queering

queer is over if you want it

havent written much lately but its june and im officially a 10-year member of the tranny club so excuse me while i run my mouth a while

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its 2024 and we can finally stop queering things now. if this was ever a radical act it hasnt been for decades, and i think of it as an easily visible symptom of a larger ideological problem we have. no matter how precise or biting or radical our critiques of oppression, injustice, violence, or whatever else, these critiques do not by their existence excuse or lessen the harm we do by participating in these systems. nor do they by their existence bring us any closer to materially diminishing that harm. i think of academics with razor sharp critiques of the neoliberal institution who still work in one, people working at evil tech companies who know better and still work there (but try to unionize? so they get better salaries working in the blood factory?!), people in heterosexual marriages with loud feelings about gay shit (seriously how did known hetero eve kosofsky sedgwick become a pillar of “queer theory” how did anyone let that happen??), and even in some sense the classic conservative strawman of the anti-capitalist with an iphone. not to sound like your idiot uncle but he’s got a point there—anticapitalist politics can accomodate using a smartphone, but they cannot accomodate buying a new smartphone with any regularity that isn't “when absolutely necessary”. im sorry but words mean things. or at least they should. and queering should mean active dismantling of systems of oppression, not expressing nuanced disapproval but ultimately not changing ones material behavior.

ive had it with “normalizing” “queerness”, because now we have an absolutely normal, toothless queerness. we have a million posts every june about how the first pride was a riot, but we have no faggot riots; we have jill biden given a stage and a mic at pittsburgh pride during a genocide personally funded and enabled by the president of the united states. one of the most succinct failures of modern gayness that i have ever seen. a deep shame for the so called queer community, a searing indictment of the absolute limpness and impotence of identity politics, and proof that most gay people don't have dreams beyond acceptance in the begrudging, political sense and the privileges that entails. normalizing as a political project is short-sighted at best. it generally means some amount of bootlicking to minimize the social and economic danger associated with a certain identity. for instance normalizing “mental illness” seems to mean that people in offices can take mental health days for anxiety without getting fired, normalizing mental illness does not seem to mean securing healthcare or even giving ten dollars to homeless people experiencing psychosis, for instance. so do forgive me for not giving a shit about normalizing mental illness.

why do leftists care so much about normalcy lately? we can all agree that society is deeply fucked, what is there to gain by integrating queerness into that society? who does that actually serve? why do we put any effort into it? in my united states, we legalized gay marriage in 2015—9 years ago. what have we gotten in that time? some representation on television, we have merch at target that fans the flames of the far right in the so called culture war. yes we can get married but we still have trans people with a poverty rate 10% higher than hetero people, still getting murdered. basically, the comfortable secure white middle class got a little more comfortable and secure. this is not the only thing that happened, peoples lives have improved, but it's the most salient thing. im a well known pisspants contrarian, i will eventually benefit from the legal institution of marriage, but i would rather healthcare not be tied to a piece of paper, a marriage certificate or otherwise. that's like common sense

gay marriage is a symptom of the same disease that elected joe biden and then looked the other way. biden is more fanatical about “securing” the border, is more bloodthirsty in the middle east, and does nothing to materially protect gay people. but now that a democrat does these things, people dont give a shit. they don't pay attention, they elected the blue guy which should fix those problems. they rest easier. the real entrenched problems that gay people faced and still face have essentially nothing to do with getting married. it enables access to healthcare and estate planning, etc, but not having healthcare isnt just a gay problem and estate planning is only for people who are rich enough to have an estate. getting married was a big flashy issue that liberal institutions and eventually politicians threw some of their weight behind, and now that it happened there is no big ticket item. what more could those faggots want? there is no unifying gay political movement because, im sorry, most gay people don't care, and politicians certainly don’t care about us either.

queering marriage doesnt mean anything. queering academia or business or “modes of relationality” means less than nothing. queering anything that is endorsed by the dominant structures of capitalism and evil neoliberal politics is simply excusing yourself for participating in a system that you know better than to participate in. trying to find some moral forgiveness for an immoral thing, working the job because you need to pay the bills. we all need to pay the bills, in fact that's actually the entire problem. we aren't special for being able to articulate the problems of participating in a fucked up system very aptly. everyone knows everything sucks. knowing better is not the same as doing better.

there's an essay by brian blanchfield (“on frottage”) where he writes— “My early fantasy of partnership was in fact sealed fast by HIV: if finally you and he were infected and allegiance followed whatever tearful forgiveness, it seemed to me you could not uncouple, conjoined in the blood. That was my gay marriage. The brave intimacy, and then hurtling undead together through the newly meaningless trappings of the world, liberated by the worst once it happened.” i heard him read this and i wept. queering marriage, if it can ever be anything, must be love in the face of certain death—devotion. because we are facing certain death. this world is going to kill us somehow, it's killing us already. it may not be you just yet but it will be someday. and we don't need queer discourse, we need material devotion.

in writing this, i dont excuse myself. i could and should be more materially devoted to “the cause”, to dragging a better world into reality kicking and screaming. articulating a problem doesnt solve it, and most crucially, articulating a solution doesnt actualize it. its not really more complicated than cowardice on some spiritual level. a fear of giving up stability when i (you, we) know very well that this world is dramatically and increasingly instable. im not yet the person i want to be, but the person i am now needs to bring me to her. this is true of you too. so fuck queering—it wont save me. and fuck pride—it wont save me. but rage just might