generations that do not tolerate it; most of the youth are more accepting towards bisexuality, which she correlates with awareness gained from social media as well as general open-mindedness. A third also shares this sentiment, saying that acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community in general is conditional: “ I have noticed the trend wherein we need to be beneficial for straight people for them to accept us. Our LGBT members to compensate more by being funny or being the fun friend.” This is in line with the aforementioned “entertainment factor” that is promoted by Vice Ganda.

One participant, however, says that bisexuality is not acknowledged at all: bisexuality is hardly a topic even in gay organizations, and bisexual representation in pride marches is minimal. She says that in general, people are unable to comprehend bisexuality, as they believe that it is merely a sexuality used as a label for justifying promiscuity. Another respondent echoes this:

Bisexuality is not entirely accepted. In my opinion, many don’t even understand what it means. The culture in the Philippines towards LGBTQ+ is more tolerant than accepting, and this leads to ignorance or apathy towards the community. Here, mostly gays and lesbians are the emphasized and known orientations, and this selective knowledge begets ignorance towards the feelings towards bisexuals, which may affect one’s perceptions about validity.

youtube

Bi the way, we exist | Viet Vu from Youtube

Conclusion

The fight is not quite over yet. Despite the LGBTQ+ community's growing acceptance, they remain marginalized in society, having to fit into the expectations that Philippine culture imposes on them. Furthermore, with only the recognition and focus on gays and lesbians, the “singular” sexual orientations, other sexual preferences are left in the dark, particularly bisexuality.

Because of the heteronormative and dichotomous view on gender and sexuality, bisexuality is, if not ignored, misunderstood. It is not seen as a valid sexual orientation and is typically accused of being an excuse for promiscuity, a confused sexuality, or the stepping stone to being “fully gay.” The Philippines still has a long way to go before everyone becomes truly free. I am unsure if will be around to see it, but as someone who also loves regardless of gender, I will gladly join the fight.

References

de Jong, A. (2017, February 15). Bakla. The creation of a Philippine gay-identity. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/5155866/Bakla._The_creation_of_a_Philippine_gay-identity.

GLAAD. (2014, September 19). Erasure of Bisexuality. Retrieved from GLAAD: https://www.glaad.org/bisexual/bierasure

Hase, M. (2005, November-December). Bisexual Blues. Off Our Backs, pp. 18-19.

Joaquin, A. (2014). Carrying the Cross: Being Gay , Catholic , and Filipino. Sociology and Anthropology Student Union Undergraduate Journal. 1 (2014). 17-28. Retrieved from http://summit.sfu.ca/item/15203.

Justiniani, B., & Sierras, N. (2015, August 13). Has love really won? Retrieved from The Lasallian: http://thelasallian.com/2015/08/13/has-love-really-won/.

Serano, J. (2010, October 9). Bisexuality does not reinforce the gender binary. Retrieved from The Scavenger: http://www.thescavenger.net/sex-gender-sexual-diversity/glb-diversity/467-bisexuality-does-not-reinforce-the-gender-binary-39675.html.

San Francisco Human Rights Commission. (2011, March). Bisexual Invisibility: Impacts and Recommendations. Retrieved from San Francisco Human Rights: https://sf-hrc.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=989

Tiempo, J.M. (n.d.) Descriptive analysis on the portrayal of gays and lesbians in Filipino films since 1985-2015. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/29636048/Descriptive_analysis_on_the_portrayal_of_gays_and_lesbians_in_Filipino_films_since_1985-2015.

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the-habitual-wordsmith · 7 years ago

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Trans Relations In The Black Community: A Love Letter.

I love my community. I honestly do. Black people are the most vilified, antagonized, unduly criticized people walking God’s green Earth. But we are not beyond reproach. There are many topics that are still taboo in the Black community because of deeply entrenched misogyny and the traditional need to “keep up appearances” in the street. My grandmother used to tell my cousin and I, no matter what happens in the house, you don’t let it spill outside. Which is cool when it comes to not bringing conflicts into the outside world because not everyone needs to know your business, but when it applies to things like mental illness, homosexuality, etc., it’s suppressive and disabling. As far as the burgeoning topic of gender identity and sexuality are concerned, we are still very oppressive towards our own because of the deep-seated hypermasculinity that pervades each and every level of our community, and it is damaging it viciously. This year alone, countless trans women of color have been murdered. Black men are still afraid of being caught with trans women because of what they perceive their peers will think about them, conflating trans women for men in women’s clothing, and that damaging perception is what perpetrates violence against trans women.

We don’t afford trans women the same rights we afford cisgender women because we still conflate genitalia for gender. Admittedly, I am unpacking the same damning concepts and misconstructions because of the socialization I’ve been exposed to all my life in a world where my masculinity is constantly being subjected to social cues and critiques; from family to the music we identify with to relationships, my manhood is always coopted by socialization. So why wouldn’t I buck against gender identity? Why wouldn’t I be upset when I date someone that I thought was a cisgender woman and is actually a trans woman; ain’t I gay for that? My homies are gonna turn on me so I should hide the fact that I ever did that, right? What will everyone think?

While I don’t excuse that mentality at all, I understand where it comes from. It takes a lot to undo the destructive primal chest-beating, psychosomatic reaffirmation of my masculinity and what makes me a man, and rather than address those issues, it is significantly easier to abandon all understanding and tolerance and simply be an asshole. But in being an asshole, the assertion that trans folk aren’t worth learning their identities and respecting them enough to address them as such, as well as not being antagonistic towards them is exactly the fight our community goes through. Yes, our discrimination is different systematically, but the origins are the same: I don’t value you as a human being therefore I don’t give a shit about who you are and what you stand for and I will dehumanize your existence at any opportunity that I get. That is hypocritical. We can’t very well demand the respect of “Black lives mattering” and then exclude Black trans folk because they don’t fit in with our heteronormative concepts. We don’t need to demand that trans folk meet our comfortable sensibilities; we need to meet their humanity at the base level. It literally does nothing to you to respect pronouns. It literally does nothing to you to respect identities. You’re not subscribing to some sort of wicked agenda, you’re being a decent human being.

I currently date a trans woman. She is genderfluid, meaning she identifies either as a woman or agender. Currently, her pronouns are “she/her”, but a lot of genderfluid people identify as “they/them”. She was afraid to come out to me because she felt like she would scare me off, which is the disheartening fear a lot of trans folk feel, and that’s just one of the minimum, upfront feelings. “Is this person gonna reject me? Is this person gonna hurt me? Is this person gonna kill me?” An interesting aspect of our relationship is the conversations that we have about her identity and how she’s learning a lot about herself every day, to which she imparts knowledge on me. We hit bumps in the road, because I’m still unpacking a lot of things myself. I’m learning how to unlearn all these aspects of toxic masculinity that have been dormant in me all my life. I still deal with little microaggressions that want to come out of my mouth and I have to censor myself a lot because I don’t want to be insensitive or unconsciously cruel. I still find myself on social media, talking in trans spaces and stepping on toes by centering the conversation on me, and that’s wrong. I still find myself misgendering some folks and apologizing profusely for it, to which I’m met with “don’t be sorry, be better”, and initially, it hurts my fragile male ego to be told that, but then I understand. How many times have we, as black people, had to defend our humanity to white people? How tiring does it get? It gets just as tiring for a trans person to be like “Look, I identify as this, my pronouns are these, please learn them”.

After I let her know it’s safe to come out to me and she would never have any issues with me as far as understanding and acceptance are concerned, I asked her what she deals with mentally, like what goes on in the mind of a genderfluid person. Individually, sometimes she feels feminine, but most of the time, she feels like she’s genderless, neither masculine nor feminine. We talk often about trans-affective subjects, and I’ve learned that it’s often exhausting to keep asking researchable things but she enjoys educating me, a luxury a lot of heterosexual cisgender partners aren’t afforded. I feel like it’s strengthened our bond even further. I’ve never dealt with a person quite like her and I feel privileged to know her, let alone be with her, in a world where she is targeted as a woman of color, as well as a member of the LGBT+ community. I feel like my role as an ally is increasing and that makes me elated because I genuinely care about her struggles, as well as the struggles of everyone else who has to deal with the stares and the aggressions and the violence and the social media condescension. I stand for all oppressed people, and I believe that empowering the Black community with knowledge will foster understanding, acceptance and tolerance, because we should all stand united, shoulder to shoulder, especially in these times where we all have targets firmly painted on our backs.

#just my thoughts #black community #black people #people of color #poc #trans #trans folk #lgbtqia #essays

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ecocore · 7 years ago

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FUCKING PANSIES:

Queer Poetics, Plant Reproduction, Plant Poetics, Queer Reproduction

Caspar Heinemann

with images from Lee Pivnik

‘Waking, I was certain my room was host to a demon; terrified, I watched the remorseless eyes in the half light, till dawn gave me the courage to bolt shivering with fear to my parents’ bed. My father laughed: ‘Don’t be such a pansy, Derek.’ -Derek Jarman, Modern Nature

Don’t be such a pansy, Viola tricolor, violet, heart’s-ease, love-in-idleness; Pansy goes by many names, and many names fit into and fall under ‘Don’t be such a pansy, _______.’ Don’t be such a pansy, even if there’s a remorseless demon in your room, crouching in the dark, ready to tear you apart. Even if there’s a whole remorseless world out there, even in your parents’ bedroom, ready and waiting to tear you apart.

The pansy has remained a staple in anti-queer lexicon since the last century, the humble violet symbolising weakness, effeminacy, all things effete, wimpy, and generally flowery. Propagating alongside its siblings sissy, fairy, and faggot, the pansy is a resilient flower. However, its roots as an insult are not strictly horticultural. The etymology of pansy (flower) is the French pensée, the past tense of ‘to think’, and a feminine reflexive. This occurred when, in a dubious feat of anthropomorphising, the pansy was seen to resemble a person leant over in intense contemplation, which in turn led to it becoming a symbol of remembrance. As an insult, it was applied to the ineffectual intellectual, implying an emasculating failure to embody a forceful, active, masculine ideal. The quality of thoughtfulness was already both feminized and feminizing, but the first known use of the word to describe gay men was not until 1925 (Partridge, 1984).[1] At some point along the way, the studious pensée became the flamboyant pansy, the femininity of the insult taking precedence over any other qualities. With ‘pansy’ having no non-floral meaning in English, in popular usage any association with remembrance is forgotten. The intellectual intellectual basis of the insult becomes obscured through time and translation and all that we are left with is the ontological relation of a human subject to the Viola tricolor itself, and the vague sense that there is something not right in the boy who thinks too much, looks too closely.

When the insult ‘pansy’ is thrown, there exists the obvious implication that the victim is themselves, physically, a pansy. But alongside this, to be a pansy is most likely to also be someone with an affinity for pansies, someone who would rather draw flowers in the garden than kick a ball around, a boy who would rather have a bunch of arum lilies than a brace of pistols (Jarman, 1992, p28). Being a pansy is seen as both a cause and an effect of an underlying affection for the delicate, the pretty, and the decorative. Pansies love pansies because they are pansies, which is why they are pansies. The love of pansies is a red flag on the slippery slope to becoming a pansy, and the pansy is a pansy because pansy is the word for people who love pansies. This is not an intentional morphing, but rather, after all those hours in the garden someone turns and says ‘Don’t be such a pansy’, and then there is a demon in your room, and it is clear a pansy is a bad thing to be, which is strange to consider for someone who loves pansies, but lots of things are going to be strange from now on.

The homophobia of the insult pansy is not just the implication of effeminacy from association with the flower itself, but the homophobic condemnation of perceived sameness. The pansies love of pansies is taboo in part because they are a pansy, there is no heterosexual difference in pansy desire. However, the pansy-pansy identification is not the same as Narcissus falling in love with his own image, not the egocentric self-adoration of the daffodil leaning into the pond. The pansy is intensely relational and curious, and loves other pansies (and daffodils and geraniums and buttercups and snowdrops). Remember, the pansy becomes a pansy through perceived similarity and/or attachment to other pansies. The initial recognition was with something they were yet to become. In this way, pansy is inherently a collective identity, inhabiting a multiple temporality. To clarify, this is not an essentialist argument that all pansies like pansies, as in, ‘all people perceived as queer men like Viola tricolor.’ But rather, that its formulation as a generalised homophobic insult, potentially applied to any queer man, or any person read as such, means that ‘queer men like queer men’ (uncontroversial) can be read as ‘pansies like pansies’. The collision of this meaning, with the horticultural association, begins to create a framework for a positive understanding of queerness, reproduction, survival and the natural.

As with many anti-queer insults, an underlying assumption in pansy is that there is an unnaturalness to effeminacy, that it signifies something gone astray that would never thrive or even survive in the state of nature, a rupture in the normatively gendered Arcadian ideal. The pansy clearly cannot be a real man, because he is a flower, and flowers are not men, and men are not flowers. But even the most ardent homophobe would find it hard to argue that flowers are not ‘natural’, even in all their selectively bred garden centre glory. Whilst not wanting to perpetuate the myth of queer sex as inherently unreproductive, it is important to not deny that queerness still exists with a turbulent relationship to reproduction, in the biological sense. At the heart of this is the existence of queerness in relation to a medicalised discourse that understands the queer subject in terms of biology, in a way that is inherently naturalised, assuming queerness as something to be located in genes and hormones, glands and chromosomes.

This is not a form of acceptance or understanding, but rather a naturalisation that implies a failure, a departure from the script of healthy, normative heterosexuality and gender. When the queer body is accepted as a natural form, it is always a defective natural body, an abnormality that reinforces the norm. Homophobic and transphobic discourse has adopted this position in recent years, in reaction to the realisation that an understanding of the queer body as unnatural has the unintended consequence of devaluing any biologically based understanding of gender and sexuality, rendering the cisgender heterosexual body equally unnatural.[2] In reference to the earlier (and still present) form of anti-queer rhetoric Greta Gaard (1997) points out the irony that when homophobes use the argument that to be queer is to be against nature, they are insinuating that they care about ‘nature’, which is rarely the case. This is especially true for people coming from a fundamentalist Christian theological perspective in which man’s dominion over nature is central. She writes that ‘in effect, the "nature" queers are urged to comply with is none other than the dominant paradigm of heterosexuality.’ Nature becomes a weaponised synonym for reproduction, and everything that does not directly contribute to the survival of a the species becomes an affront.

As much as the queer is being called a flower, the flower is being called a queer. As much as the pansy lends its prettiness to the queer subject, the queer subject lends their effeminacy to the pansy. Although this could be read as a reductive anthropomorphising, there is also the potential for something else if the relationship is not read as one-way mapping of human characteristics onto flowers, but also flower characteristics onto humans, with implications for the agency of both. Gaard asks us to think not only in terms of the dualisms traditionally associated with conversations around gender, race, and nature, but the ‘vertical’ associations, ‘between reason and heterosexuality, for example, or between reason and whiteness as defined in opposition to emotions and nonwhite persons […] the ways queers are feminized, animalized, eroticized, and naturalized in a culture that devalues women, animals, nature, and sexuality […] how persons of color are feminized, animalized, eroticized, and naturalized. Finally, we can explore how nature is feminized, eroticized, even queered’ (1997). Taking this as a call to arms, there is the potential for a queer identification with what is termed ‘nature’ to have positive political implications not just for queerness, but for a wider ecological and social struggles.

When read against a binary understanding of human reproduction, flowers are inherently queer. This is not a modish application of the term ‘queer’ to anything remotely ‘strange’, divorced from its roots as a slur or any analysis of human sexuality and gender, but rather a comparative statement about human understanding of gendered bodies across species.[3] While the term ‘queer’ is referring to a very specifically human (and mostly white, Western) subjects navigation of a social world, it is also inaccurate to think of plants (and other species) as exempt from and untouched by this discourse. Given the prevalence of anthropocentrism, the reading of gender in plants inevitably reverberates and affects human understanding of human gender, and the reverse. As well as not wanting to make an anthropocentric imposition onto plants, I also want to avoid essentialising queerness in humans. To borrow from Nicole Seymour, I do not want to ‘claim that queer individuals necessarily have a particular kind of relationship to the non-human; [but focus] primarily on the queer relationships that humans might develop with the non-human, and how environmental ethics might emerge from queer practices and perspectives’ (2013, p29). I would add to this an investment in thinking through how queer ethics might emerge from environmental practices and perspectives. The queer anarchist collective Baedan define queer as ‘the inherent decomposition which afflicts gender […]; not this or that historically constituted subject category, but all the divergent bodily and spiritual expressions which escape their roles’ (2014). Rather than a positive, universalising usage of queer, queer is a contingency. I hope the clumsiness of attempting to talk about how plants fuck spills over, somehow, into somewhere productive (or unproductive).

The number of scientifically validated genders for plants far exceeds those commonly understood and accepted for humans. At the most basic level, single flowers are either male, female, or bisexual (also referred to as ‘perfect’, hermaphroditic or androgynous). However, categories proliferate due to the fact that different plants grow different combinations of male, female, or bisexual flowers. This does not mean that all species have male, female, and bisexual flowers - it is possible for plants to only have either bisexual or female flowers, for example. This is complicated further by the fact that in some species, the flowers will change gender. It is important to clarify here that when we are talking about plant gender, we are potentially discussing at three different scales - the gender of an individual flower, the gender of an individual plant, and the morphology of the species as a whole, all of which determine each other. Although obviously not directly translatable, these multiple scales of plant gender provide a nuanced and useful framework for thinking through human gender, in that we are always referring to a complicated enmeshment of biological sex, individual identity, collective identity and socially enforced role, none of which can be considered independently of one another.[4]

To avoid reducing the link between the flower body and the queer body to being purely to do with reproduction in a mechanical and biological sense, it is important to think though the specificity of the situation. For one thing, many species have reproductive practices entirely contrary to the ideals of human monogamous heterosexuality.[5] For another, the conceptual reduction of reproduction to a process of sexual reproduction and the continuation of a species is profoundly anti-queer, both in a literal and abstract sense. There is clearly a specificity to flowers that has led to the association with queerness, beyond ‘flowers are not straight and have multiple genders’. Whether or not explicitly acknowledged, research and discoveries into non-human lifeforms are always embroiled in human social questions, both in process in terms of methodology, and in their consequences and applications. In their essay Involutionary Momentum: Affective Ecologies and the Sciences of Plant/Insect Encounters, Carla Hustak and Natasha Myers begin to explore this tension between botany and ideology. They write of Charles Darwin’s flower experiments, and his downplaying of the evolutionary role of self-pollination (reproduction by an individual plant possessing male and female reproductive organs) in favour of cross-fertilisation (reproduction by two plants, via insects) which was seen to be necessary for the survival of ‘higher organic beings’. Hustak and Myers write, ‘Orchids, it turns out, were caught in a queer interspecies assemblage that disrupted normative Victorian sexualities and species boundaries’ (2012, p82). Flowers must be kept at arms length to prevent them from contaminating human sexual norms, but the mapping of those norms onto the flowers becomes necessary to attempt to rationalise what is found when those flowers are not kept at arms length.[6] The flower is constantly indexed onto human sexuality and yet remains impossible to entirely understand within or assimilate into a human heterosexual framework.

CAConrad is a queer poet who for several years has been working with what he refers to as ‘soma(tic) rituals’, ritualised bodily practices which he completes and then writes from his experiences of. One of these is called Security Cameras and Flowers Dreaming the Elevation Allegiance (For Susie Timmons). CA describes his frustration at the prevalence of security cameras in his home city of Philadelphia (‘FUCK YOU WATCHING US ALWAYS!!’). The ritual resistance he describes involves taking a basket of edible flowers to the scene (‘I eat pansies, I LOVE pansies, they’re delicious buttery purple lettuce!!’). He then looks directly into the camera and proceeds to place his tongue in the flower ‘in and out, flicking, licking, suckling blossoms.’ When confronted by a security guard he responds ‘I’M A POLLINATOR, I’M A POLLINATOR!!’ As soon as it is declared, it becomes obvious that of course he is, undeniably, a pollinator. Despite not being able to facilitate the actual reproduction of the plants, due to species constraints, the small act of resistance towards the security cameras becomes an act of potential pollination, a pollination of politics and ideas and poetry and joy, both a self-pollination and a cross-pollination.[7] The security cameras that CA is resisting are a part of an ecosystem, and he uses his agency as a being within that ecosystem to make a somatic and semiotic intervention against a mode of biopolitical control.

In CA engaging in a sexualised public ritual with flowers, there is also an implied parody of straight anxieties around queer sexuality, such as the argument that legalising gay marriage is a slippery slope towards people being allowed to marry their dogs. Apart from the obvious association of queerness with animality and the non-human, these anxieties are often explicitly or implicitly predicated on the notion that all unreproductive sexual practices are on some level unethical, prioritising pleasure over the continuation of the species. CA’s pollinator intervention gains another dimension when understood in terms of certain species of orchids that have the ability to attract pollinators without a material prize (nectar), but purely on the basis of their imitation of insect sex pheromones, attracting insects on the basis of desire, rather than physical sustenance.

In Animacies, Mel Y. Chen discusses linguistic animacy hierarchies, the way in which language is used to assign different levels of agency to matter, both living and non-living. In English, firmly at the top is the white male subject, everything else placed on a scale somewhere between him and a rock, or other perceived as wholly inactive matter. The argument is that to be compared to anything lower down inherently operates as an insult, in that it implies loss of agency, which is then linked to intelligence, ability, value, and social standing. Chen asks us, ‘If language normally and habitually distinguishes human and inhuman, live and dead, but then in certain circumstances wholly fails to do so, what might this tell us about the porosity of biopolitical logics themselves?’ (Chen, 2012, p7). What are the implications when a being higher up the animacy hierarchy (a human) chooses to align themselves with a ‘lower’ being (for example an insect pollinator)? The act of solidarity both implies a rejection of the value system which places life forms on such a hierarchy, attempting to level the playing field, and recognising how in certain situations it can be desirable to disassociate from the expectations associated with being ‘human’. The situating of ‘homo sapiens’ as something that can be disidentified with and opted out of, rather than a taxonomical fact, finds affinity with Giorgio Agamben’s assertion that ‘Homo sapiens, then, is neither a clearly defined species nor a substance; it is, rather, a machine or device for producing the recognition of the human’ (2003, p26). In addition to active verbal identification with other non-human agents, In The Greenhouse by Veronica Forrest-Thomson highlights how simply the experience of embodied encounter with the non-human can render taxonomies feeling arbitrary and redundant:

The silent rhythm of pulsating pores

filling my lungs with filtered earth

is all I feel or know of alien shapes

that once were flowers.

I breathe their breath

until all definitions are dissolved,

and homo sapiens is nothing more to me.

Perhaps less aligned with Agamben’s definition, these lines find more affinity with Karen Barad’s position that ‘“Humans” are neither pure cause or pure effect but part of the world in its openended becoming’ (2003, 821). Acts of Youth by the late queer poet John Wieners provides another instance of flower-consumption as symbolic of freedom from oppressive power structures.[8] He writes:

The fear of travelling, of the future without hope

or buoy. I must get away from this place and see

that there is no fear without me: that it is within

unless it be some sudden act or calamity

to land me in the hospital, a total wreck, without

memory again; or worse still, behind bars. If

I could just get out of the country. Some place

where one can eat the lotus in peace.

Give me the strength

to bear it, to enter those places where the

great animals are caged. And we can live

at peace by their side.

‘Some place where one can eat the lotus in peace’ is presented as the ultimate sanctuary from the fear and violence of his world, both inner and outer. Flower-eating operates as a literal form of, and metaphor for, spiritual survival precisely because of the low nutritional value of flowers, especially when compared to their high symbolic value. To eat a flower is to aesthetically nourish the body. Eating the lotus in peace is to embody a form of consumption not predicated on a violent conquest, but a gentle taking in of the other into the self, a pleasurable participation in an affective-aesthetic ecology. Wieners desire to live at peace by the side of the great animals in their cages demonstrates an identification with the feral and a siding with the non-human over the human (for who put the animals in cages?). But it is perhaps telling that even in the potentially limitless space of poetics, Wieners chooses to live with caged animals. Trans poet Verity Spott ends her piece Against Trans* Manifestos (2015) with the lines: ‘Determined as it is by a start and a finish, a false double, something that contains at least five harmonic falsities on a liberal map of social reality. Perhaps this is why we have a fetish involving cages; everything impossible to communicate.’ Read against this, Wieners collective desire (‘we’) to live with caged animals becomes a recognition of the contingency of pleasure, and of the description of pleasure as itself a form of caging, and how agency can be enacted whilst being trapped ‘inside’.[9] There is also the issue of temporality within cages, and to what extent temporality is defined by a sense of history and progress, necessarily implying movement and action. Hustak and Myers identify the stationary nature of plants as part of the reason they are placed near the bottom of ‘hierarchies that identify outward motion and action as signs of agency’ (80). This has resonance with the origins of pansy as an insult, as rooted in an notion of thoughtfulness and introspection as effeminate and inferior to active, assertive masculinity. In Our Lady of The Flowers Jean Genet describes the gender identity of the character Divine:

‘Her femininity was not only a masquerade. But as for thinking woman completely, her organs hindered her. To think is to perform an act. In order to act, you have to discard frivolity and set your idea on a solid base. So she was aided by the idea of solidity, which she associated with the idea of virility, and it was in grammar that she found it near at hand. For if, to define a state of mind that she felt, Divine dared use the feminine, she was unable to do so in defining an action which she performed. And all the ‘woman’ judgments she made were, in reality, poetic conclusions.’ (1988, p176)

Solidity and action are associated with the masculine, but this is complicated by the assertion that ‘to think is to perform an act.’ Divine dares to use feminine pronouns for her states of mind, but not in defining her actions. If thinking is an action, then ‘state of mind’ has to be referring to something other than thoughts. The ‘‘woman’ judgements’ she made, which are emphatically not thoughts, are ‘poetic conclusions’. The distinction between active masculine ‘thoughts’ and feminine ‘states of mind’ and ‘poetic conclusions’ is that in order to act, ‘you have to discard frivolity and set your idea on a solid base.’ Solidity and virility are found in grammar, and therefore poetic language is disqualified from the realm of ‘thinking’ due to its frivolity and instability. Its exclusion from thinking as a masculine exercise, outside of solidity and grammar and certainty, means that poetry is in a unique position to express possibilities and potentials outside of dominant thought.

In an essay entitled The Queer Voice: Reparative Poetry Rituals & Glitter Perversions CAConrad describes the somatic rituals he performed to write poetry and attempt to heal himself from the trauma of the homophobic murder of his boyfriend, Earth. One of these rituals results in a dream, where CA finds himself in a garden with Earth, although they do not meet human face to human face. In the garden Earth communicates with CA through flowers who explain to him the difficulty of Earth’s time on earth, acting as prophets from the spirit world whilst remaining entirely grounded in earth and syntax. CA explains that the flowers did not speak with mouths, but ‘their centers mashed up and down as they told me [Earth] could not see me now because he was busy repairing.’ In German the phrase ‘Durch die Blume Gesprochen’, literally ‘spoken through a flower’, means to subtly hint at something without giving away all the details, a minor verbal obfuscation to soften blows or gently allude to an issue. In English, there is ‘flowery language’, with some similar implications and an added air of assumed affectation and pretension (remember the origins of ‘pansy’?). There is also the Latin phrase ‘sub rosa’, literally meaning ‘under the rose’ and used to indicate secrecy and confidentiality. Flowers are seen as untruthful, dishonest in their embodiment, as hiding something under their opulent exteriors. However, in CA’s prophet-flowers the exact opposite is the case, the flowers are messengers of the deepest, most vital truths.

In common parlance there is something in the overtly elaborate and ornate that becomes read as at best wasteful, and at worst deceitful. As a bridge between morphology and semiotics, Georges Bataille colludes with this perspective in The Language of Flowers when he writes, ‘Thus the interior of a rose does not at all correspond to its exterior beauty; if one tears off all of the corolla's petals, all that remains is a rather sordid tuft.’ (Bataille, 1985, p12) The flowers insides are seen as a betrayal of its exterior form, despite that exterior form existing partially for the purpose of attracting insects to the interior. Whilst admitting that some flowers (again, orchids) possess ‘elegant’ stamens, for Bataille this beauty is ‘satanic’, and ‘one is tempted to attribute to them the most troubling human perversions.’ (12) It feels redundant to say that flowers are sexualised, in the sense that they are literally reproductive organs. To be more specific, the sexualisation of flowers is both a cause and consequence of their status as feminine. Bataille makes this misogyny explicit, going on to state that once flowers die, they do not age ‘honestly’ like leaves, but wither like ‘old and overly made-up dowagers.’ (12) Flowers are singled out for their aesthetic qualities, objectified for their external beauty, and reduced to their reproductive function, a feminised position. Simultaneously, they are seen as performing in excess of that role, of being too flamboyant and melodramatic for the task at hand, their beauty seen as a form of deception and trickery. In addition to the obvious analogy with women under patriarchy, this mistrust on the basis of perceived inauthenticity and frivolity also has resonance with a queer position.

To deal first with inauthenticity, I want to suggest that the treatment of artifice as falsification and dishonesty is a feature of straight culture, with little relevance to most queer people. Despite the limitations and dangers of this kind of essentialising, there are material issues at hand. For example, for trans people there is often the sense that an external presentation that could be perceived from the outside to be inauthentic is in fact the most honest expression of their inner selves, and many queer people must keep their desires or certain aspects of their lives internal, or at least restrict who has knowledge of them. To exist as queer in the world requires a certain amount of ‘speaking through flowers’, acknowledging the impossibility and possible undesirability of an entirely transparent existence. Michel Foucault in A History of Sexuality describes the transition from sodomy as a practice into the homosexual as a subject position, ‘a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology […] [sexuality] written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret that always gave itself away’ (1978, p43). The assumed knowability of the queer body through its naming as such, and that naming giving rise to the presumption of a specific sexual morphology, provides some context for the ambivalent relationship of many queer people to visibility and representation. Speaking through flowers could be a mode of engagement simultaneously flaunting and obscuring one’s ‘indiscreet anatomy’, operating as a form of resistance to and avoidance of biopolitical control, a tactic of conscious illegibility and subterfuge.

A concept closely related to inauthenticity is unnaturalness, both related to the idea that there is a true form that is being betrayed. When Bataille talks of being tempted to attribute to flowers ‘the most troubling human perversions’ it becomes clear that despite falling under the rubric of what is commonly referred to as ‘nature’, the sexuality of flowers is only tenuously perceived as natural. Timothy Morton describes nature as a ‘transcendental term in a material mask’, and the end of a potentially infinite metonymic list: ‘fish, grass, mountain air, chimpanzees, love, soda water, freedom of choice, heterosexuality, free markets…Nature’ (2009, p14). When we accept that there is no actual criteria for naturalness, apart from vague essentialist subjective perception, there is the awkward reality that if something is described as unnatural then it is unnatural, inasmuch as something becomes natural through the same process. As flowers are often read as suspiciously unnatural, they are in some sense are. The unnaturalness of flowers has to do with excess, which is to say wastefulness, which is to say floweriness. To be natural is to fit into a straight human logic of heterosexual reproduction, whether through direct participation or resemblance to the model, to refuse this demand is to be against nature. It is here that both queers and flowers fall through the cracks.

Historically, a large element of what we now refer to as ‘homophobia’ was religiously grounded in the Christian belief that any sexual practices not entirely related procreation were a sin, as they were wasteful of semen. There is an association therefore between queerness and wastefulness, as well as refusal of sexual reproduction, leading to a queer understanding of the necessity of what has been deemed trivial and non-essential, a celebration of earthly pleasures, and a respect for the temporary and fleeting. Nicole Seymour suggests there is something ‘admirable’ and ‘thrillingly ironic’ in queer environmentalism, ‘that those with a foreclosed relationship to “the future” in heteronormative terms would be deeply concerned about the future in ecological terms’ (2012, p63). In In A Queer Time & Place Jack Halberstam makes the argument for queer time as operating within a different logic from straight time, writing that ‘queer subcultures produce alternative temporalities by allowing their participants to believe that their futures can be imagined according to logics that lie outside of those paradigmatic markers of life experience-namely, birth, marriage, reproduction, and death’ (2005, p2). Halberstam ties this specifically to the AIDS crisis, making links with Lee Edelman’s argument for queer anti-futurity (2004). Despite how it is sometimes characterised, this is not a case of ‘positive’ versus ‘negative’ models of queerness, because in theorising anti-futurity as a feature of queerness Edelman betrays a desire for some sense of ‘queer’ as a meaningful, and ultimately positive (by some definition), cohesion. Neel Ahuja argues ‘we might thus benefit from thinking more broadly about reproduction than Edelman does, recognizing that bodies and atmospheres reproduce through complex forms of socio-ecological entanglement.’ Without wanting to reinforce ‘repro-centric’ discourse, I would argue in parallel that what is taking place in queer culture is not a refusal of reproduction, but a cultural, which is to say unnatural, reproduction based on something other than the straight nuclear family unit.[10]

In a soma(tic) ritual entitled Suspension Fluid Magnificence (For Samuel R. Delaney & Stephen Boyer) CA describes approaching men on the street and requesting that they rate their semen on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being ‘thin and creamy’ and 5 being ‘cottage cheese.’ He describes this as an attempt to think through ‘how wilderness is memorised in the body’, looking for men to ‘step up to the quiet, feral interior.’ Dealing explicitly with the materiality of biological reproduction, CA does not dismiss the power or significance of semen but rather thinks through how it retains this power and significance as an aesthetic, semiotic, and social material. He writes ‘Semen is fascinating […] The orgasm the flash of light reconnecting to the original proliferation of cells and the construction of sensate flesh, which is a very marvellous thing, being here, all of us.’ In what could have easily been a glorification of straight reproduction CA manages to create an inclusive networked cosmology, a glorification of pleasure and the animistic power of sensate flesh, the wonder of being here, all of us, but no dads. #nodads was a meme originating in 2012 from ultraleft circles on Twitter. Being a meme, its meaning was variable and plural, however the central theme was rejection of the father figure in his oppressive patriarchal role, but equally in more paternalistic caring capacities. In his analysis of the meme Aaron Bady describes it as ‘a rejection of the category [of dad] itself—and of the manner in which it comes to seem a higher order category than many others—it doesn’t necessarily have all that much to do with actual dads, but only by the sociological matrix that makes biology into destiny’ (2012). This feels like a useful model of thinking through biological reproduction, which is to say that none of this is a rejection of the continuation of the human species but rather a thinking through of how reproduction operates when enmeshed with a heterosexual culture which formulates it as the only form of reproduction and life worth celebrating. In this context CA’s cum poetry gestures towards a reconciliation whereby bodily functions can be celebrated as feral and joyous outside of a normative matrix.

To reiterate, this is not to suggest that queer sex is inherently biologically unreproductive, but a reminder that there is a historical context in which queer sex has been framed as wasteful due to its association with unreproductive pleasure. Additionally, there is the factor that biological reproduction is not an organising principal of queer culture, as opposed to straight culture where ‘community is imagined through scenes of intimacy, coupling, and kinship; a historical relation to futurity is restricted to generational narrative and reproduction’ (Berlant and Warner, 1998, p554). If a function of the straight nuclear family is to reproduce the straight nuclear family, queer family cannot rely on this means of reproducing itself, queers cannot take for granted the immortality of reproduction, but this leads to more creative forms of intimacy, kinship, survival and ‘immortality’. Within this framework, it is precisely what is deemed nonessential that is the means of survival: art, poetry, music, fashion, and what Berlant and Warner refer to as ‘parasitic and fugitive elaboration through gossip, dance clubs, softball leagues, and the phone-sex ads’ (p561). In parallel, in flowers it is the colours and scents and delicate forms that are commonly read by human eyes as elaborate and ostentatious that are the bread and butter of survival. Hustak and Myers describe Darwin’s delight in orchids as he saw them as ‘a demonstration that even beautiful forms had utilitarian, adaptive value.’ (75) Although this could be read as an insinuation that forms only have worth if they have utilitarian value, it can also be an understanding that the form and function are inseparable, and the beauty is its own functionality. In a poem referencing the homophobic Black Mountain poet Ed Dorn, CAConrad writes:

i need a soda to

wash this glitter down

it's dark in the stomach

next morning

bathroom light catches

glint of turd covered

in glitter

disco log in the bowl

fecal poetry ranges from

shocking to absurd

this is neither

this is pragmatic

it's my life as i need to live it

Ed Dorn i would kill myself if

i were you but i'm not and

get to live this spectacular

life of sparkling hygiene

CA refuses to frame his glitter consumption as anything other than a practical everyday ritual needed for survival, alongside eating or sleeping, he refuses to draw any distinction between physical, emotional and spiritual survivals. The reality that queer survival is inherently predicated on something other than the physical continuation of the species manifests in a personal sense as survival being about more than the day to day physical maintenance of a body, or more accurately, redefining what constitutes the day to day physical maintenance of a body. This is not to say that it is an abstract and disembodied survival, as what could be more embodied than eating and shitting out glitter? But rather that it treats the body as a vessel for a modest, everyday spiritual joy, no matter how temporary. Pleasure for pleasure and survival’s sake, and always the twain shall meet.

Another poem in the series includes the lines ‘Ed Dorn thinks faggots should drink directly from the sewer / i want to dress special for this.’ There is a provocative knowing that dressing special is not unrelated to why Dorn thinks faggots should drink directly from the sewer, and that dressing special for this punishment will add to his annoyance. In Dorn’s initial comments there is also the implication of queers as wasteful, as undeserving of the privilege of clean tap water; If the ultimate goal is reproduction, queers are a waste of resources. The poem goes on to imagine Dorn asking CA, ‘what camouflage will you wear to hide in the gingerbread house?’ and CA replying ‘none, I want the witch to find me EAT ME!’ This acts as a subversion of survival narratives and demonstrates a lack of belief in the inherent goodness of physical self-preservation and security at all costs. This is not say that physical survival is not important but rather that sometimes it is important for your spiritual survival to allow yourself to be eaten by a witch rather than accept a life of homophobe-endorsed camouflage in the gingerbread house. What are we potentially missing out on when we hide in camouflage in the gingerbread house? Is being eaten by the witch the worst that could happen? In Darwin’s Plots Gillian Beer describes the moment in which the intersection of evolutionary theory and psychological theory became important as it began to ask ‘what emotions and what reflex actions help the individual and race to survive’ (2009, p201). This instrumentalisation of affect seems to shut down the possibility of an ‘affective ecology’ (Hustak and Myers) based on anything other than reproduction.

When asked in interview about his reasons for becoming a writer John Wieners answers, ‘Immortality, in the sense of living after one’s own time has run out’ (1993). Again, there is the sense of ‘life’ as existing beyond an individual’s lifespan, attached to an individual but not necessarily to their physical form or genetics.

Dancing dandelions

and buttercups in the grass

remind me of other summer

flowers, simple blossoms

roses and tiger lilies by the wall

milk pod, sumac branches

lilacs across the road, daisies, blueberries

snaps, cut violets

three years ago still grow in my mind

as peonies or planted geraniums, bachelor buttons

in downy fields filled with clover

lover, come again and again up fern

path upheld as memory’s perennial

against stern hard-faced officers of imprisonment

and cold regulation more painful than lover’s arms

or flowers charming but not more lasting

No, the wild tulip shall outlast the prison wall

no matter what grows within.

In Wiener’s 1969 poem Private Estate, reproduced in its entirety above, a flowing list of flowers ebbs seamlessly into a lover, before the scene is abruptly cut by ‘stern hard-faced officers of imprisonment and cold regulation’. The ambiguous line break after clover leaves the possibility for the ‘clover lover’ as the lover made of clover, or the lover of clover. Years are things that continue to develop and change after their official endings, growing towards the sun, if only in the mind. The cyclical, nonlinear queer time of lover’s arms or flowers is sectioned off by the harsh linear institutional time of the prison or mental hospital. Despite this, these seemingly concrete and immutable structures are presented as ultimately more precarious and fleeting, being outlasted by the wild tulip. In an essay on feminist applications of Darwin, Elizabeth Grosz describes the sense in his work ‘in which the domination of species or individuals is inherently precarious and necessarily historically limited’ (2008, 42). The fragility of power structures and a nondeterministic time is drawn out as a central point where social struggles and biology could find affinity. The tulip is a perennial plant, meaning simply a plant that lives longer than two years, in opposition to biannual and annual plants, which must be replanted more frequently. The taxonomical listing of the poem suggests however that it is not a single tulip that will outlast the prison, but rather wild tulips as a whole, or perhaps even just the idea of the wild tulip. When Wieners speaks of ‘memory’s perennial’ it invites the possibility of the plants having not physically survived at all, yet continuing to grow and thrive in his mind.

This mirrors his statement of desire for immortality through writing. The lines ‘lover, come again and again up fern / path upheld as memory’s perennial’ operate on this ambiguous perennial time, the flirtatious talk of lovers mixing with the seasonal dying back and reblooming of the plants, taking place as a specific memory but also the substance of memory itself. In The Imagination through Time, Wieners speaks of the hour and minute as ‘false divisions of the moon’. The poem ends:

the cautious breath of a friend,

presumably, also up,

in the dark of his house,

who alike hears your thoughts,

wondering; that is a true meeting in eternity.

Not this petty worry

about days, months, proximities

to warmth. There are always fires

on earth, that burn immortally.

For Wieners, human intimacy is a form of immortality, only the ephemeral can come close to touching the eternal. The constant anxiety of looking for comfort and stability (‘proximities to warmth’) is quelled by the knowledge there are always fires burning immortally, somewhere on earth. In another poem about his murdered lover, I Loved Earth Years Ago CA explains, ‘He named himself Earth when planet extinction was clearest.’ The naming decision itself and CA’s recalling of it operate simultaneously as morbid foreshadowing and a hymn to survival and resilience. There is the triple, triangulated meaning of Earth to refer to CA’s lover, the planet Earth, and earth itself, the mud and soil of the world. There is the sense that CA used to love Earth, but there was some rupture that necessitates the use of the past tense, coexisting with the feeling that he has been loving Earth for a long, long time. The statement that he loved Earth years ago does not mean he does not love him now, but there is an acceptance of change. The temporality of the title can be read as an example of Wiener’s ‘perennial time’, neither endless reproduction nor something constricted to a single discrete moment, but something seasonal, ebbing and flowing, perhaps not itself forever, but something, somewhere. In Julia Kristeva’s essay Women’s Time, she suggests that despite being seemingly opposed, eternal and cyclical time, both associated with women, might be closer than they first appear as they both operate outside of linear time (1981). Not wanting to replicate the essentialism of Kristeva’s thought, and in reference to Halberstam (2005), I would argue that this exclusion from (or rejection of) linearity (or straight time) is present not only in women but all who fall outside of the timeframes of normative heterosexuality and gender.[11] In CA’s title there is the evocation of a measurement of time outside of ruling time, a different temporal space: ‘Earth Years’. Earth Years act as a counter to heteronormative timescales, of the years and milestones of straight reproduction, or possibly as a calendar more in tune with the seasons, a rejection of the arbitrary timekeeping divorced from them and enforced as a tool of (re)productivity.

In Permission Please To Be a Stone but You Are A Clock We Say CA writes ‘no wonder clocks aspire to granite’, becoming, ‘don’t allude to my spurt / don’t look at my thighs / you pernicious clocks / make the worst stones’. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen makes the argument that despite being seen as stable and fixed ‘stone is fluid when viewed within its proper duration’ (2015). Clocks can only aspire to the timekeeping abilities of stone, their constant sense of movement and progress overshadowed by the eternal. The honest breaking down of stone into sand usurps the arbitrary time of the constantly flipped hourglass. In Wieners’ words: ‘a true meeting in eternity. / Not this petty worry about days, months, proximities to warmth.’ Tim Dean proposes that ‘queer theorists of spectrality embrace asynchronous temporalities because they regard being haunted as an opportunity to produce a different future, one that the past did not generate but still might’ (2011, p92). This text began with the thoughtful pansy both as a symbol of remembrance and of queer effeminacy, occupying a place of perceived fragility and permanence, its individual lifespan coming up against its collective, symbolic lifespan. Thinking through what I’ve termed queer reproduction, I want to suggest this intersection as politically vital from an ecological perspective for imagining what abundance and joy could mean outside of cycles of physical re/production and consumption. Eternity is not present in static monoliths but in variable, shifting networks of pleasure and affect. In speaking through flowers, which is to say poetry, the consequences of communication are non-linear, cross-pollinated and dispersed, the eternal and cyclical affectively and effectively meeting to produce models of life which could be described as pragmatically opulent. Poetry becomes the language of survival in excess and weaponised floweriness, everything that is ‘too much’ pushing back against false scarcity and repressive taxonomies of gender and sexuality, creating breathing space for a politics of cornucopia, possibility and, propagation outside the already-existing. Fucking pansies speaking through flowers.

‘Do not think of the future; there is none.’

-John Wieners, 6th January 1934 – 1st March 2002

1. From Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang & Unconventional English, 8th edition (1984): pansy, n. A very effeminate youth; a homosexual: from ca. 1925. Cf. Nancy (boy). Also pansy-boy: from ca. 1930; New Statesman and Nation, 15 Sep. 1934, concerning the fascist meeting in Hyde Park on 9 Sep., notes that there were, from the crowd, 'shouts about 'pansy-boys'". ↩

2. The term ‘cisgender’ is used to describe someone who is not transgender, i.e. someone whose gender identity is broadly aligned with the gender they were assigned at birth. ↩

3. See: The Molecularisation of Sexuality by Jordana Rosenburg for a fuller critique of the problems of infinitely abstracting ‘queerness’. ↩

4. Luciana Parisi’s Abstract Sex thinks through these questions of scale and transferability, for example: ‘The biophysical organisation of sex questions the accounts of a human-centred evolution that assimilates sex to sexual reproduction and sexual organs determining the progressive evolution of the body – from bacteria to humans – and sex – from unicellular to multicellular sex’ (p22). ↩

5. See Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People by Joan Roughgarden (2009) for wide-ranging accounts of gender and sexual diversity in non-human species. ↩

6. This issue is explored by Eva Hayward with reference to marine life: ‘With the aquarium, the unnerving sexual variation of marine life moved from ocean depths—which was a gothic scene for Victorians—into the inner sanctum of social order and bodily regulation, the aristocratic home. Efforts to know, classify, and conquer the oceanic, and otherwise capture nature for visual pleasure, resulted in a counter conquest of the home by monsters and sexual deviants (2012, p166) ↩

7. This has echoes of Deleuze and Guattari’s writing on the contagion: ‘We oppose epidemic to filiation, contagion to heredity, peopling by contagion to sexual reproduction, sexual production. Bands, human or animal, proliferate by contagion, epidemics, battlefields, and catastrophes. Like hybrids, which are themselves sterile, born of a sexual union that will not reproduce itself, but which begins over again every time, gaining that much ground’ (1987, p241). ↩

8. The flower-eating theme is potentially non-coincidental, as CA has cited Wieners as an influence, and recently edited a collection of his work, Supplication, in which the above poem appears. ↩

9. For more on animal captivity, see Hayward (2012). ↩

10. ‘Repro-centricism’, i.e. the centring of reproduction as the default mode in all discussions of sexual difference, is a term borrowed from Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson in their introduction to Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire (2010), p11. ↩

11. For perspectives on what ‘gay men’s time’ might look like, see: Edelman (2004) and Dean (2011). ↩

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trashweavings · 6 years ago

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July 29th, 1996, 7:24 AM, a baby was born to two poor, Vietnamese immigrants in Fountain Valley, California’s Regional Hospital. The baby was promptly declared a girl, and that may have been the worst thing that could have happened to that baby. Because from the moment the hospital said, “it’s a girl” that baby became a “she” that she would never be able to live up to, and within our patriarchal society, being unable to live up to your gender is one of the worst things you can do.

Her parents chose to give her the name Natalie Ngoc Duong. Ngoc, the middle name given to her and her two older brother meant jade. The middle name was chosen in hopes to give the child a chance of wealth that her parents didn’t have.

Duong, the last name, was taken from her father to indicate that she belongs to the father and will continue his lineage.

Natalie was chosen because her father admired the actress Natalie Wood. He wanted his daughter to not be trapped by her Vietnamese status and able to assimilate better into the white culture he admired in America. He wanted his daughter to have the grace and beauty and femininity of an old Hollywood actress.

See, when a parent names their child, they’re putting their hopes of what that child will be into those words. Those words aren’t just what that child makes those words to be, but also, they shape the child. Many people may think, “a name is a name. It doesn’t make a difference. It’s just a word,” but when they say that, they fail to understand the fundamental power that language has. That girl was me. Or maybe that girl “is” me. I’ve felt the weight of what my parents wanted from me before I could even explain what it meant to feel pressure.

Kleinman touches on this in her text “Why Sexist Language Matters.” In that text, she talks about the pervasiveness of male-coded language, and why it is problematic. Saying the words “you guys” , “freshman” , “chairman” , etc. as the default is dangerous because despite people saying it is innocuous, in reality, they are saying that the default in our society is man. Using “you guys” to refer to a full of group of women isn’t an innocent act, it inadvertently reduces women into nothingness. They can’t even be acknowledged if they are the only in the room. Language is how we describe and experience the world around us. People say they’re just words, but where do the words come from other than our human selves and the way we treat and view others around us.

So, the name “Natalie” was never right for me. Maybe I could still be the me that I am now with that name, but when I changed my name to Ryn, it was like all the weight of my parents’ gendered expectations on me were lifted off of me. It was like all the times that people looked at me in confusion when a queer body introduced themselves at Natalie was erased from my history, and I was rewriting my narrative.

I think it disappointed my family when I changed my name. My parents wanted so badly for me to fit the mold of a girl. For a while I really wanted to be that too. Not just for more parents, but because I didn’t know I had any other options. From the moment I was born, from the moment a human is born, the world imposes endless amounts of expectations and standards on that person. Gender is taught and enforced onto a person often even before they were born.

I figured out I wasn’t good at being a girl when I was 5 years old. I liked to play with Barbie dolls growing up, even when I was allowed to play with my brother’s Legos and transformers, I always chose Barbie dolls. In my Kindergarten class, a boy made fun of me for playing with my Barbie dolls because they were girly and weak, so I pushed him over and he started crying. I got sent to time out for making him cry, but I was so mad. Boys got to push each other all the time. Why couldn’t I?

Because girls don’t get to be boys. Girls have to be sweet. They have to be soft. They have to be gentle. They have to be all the things I couldn’t make myself be no matter how hard I tried. 5 years old was the first time that I realized, I was never going to live up to the name my parents gave me, and I felt endless guilt for it.

The reason doing gender wrong is one of the worst things you can do is because of the patriarchy. Our society centers around the power dynamic between men and women. Our social practices, our economy, our media, everything can relate back to patriarchy. In a patriarchy, everything is structured around the power dynamics between white, cisgender, heterosexual men over everyone else. As Allan Johnson describes in his text, our patriarchy is a capitalist, white supremacist system that is “male-dominated, male-identified, and male-centered.” Meaning everything in our society is structured out of a power differential between men and everyone else. Our gender binary is so problematic not because gender is problematic, but because it is a binary structured to empower men. Our gender binary enforces this by teaching boys how to be more powerful than girls, by teaching girls how to subdue themselves and make themselves smaller because that’s what they are supposed to be.

Not only does a patriarchy have this expectations for everybody, it also creates real world consequences for people who do gender wrong. This can be seen in the grooming practices women subject themselves to despite how troublesome and harmful the practices are can be. Sheila Jeffrey’s describes in “Making Up is Hard to Do” how women who don’t wear makeup look less “healthy,” “heterosexual” or “credible.” This means, women who don’t subject themselves to this one aspect of gendered expectation they literally have less access to intimacy and wealth. Intimacy because if a woman is heterosexual and does not mark herself as so, she could pass up the chance for a potential partner, which as a human, can be really painful. Furthermore, in our capitalistic society, it is so difficult as a woman to sustain oneself without a partner who also works. Especially if a woman wants to have a family. There’s even less access to wealth because a woman is viewed as less credible without makeup on. This affects their ability to get hired, and their perceived job performance.

Girls learn from a young age that grooming oneself, beautifying one self, is not optional. This is one of the many ways we learn gender growing up, but here’s the thing. Girls learn about makeup in an unsuspecting way. So many women who do makeup now talk about how their first experience with makeup was sneaking into their mom’s or grandmother’s makeup and putting it on in secret. They talk about a woman figure in their life teaching their how to do makeup. They talk about it with nostalgia, and as if makeup is this beautiful way of bonding with other women that is really empowering. I’ve almost never heard about girls learning about makeup in a way that felt forceful, yet these same women will talk about how they need to put makeup on to go out in public, about how they look like a potato without it.

This demonstrates how gender can be learned in such inconspicuous, innocent way, yet it’s never just gender. People don’t think about how problematic the way we are socialized in terms of gender is because if you look at it individually and closely, gender doesn’t seem problematic. Marilyn Frye describes this perfectly when she describes oppression as a birdcage. The way a girl becomes interested in makeup is a wire, and it seems like not a big deal. Maybe makeup can make a girl feel less adequate in her appearance, but she can simply get around that wire by using it as play and using it to bond with maybe her mom or aunt or whoever. Zoom out and look at the wires surrounding it you see that makeup is one of the many grooming practices that relates to the oppression of women as a whole. Makeup is wholly white supremacist. Many trends are about white washing and getting a face to conform to European beauty standards. It promotes thin culture where it’s about making your face look slenderer and cheekbones pop out more. It’s classist because women with more money have access to more makeup and higher quality products that allow them to look more “beautiful.” When one simply participates in makeup, they are trapping themselves in this birdcage that relates to all the aspects of the patriarchy.

Gender feels like a choice, and it is in a way. Obviously, I chose to identify as non-binary. I chose my gender. The problem is, there has been a real pushback and consequence to my “choice.” I have been told by society that I have made the wrong choice. That I am behaving incorrectly for a “Natalie” in our society. I have had to reckon with the fact that I don’t have the same access to love as other people. That people don’t know how to view me as attractive because they only know the heterosexual script for attraction and I don’t fit that script. I’ve had to accept the fact that I will never have the same bond with my brothers ever again because they view my gender as a “mental illness.” I have to accept that everyday is a fight for me.

I am trapped in a birdcage. I am resisting it, but I will always be bound by this birdcage. I have lost in society’s eye by being trans. The thing is, for someone who is not a heterosexual, cisgender, financially-privileged, white man, there is not winning for me. This inability to win no matter what shows you the truth, gender is not truly a choice. It is compulsory.

The fact that gender is inescapable makes the concept of dismantling the patriarchy feel hopeless, but Allan Johnson gives space for hope in “Unravelling the Gender Knot.” He describes all the expectations and things that encompass gender as a knot, and that there are things we can do to unravel this not. One that resonates with me was to “openly choose and model alternative paths.”

I mean, at the age of 6, I made the conscious decision to never wear dresses in public unless I was being forced. Not because I didn’t like them. I love them. As a 6-year-old, they were just another fun clothing item to me. Even at 6, I recognized that people treated me differently when I was in a dress. They told me not to run around, not to rough house. I was supposed to behave even more when I was in a dress. I saw adults coo at me and coddle me as if I was smaller and weaker in a dress, and I hated that. The last thing I wanted was to be treated like I was less capable than the other children around me just because I was wearing a dress.

Dresses restricted me, but they taught me that I could take control over more body, over my gender expression, and people would treat me different. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing then, but I knew it made a difference when I chose not to wear dresses. The thing is, I still loved dresses, and I would wear them in my room by myself all the time. I let myself feel powerful in a clothing item I wasn’t supposed to feel powerful in at 6. When I wore dresses in secret, I did the things my mom told me I wasn’t supposed to do when wearing a dress. I would run around, jump around, sprawl out spreading my legs with no regard to how I was exposing my body because as a kid in private, I didn’t have to worry about being inappropriate. I could just have fun. At 6 years old, I was going down an alternative path and queering dresses. As Johnson said, “modeling new paths creates tension in a system, which moves towards resolution.”

I don’t think dresses will stop being associated with girlhood and pushed onto girls in my lifetime, but I know that my choice to not wear dresses at 6 was my part in tugging at that one part of the gender knot.

I continue to model alternative paths now. The thing is modeling alternative paths relates to another way that Johnson says that we can unravel this knot. I “choose to make people uncomfortable, starting with myself.” When a queer human wears a dress, and refuses to behave in a soft or small manner, they make people uncomfortable because what they are doing is technically wrong. So, in my life now, I choose to wear dresses. I choose to wear skirts. I choose to wear clothes that are associated with femininity, but I also choose to not allow them to dictate my behavior and posturing within them.

My shaved head was also a conscious decision to not only take control over my body but to also queer the sight of people around me and make them uncomfortable. I am undeniably queer, clockable from a mile away, and I am forcing people around me to see that there are queer ways of gender expression, and the more we queer the world around us, the more strides we are making to resist the patriarchy. People cannot erase queer people if we “shove” it into their faces. If me shaving my head is to queer my body and deny the expectation of my feminine-coded body to have long hair, then me wearing dresses is reject and resist the idea that my androgyny is defined by claiming masculine traits. When I step out of the house knowing that I chose each item on my body out of an enjoyment for those items and as a way to express the infinity of my gender, I can describe the feeling as nothing less than gender euphoria.

Along with my gender shifting how I related to myself and my choices, my gender has shifted the way I relate to people too. I mean, people really don’t understand how gender affects everything in our lives. I think people think gender just affects the few things they really noticed as gendered like clothing and colors, but that’s not true. We’ve gendered nearly everything in our society in a way, especially human behavior and traits. Which means, the gender assigned to us at birth teaches us to behave and interact with other people in different ways.

When I rejected girlhood, and came out as non-binary, I realized, I had to analyze so many things I did and figure out, do I behave this way because I want to, or because that’s the way I was told I had to be. Even if something is the way I want to be, does it still reinforce and perpetuate the patriarchy? All these things have shifted because of my gender.

When I talk to other people, it has shifted because of my awareness of gender. I am brash, I am loud, I am unapologetic. I don’t let my voice be covered up by men or cisgender people, and I refuse to ever let that happen. Despite that, I am kind, and I am sensitive. I don’t let my voice be covered up by men and cisgender people, but I don’t speak up over people with aggression and deny them a voice. I want to be considerate and caring, but I refuse to let gender and society dictate I can’t be all those things and powerful and assertive too.

The fact of the matter though is despite these being the ways I resist the patriarchy, I often ask myself, why don’t more people do this? Why don’t more people imbue acts of resistance in their everyday actions and choices when this is what it takes to deconstruct the patriarchy? Going back to Patriarchy by Allan Johnson, Johnson describes this as following “path of least resistance.” People don’t go against the rigid structure of gender because it’s easier not to. It’s normal not to resist. People who resist and do gender wrong, there’s not many people who look like them, they feel isolated, different. That’s just a social consequence though. Beyond that it can be harder to be hired or your job performance is placed into question when you look or act different. That’s a powerful punishment in this capitalistic world. Despite this though, people are resisting now, and people who look like me, who look queer, they are only growing in number. My best friend, Julie, who has always subscribed to heteronormative gender expectations has recently chosen to cut all her hair of. This is something she’s always wanted to do but felt like she couldn’t because of fear of judgement. She has expanded her idea of gender and liberated her choices in clothing and behavior and appearance despite still identifying as a cisgender woman. She is learning from me, how to model alternative paths in her life. She is unraveling gender within in her own life. At the end of the day, of each day, that is what we can do and will do to empower ourselves in this gender mess around us. We can choose for ourselves to make our lives harder and resist gender, and in turn that serves as an example to others as to how to liberate themselves.

Dismantling oppressive systems is not an overnight feat. It is not a feat I can envision happening, but that does not stop me from taking each small act I can in my life to resist. That does not stop me from helping my other friends feel empowered to resist. I may still be oppressed, but like I said in my midterm “oppression and privilege does not mean suffering or not suffering.” I am finding ways to alleviate my suffering in this world despite still being oppressed, and beyond that the alleviation of my suffering (which often time is related to the parts of my identity that signify my oppression) are part of endless small acts that everyone must take to alleviate oppression. I am certainly happy and not suffering currently because I am choosing to live my truth as a gender non-conforming persons, and that’s pretty awesome to be able to do in this patriarchy.

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abandoned-never-finished · 6 years ago

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An Investi(gay)tion Into Existing as Queer

Societies operate off a culturally and historically entrenched set of norms, or rules and standards by which that particular society functions and organizes itself. These norms can be informal (e.g. walking on the right side of a sidewalk) or formal (e.g. laws). Individuals who comply with these norms are described as normative, whereas those who fail to follow norms in some respect are labeled as deviants. Deviating from social norms can result in sanctions, or consequences for not heeding an established rule. Again, these can range from informal (e.g. people giving you a dirty look for bumping into them) to formal (e.g. prison time for committing a crime). In order to function in a society, individuals learn these rules through a process called socialization. Family, peer groups, school, work, and larger institutions are all agents of socialization. They teach people the social norms and expectations, as well as how to comply with them. It is important to note that there are certain norms that individuals break simply by existing. This is most clearly seen among minority groups; disabled people, for example, deviate from the norm that prizes and acknowledges able-bodied people.

In this experiment, I breached the heteronormative norms surrounding romantic relationships by appearing with my partner in public. Essentially, I went about my normal life with my partner and recorded what it’s like to be publicly viewed as a queer couple. In American society, heterosexual relationships are assumed to be the norm. Couples that present as anything other than heterosexual (e.g. male-male, female-female, androgynous, etc.) are seen as deviant. This norm stems from homophobic (or perhaps more accurately, queerphobic) attitudes and beliefs that are historically rooted. Events including Hitler’s murder of homosexuals, the AIDS epidemic initially attributed as a “gay disease,” and the belief that homosexuality was a diagnosable psychological disorder have contributed to these attitudes. One may argue that as a society, the United States has come far since the days of brutal stories like those of Matthew Shepard and the Stonewall Riots. However, I hope to point out how many openly discriminatory behaviors have been replaced by microaggressions. Though these acts may seem inconsequential, the additive stress of experiencing them repeatedly has been demonstrated to be damaging across minority groups. I believe it’s important to note that I am speaking from limited experience: I only came to terms with my queerness and have been in a queer relationship for roughly a year and a half. I have never experienced acts of violence or explicit threats as a result of my sexuality, but I do know other queer people who have. Thus, I can only speak for what I have encountered, but I’m sure that other queer people can relate to some of these experiences.

When I am out in public with my partner, we make an effort to not read as a queer couple, largely for fear of repercussion or negative reactions. We rarely hold hands in public. We hardly ever display affection without first checking that nobody is watching or present. To members of their extended family, I am always introduced simply as a friend. These precautions seem minor, but when one considers how they permeate so many daily interactions, it becomes apparent just how draining they can be.

A small café in our hometown in Connecticut is one of the few places we generally feel safe. Still, we’re conscious of who’s in the room when we want to be affectionate. If there are people belonging to particular groups (e.g. older white people, people meeting for bible studies or other religious gatherings, etc.), we usually revert to acting as if we are just friends. One such instance occurred fairly early in our relationship. We were sitting next to each other in a booth-style table in the back corner of the empty café. While we were sitting close to each other, there was no other obvious affection being displayed. A white woman (maybe in her 30s) walked in with her young daughter who appeared to be about 6 years old. They ordered drinks and sat down at a table near us. About 10 minutes into their stay and after glancing over at us repeatedly, the mother physically moved her daughter to sit so that her back was towards us. They stayed seated that way until they left some time later. As someone who was just coming into my queerness, this incident stuck with me. I was hurt not only by how blatant the action had seemed, but also by the fact that it had involved this woman’s young daughter. Children learn from their parent(s)’ actions and beliefs, and this little girl was implicitly being taught intolerance. She may continue to perform small actions such as these without realizing how they affect the intended recipients. I remember pointing this out to my partner (who has been out for several years) and they shrugged, remarking that this was nothing new to them. Although I had known beforehand that queerphobia was alive and well, I didn’t exactly realize just how much it would impact my own reality.

Several weeks ago, my partner and I went out for an early dinner at an Olive Garden restaurant. Considering the time (around 4:30-5:00), the majority of the clientele were elderly. We did receive a few sideways glances, but nothing too terribly out of the ordinary. Our waitress, a young woman in her 20s or 30s, seated us at a four-person table, placing our menus next to each other instead of across from each other. I didn’t think much of it; neither of us was exactly dressed in “date-like” attire, nor were we necessarily acting explicitly as a couple. After we had finished eating, the waitress brought us the (digital) check and slid the machine over to my partner, rather than placing it in front of me or at the center of the table, despite the fact that I was the one paying. I’m sure she meant no harm and likely didn’t realize she had done that, but it made me wonder how she might have perceived us. Could she have assumed my partner is the more dominant or “male” member in the relationship, considering they are older than I am and present as more masculine? Could this be a reflection of implicit biases? Or maybe it meant nothing at all, that there was no intent unconscious or otherwise behind the action. But therein lies the reality of existing as queer people (or as members of other minority groups): you learn to read into things and assume that there is always the potential for a threat to be present. You learn to censor your existence out of fear of people’s reactions.

Recently, my partner and I were again at the local café, seated at a table and working on our respective assignments. Two heterosexual couples came in, apparently stopping for coffee before traveling together to a show. All four individuals were white and 65+ years old, which is unsurprisingly a group neither my partner nor I expect much acceptance from. We continued doing our work, not touching and hardly talking to each other during the time they were there. At one point, my partner got up to use the restroom. One of the men (I’ll call him George for clarity’s sake) had to use the restroom while my partner was still inside. Realizing the door was locked, he sat back down with the group. A few minutes later, the other man asked, “Are you sure there’s someone in there?” to which George responded, “Yeah, her partner went in there, I saw her.” Putting aside the misgendering, George’s use of the word “partner” caught me completely off guard as we hadn’t been affectionate (and frankly had interacted very little) since the group had arrived. I then wondered if we read as queer. The use of “partner” doesn’t bother me, because that word should be normalized, but the context and realization that we read as a couple when we make a conscious effort not to “act gay” in front of people left me uncomfortable and honestly a little freaked out. It reinforced the realization that there is always the potential for us to be unsafe if people perceive us as different.

As a result of this fear of being seen as different, deciding whether to present as queer or to pass as straight is something that I’ve struggled with thus far in my experience with queerness. It’s a large part of the reason it took me so long to cut my hair short again. It’s the reason that, while I’m very comfortable in “masculine” clothing (e.g. button downs, oxfords, bowties/ties), I worry that when wearing them I’ll be perceived as queer. This experience is a double-edged sword, however. While there is the concern surrounding presenting as queer, I don’t want to hide my identity and dislike being perceived as heterosexual because I’m not heterosexual. This seems to be a balancing act a lot of queer people struggle with. They want to feel safe, but they don’t want to grapple with the invalidation of being assumed to be heterosexual and/or cisgender (especially if this has happened many times before).

This balancing act between presenting as queer or not is often met with an outside perspective that asks questions like, “Why does it matter if people think you’re straight?” On the one hand, it’s true that my sexuality is not all that there is to my identity, and in theory, being assumed straight seems a minor issue (especially when compared to the dangers faced by many queer people who cannot be out as a result of both legal and societal repercussions). But it does matter, because heteronormative perspectives are so pervasive, and hearing them constantly results in a never-ending string of (usually unintentional) microinvalidations. My doctor doesn’t ask me if I’m sexually active or having safe sex, she asks if I have a boyfriend. Relatives want to know if I’ve met any cute boys at school. My parents hint (sometimes not so subtly) at things that I should do, like wearing makeup, removing body hair, letting my hair grow out, dressing “femininely”, or using perfume, because men won’t find the alternative attractive. These small acts that imply that some part of my existence should serve to impress men simply because I am a woman are draining, nevermind incredibly invalidating. These are not “big” instances of discrimination. I have never been harmed or threatened for my queerness. But hearing those remarks and putting in the energy to always check my queerness at the door can get exhausting. Many minority groups experience something similar to this, and for those who cannot present as the majority group (e.g. people of color), it’s even more impactful.

Now of course, this is not all to say that I haven’t had positive experiences with being public in my queerness. Just this week, my partner and I went apple picking together and held hands and kissed throughout, regardless of who else might have been in the field or the orchard’s market. We received no staring, glares, or commentary. But there are also dozens of instances in other settings where we noticed people staring at us or glancing over far too many times to be accidental that I don’t remember in enough detail to recount here. There are the countless times I’ve struggled to find a label to describe my partner to friends on campus if I didn’t know their feelings towards queer people and nonbinary terms. I’ve used the term boyfriend instead of partner to avoid the dreaded “oh” that really means, “I didn’t know you were gay,” or to deter boys who wouldn’t take “girlfriend” to be an indicator that they should stop flirting. There are all the times where I’ve debated if outing myself to someone was worth the possibility of losing the friendship. Navigating queerness often feels like a very calculated existence of shifting between scripts depending on their recipients.

More positively though, there is something to be said for the type of people my partner and I are among and how that impacts feelings of difference. If we go out on a double date with another queer couple for example, or spend time with friends who are also queer, we are more likely to be comfortable acting publicly queer. Being around other queer people provides a sense of ingroup, a certainty that we aren’t the only “deviants” in the room, so to speak. It takes some of the pressure off of us to behave in a way that will make heterosexuals the least uncomfortable. This safety-net provided by being around other queer people is more obvious in settings like gay bars and pride parades. There is an understanding that you are occupying a space that is both safe and intended for you. Being out with a friend group that also identifies as queer offers some of this same feeling, just on a smaller scale.

So, what does all this mean for queer people who deviate simply by existing and going about their lives? How does one grapple with that concept? In truth, I’m not really sure. It seems the only available option is to become aware of this reality (not doing so isn’t exactly a choice available to queer people), exist in it, and whenever possible, fight against it. For those who are not queer, awareness is critical. It is all too easy to exist in a bubble without understanding how social norms affect people’s everyday lives. Even I did not realize how subtle and pervasive queerphobia was, and I would have considered myself a fairly aware and accepting person. People often say they would be afraid to travel back in time because any small action could cause a butterfly effect, rippling out and changing the course of history. Yet, they rarely seem to think that small actions now will have any larger impact in the future. Taking the time to understand people’s experiences as members of “naturally” deviant groups and using that knowledge to guide small actions is the first step towards effecting change that cannot come soon enough.

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