#dyke in practice fag in theory for now

[kitt-andrea]

What is Queer?

Gay 1 told me to ‘settle down, our lot can get married now so (I) should Stop complaining- and while (I’m) at it, get a job and stop dyeing (my) hair weird colours.’ I gulp down my imperative to scream at his condescending tone, and walk away. To be Queer is to be looked down upon, but to know one’s value and try to be better.

And the teacher stuck in the 70s hasn’t realised yes, I can study Queer Theory at university -And even as a word itself, it is one I treasure: Can he not tell I’m not slurring it across a room like his other student did just last week?

Just as the grassroots informed the naming of our theory of life, The tensions of which branch of non-normative identity one takes up Is present in its constituents too. But Gay 1 runs our Gay Straight Alliance, And important politics are formed in the process of making a capital-a Ally so I play nice.

It seems the Allies want to join the acronym too now, And the Lesbians and Gays are in pieces over how respectable they should be today. Being an Ally isn’t Queer, sorry, we say, but they never wanted to be Queer anyway.

Being Queer means knowing that co-operating is sometimes useful to the movement, But that ultimately your aims are totally disparate, and it is more useful to Find a group on the margins too for totally different reasons And find where the struggle does overlap- and in the space it doesn’t create mutual aid.

Grinding my teeth in the fifth meeting this week- with staff, or my own constituent students That tell me, maybe I’m too militant for liberation and should focus on Going to the raising of the flag at University House instead.

Queers look to total liberation, that is tied up in the liberation of everyone else too So we will demonstrate: against racism, to end the thinly veiled neo-colonialist war- For any cause that drives humanity towards a utopia, no matter how useless Such an endeavour feels. To be Queer is to actively oppose harmful structures.

No, this does still not make Allies Queer. Show me their action extending past A GSA meeting, into the streets for us and others, or to their homes- their bedrooms. Point to how they Queer their movement through the world.

Could a Heterosexual person be Queer? Queer 2 replies, ‘maybe if they are Trans.’ While I do agree, being Transgender is as much a way into Queerness as being Attracted to multiple genders, the implied definition for Queer (as told by Queer 3) Is simply non-normative gender and orientation, nothing more and nothing less.

We are a politics against purity, but did you see the same logic of LGBTQUIAP+ (and endless formations even less useful than that) Shining through? This is not who we are meant to be, damn it!

Let’s Queer the pitch and challenge these outdated lines of gatekeeping. What of the Ethically non-monogamous? What of those who practice kink and have Non-normative sex? What makes their variety of relationships not Queer? What even is Queer? It has dead bodies in itself, but birth and celebration too.

And I know that the cisgender heterosexuals in those communities Are still prone to shouting abuse or laughing at us or denying us access: I am adamant. Those ones Queer nothing. But some still do.

Consider the limited parental rights of those categories, or the working opportunities. Sexual violence is laughed at when other pain is consensual. There are powers at play When a BDSM scene creates a culture of consent stronger than its vanilla counterparts And when non-monogamy undermines the premises of an efficient nuclear family.

At my first social, I am told to use a fake name, and call the one I am under protection of ‘Amy’. The name stumbles across my lips but it is for our protection, no one can know she Studies … No one can know I’d teach if I could one day.

Is anything solidly Queer? Queer is a verb, I am Queer because of how I choose to Act in my life. I am Queer when my sex(uality)/ relationships/ gender undermine That which is the norm. When I struggle in solidarity and revolt against the logic of this world. Gay 1, or Lesbian 4 are not Queer because they uphold this Straight hegemony.

Queer is anti-capitalist, so join me on the streets in the march to Grenfell, Or smash your way to the top of Millbank Or mask up for when Mark Duggan…

The Queer cannot beg to be ‘like everyone else’, with a normal family and marriage, Or ask to join the army and kill some brown (queer) people for their country. We are a set of demands alight in a Molotov Cocktail- and if our flame makes the sparkliest rainbow, Then so be it. Queer is a potential found across gender and orientations, embrace it.

In a room full of the closest friends, she admits that maybe she too is a bit Queer, a bit genderqueer, that these norms do not fit her either, but she is afraid To come out- to family yes, but to the community of letters who should judge her not enough.

I am not a subcategory of anything or anyone, not even the Gay and Lesbian group. Queer means so much more than a simple identity, it is a statement of intent, A set of demands and constant striving to have made oneself who we needed as children.

We are the eternal collective of Dykes, Fags, Trannies- and above all else- filthy Queers. And we are here, we will eternally fuck this shit up in the name of glorious revolution-

My beautiful body that pleasingly straddles binary gender and sex is its own small Revolution. It is yet more beautiful when the binaries dissolve under the weight of A gender pluralism that recognises gender’s present importance but eventual death.

To kill gender and sexuality and leave only pleasure and people is our aim, for now we fight-

February 2018