{"id":145106657,"date":"2024-06-05T12:31:53","date_gmt":"2024-06-05T12:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=145106657"},"modified":"2024-06-05T12:31:53","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T12:31:53","slug":"humanity-would-be-nothing-without-queerness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=145106657","title":{"rendered":"Humanity Would Be Nothing Without Queerness"},"content":{"rendered":"

“It’s true I’m all talk & a French tuck \/ but so what. Like the wind, I ride” – Ocean Vuong, “The Last Prom Queen In Antarctica” <\/h2>

Happy Pride Month! I have some Lists Of People & Art To Check Out coming, but as I started thinking about writing them (and which one to start with), it hit me\u2014there is no humanity\u2014well, you read the title, right? And the epigraph? <\/p>

Humanity is nothing without queerness. <\/p>

\"File:Pride<\/figure>

\u201cWell hang on, Chris, what do you mean by that?\u201d <\/p>

You know how people say USian popular culture is just Black culture, appropriated\/stolen? I\u2019m saying that without queerness, there wouldn\u2019t be human culture<\/em>, period. Fascists and business school grads and weird Christians love to ask what the point of things without immediate value is. Why get a creative writing degree when you won\u2019t make any money? Why do you wear clothes that are more than purely functional? Why do you have sex for any reason other the procreation? <\/p>

So many people want everything to fit in its neat little box. So many people want to get their Rust Cohle on and talk about consciousness being a tragic misstep in human evolution. The very fact that some people are gay or trans or intersex or asexual or anything else is a refutation of that. Queerness is, on the most basic level possible, an assertion that sometimes things be the way they are because of how they do.<\/p>

\"Matthew<\/figure>

Without getting all white ally about it, the first thing I think of when I think of queerness is joy. Irreverence, humor, strength, resilience, goofballality\u2014these are the adjectives I think of when I think of my LGBTQ friends. Our society makes it really difficult to admit to yourself that you might be anything other than straight or cis. That awakening can be a confusing process, and once you come out, you face a whole new set of fears and dangers. From where I\u2019m looking, I don\u2019t see how you go through that process and come out the other side thinking the human experience is anything other than at least a little silly. <\/p>

Being straight and cis and having the Obama\/McCain election be the first one I could vote it, I\u2019ve watched USian society drift from \u201ccasual ambient homophobia\u201d to \u201cmore or less cultural acceptance, at least, We Have Gay Marriage Now.\u201d Where I\u2019m at lately, I wonder how much straight cis people think about why they identify that way. You\u2019re attracted to people of the opposite gender? That\u2019s it<\/em>? Your gender matches the one you were assigned at birth? Are ya sure<\/em>? These thoughts are worth thinking. A lot men act stupidly and angrily and violently because they feel like their manhood is under attack and can\u2019t even come up with halfway articulate statements on what makes them men. <\/p>

\"File:Sebastes<\/figure>

Why are you the way you are? Why do things have to be the way that seems prescribed? I don\u2019t mean this to trivialize in-born imperatives or make it seem like being gay or trans or intersex or ace is a choice<\/em>, these things are not choices. The existence of queerness, though, proves that the human experience is not uniform. That we are not those 24-lifespan bugs, we are alive for more than brutally efficient reproduction. We are alive to love, to play, to experience. At the absolute barest minimum, go to a gay bar or drag brunch sometime. Read Sappho\u2019s descendants. I promise you, if you can\u2019t bring yourself to at least experience queerness peripherally, then your world is tragically<\/em> small. <\/p>

At this moment\u2014and every other moment in the US\u2019s history, save for like 15 minutes after the Obergefell decision\u2014LGBTQ people are under attack. Draconian laws against medically transitioning, Christian Nationalist ghouls and the Tradwife movement, the spirit of Matthew Shepard\u2019s killers never really dying, all kinds of depressing examples. Any time a marginalized group makes gains, there\u2019s going to be a backlash, and we\u2019re seeing a serious backlash to Obergefell, Drag Race<\/em> having multiple seasons, and the mainstreaming of \u2018they\u2019 as a singular pronoun (even though it\u2019s been used that way for hundreds of years<\/a>), among other things. <\/p>

It feels necessary, then, to say it with your chest (whether or not you\u2019ve had top surgery). We love our LGBTQ+ friends, family, and neighbors. The world would be unbearably pallid without you\u2014food less delicious, flowers less fragrant, rainbows less thrilling, poetry less gay. <\/p>

And what\u2019s poetry, if not gay? <\/p>

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