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ticklefighthockey · 6 years ago

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Do you think part of the angst is that Harry has talked about sexuality just being 'fun' for him, and that creates a disconnect between him and fans with less privilege who are queer and cannot relate to that sort of experience? Maybe it's jarring to people who have had to take their sexuality 'seriously' to look to their queer icon and realise how far apart they are. Which goes back into unrealistic expectations of celebrities, but maybe that's part of it? What do you think?

your point about the “sexuality should be fun” comment does seem to be part of the anger, yes. i was thinking about this question a lot on the plane today, and i think my primary feeling is: but yes – isn’t that the point? isn’t the great joy of queerness, in its most liberatory and expansive and generous forms, that embracing it can open up new pleasures, new joys, new forms of family-making, and new, playful, wildly imaginative modes of understanding ourselves? if your conception of queerness does not center joy, what is the point? if the way you understand and inhabit queerness relentlessly centers pain – your own pain or the pain of others – how on earth will you survive your time on earth?

eve sedgwick has an amazing line i think of all the time, in which she says something like: yes, we must absolutely remember the pain of the closet, the pain of queer shame, the pain of stigma, the pain of being vulnerable to social and physical violence in ways you did not choose. but we must never, ever mistake that pain as constitutive of queer identity. we must never assume that suffering must be central to queerness itself, simply because it feels so ubiquitous. (for context, sedgwick is writing in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, amidst the virulent homophobia and the losses of the AIDS epidemic.)

here is how I understand that quote.

i think that sometimes – perhaps especially in our current political climate where everything feels so bad so much of the time – we come to believe that suffering itself must be the core of what it means to belong to an identity group. we assume that whenever we speak about Blackness, we must focus only structural racism and the devastating toll it takes on people’s minds, bodies, and communities. we assume that whenever we speak of womanhood, we must focus primarily on rape, assault, domestic violence, etc. we assume that whenever we speak of queerness, we must focus primarily on various kinds of psychological, physical, or economic violence that can be inflicted on queer and trans bodies. if we speak of Blackness, of queerness or transness, of being a woman, and we do not immediately leap to discussing all the violence of the -isms (sexism, racism, etc.), it means we must be insufficiently radical, even complicit.

a simpler, more distilled version of that idea: sometimes we feel like we can only be progressive, or can only hold ‘good’ politics, if we are relentlessly negative/critical all the time and if we relentlessly center pain in our conversations about marginalized identities.

but here’s the thing.

all of those forms of violence – those are effects of structural inequities. they have nothing to do with the person themselves, as a human being, and everything to do with the social and political environments in which that human being is enmeshed. yes, it is vitally important to name and study and work to dismantle those structures. but it is also vitally important that we not mistake the effects of structural violence for the essence of our identities. we must be careful not to just name the violences, and then ignore or dismiss as somehow less important all of those qualities that marginalized peoples have had to cultivate to stay alive and to carve out for themselves a measure of joy, dignity, and love even amidst destruction. queerness, Blackness, transness, womanhood: these experiences and the long cultural histories that shape them are not just about suffering. they are also about resilience, stubbornness, creativity, community, love, and joy in defiance of a world where we were never meant to survive (Audre Lorde). yes, we badly need & MUST work for structural change. but if we do not seek joy, there’s no way we will survive, psychologically or as communities, long enough to do that work.

I remember teaching one of my first queer studies classes, years ago. I was so determined to get it right, to really dig into all of the structural shittiness, all of the loss and death and shame and fear and suffering that inhabiting a queer body or living a queer life can bring down upon you. i crafted this syllabus that was perfect for really, really driving those points home, and i taught it – or rather, as i came to realize, i inflicted it upon my students. at the end of the semester, on the very last day of class, we had a synthesizing discussion where we reflected on what we’d learned and would take away from the class with us. one of my favorite students raised their hand and said, “okay. but what are we supposed to do?” they weren’t asking, like, what actions do we take next. it was much more of an existential crisis question – like, what do we do with all of this suffering? what do we do, how do we live, if our lives are just going to be trying and probably failing to survive in a broken, hostile world?

i will never forget it! i had no idea what to tell this student. i stumbled through some kind of trite answer about educating ourselves, getting involved in activist work, reading about queer history, blah blah blah. all of those things are good, obviously! but when i thought about it more, and reflected back on the semester as a whole, i realized that i’d spent so much time hammering into their heads how painful and awful and scary queer life can be, but had somehow managed to communicate almost nothing about how joyous and life-affirming and soul-expanding it can be. the experience of crafting for yourself a queer body, a queer life, queer relationships, a queer family, is one of the headiest and most wonderful experiences i can imagine. there’s something so buoyant and joyous about that slow dawning realization that there are other ways to live! other ways to be! all those roles you’ve inherited, all those received ways of thinking about your body or your desires or the people you love – you do not have to abide by them. you do not have to mutilate your body or your mind, trying to cut yourself down to size so you’ll fit into someone else’s mold.

now when i teach queer studies courses, i deliberately choose texts that center queer survival and that model joyous acts of queer self-making. i tell my students: this syllabus is not just a list. it is a survival kit. it’s a collection of authors, musicians, and filmmakers whose work grapples with the terribleness of the world but also creates space for tenderness, intimacy, and trust. i no longer teach works that feel devoid of hope or that feel really dehumanizing / torture porn-y. if we are reading something really tough or heavy, i always pair it with other pieces or interviews with the author, or with assignments that are designed to help students explore the threads of resilience that are woven through traumatic experiences. sometimes the texts i offer don’t resonate in the same way with other readers or viewers, and that’s okay: our survival kits look different, depending on what we need to survive. i always encourage them to find and bring into the class or into their work pieces that do speak to their own lives, ones that they can draw emotional or political sustenance from; if they aren’t sure where to start, i try to help them figure that out, too.

how does all of this relate to the harry interview? well, it certainly shapes how i interpret his comments. personally i love to hear someone say that sexuality is fun, and in my life and in my classes i am always trying to center that feeling, to draw it out, to encourage people to delight in it. i love it when people describe the joys of experimenting with all kinds of ways of dressing and understanding themselves and forging relationships with other people. ideally, that is the world we are trying to envision: a world where inventiveness and delight – not pain and suffering – are constitutive of queerness.

i guess too that when i see someone say that sexuality is fun, or that they are greatly enjoying the experience of experimenting and trying things out, i don’t interpret that as a blanket statement about all queer experiences? i certainly don’t think that harry is saying, “I’m having fun – and I assume that everyone else is too, all the time, 24/7 nonstop fun!” i don’t think it’s meant to be a description of everyone’s current reality. i don’t think it’s meant to be a refusal of solidarity, either – the question was how does harry think about his own sexuality in an era of rapidly changing gender and sexual norms, not a request for him to detail the current political and economic vulnerabilities of LGBTQ+ identified people. i’m not saying that harry is super well informed or could offer us a really nuanced take on that second question. but i am saying that, like.. it seems a bit odd to judge his entire understanding of LGBTQ+ politics or queer experience on a short quote in a celebrity profile about his album.

I also don’t think harry’s saying that he himself has only ever had fun with gender and sexuality – ie, that it’s always been fun & games and he’s never experienced even a twinge of self-doubt or internalized shame or dysphoria or what have you. if sexuality and gender expression was “fun” for harry styles 100% of the time, why does he talk so much about stepping into the light? about opening up to others instead of keeping it all inside? about choosing to share yourself with people even when it makes you feel vulnerable and scared, because you aren’t sure if they will understand you or still love you? it’s hard to imagine why a person who is only “LGBTQ+ cosplaying (cosgaying?),” to quote that godawful tweet, would feel the need to circle back, again and again, to this idea of choosing to truly accept and love yourself for who you are – all of who you are, the good and the bad, the joyous and the painful.

that sounds to me like someone whose journey of self-discovery has been serious, even if the way he chooses to present himself to the public centers playfulness and joy. i don’t know if harry was thinking specifically about who he falls in love or goes to bed with when he expressed those sentiments, but i do know that they resonate deeply with my own experiences of queer becoming. and i also know that art always belongs to us – the reader or listener or viewer – as much as it belongs to the person who created it. when we come to it, we will find in it what we most need, if we allow ourselves to be open to that experience.

i have a lot of other thoughts about this interview & its reception, but i think i will save those for another time. i wanted to leave you with a few of my own touchstones from the survival kit i’ve put together for myself over the years. these came to mind today, not so much when i thought about the interview, but when i reflected on the ways people were responding to it.

toni cade bambara, “working at it”:

“I despair at our failure to wrest power from those who have it and abuse it, our reluctance to reclaim our old power laying dormant with neglect, our hesitancy to create new power in areas where it never before existed. Our capacity for compliance, group denial, and amnesia. But I continually observe our ability to keep on keeping on, transforming the chemistry of this place. And am heartened by our spirit, our gifts, our magnificence as we battle against invisibility and fractionalization, especially in our own eyes and in each other’s. We will not be domesticated. If convinced that the truth is in the people, one can afford to laugh.”

gran fury’s political art action during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the ‘80s and 90s:

audre lorde, “uses of the erotic”:

“The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference. Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens to response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea. That self-connection shared in a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my deep capacity for feeling.”

bell hooks, teaching community: a pedagogy of hope

“It is crucial for spiritual nourishment that we all attend to what works even as we understand the need to continue to resist. Many of the individuals who worked to create communities of diversity are weary. That weariness often emerges as spiritual crisis. It is essential that we build into our teaching vision a space where spirit matters, a place where our spirits can be renewed and our souls restored. We must become as articulate in naming our joys as we are in naming our suffering. Thich Nhat Hanh teaches: ‘When you have suffered you know how to appreciate the elements of paradise that are present. If you dwell only in your suffering, you will miss paradise.’”

#and with that #i go to bed #mw #long post #edit: larries please do not reblog #this is not about a conspiracy ship

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