Repoliticizing queerness
03 April 2026 - 1,404 words
What does it mean to be Queer? Since I have been made aware of the term, and since I have labeled myself using it, I have not spent much time thinking about what the term itself actually means. It seems largely taken for granted that Queer, of course, just means some kind of deviation from cisheteronormativity. Be you “gay,” “trans,” “nonbinary,” “bisexual,” or “aroace,” “Queerness” existed primarily as an umbrella term for all of these.
In rare instances, Queerness would also compose something greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts, making up an identity in itself that could be wholly separated from those underlying identities―Queerness as an identity itself.
When we think about what the word “Queer” actually means, we obviously may look towards a synonym of Queer, such as “weird.” But Queer isn’t quite the same as Weird, it’s really a weirder version of the word. Queer, of course, in its applicaton towards people like me, originated as a slur. Quite a literal one, really, meaning that we deviate from the norm. We lie outside that which is considered ordinary, conventional, even acceptable.
Perhaps this is why Queer has been reclaimed so effortlessly and so easily. There have, of course, been critiques of this reclamation from older folks, who still feel the pain of the term. But on the whole, it’s a struggle to find anyone who has any kind of negative connotation to this word. In fact, Queer seems to be particularly positioned to illicit the pride that is claimed to be central to our struggle. Most Queers adorn the word with a bold pride, feeling euphoric at its claim, myself included.
Not only this, but Queerness acts like a coalition. Whether one is gay, trans, nonbinary, ace, aro, whether one dates members of the same gender or not, whether one identifies as the gender society thrust upon them at birth or not, whether one conforms to monogomy or amatonormativity itself or not, all of us may be united under this singular movement. There is not a single axis or line of singularity that aligns us all. In a quite beautifully poetic kind of way, the only thing that really unites the Queers is that we are all quite Queer from one another and from our society.
But I really don’t want to whitewash the Queer community, so-to-speak. In online discourse and certainly mainstream representation (though honestly, fuck mainstream representation), The Queer Voice is in fact The White Queer Voice. There is an abundance of biphobia. Somehow, both mononormativity and amatonormativity reign supreme. Passing is positioned as really the only thing for trans people to aspire towards.
I think somewhere along the line, we forgot where we came from and why we were fighting. Maybe it started in the 60s with the Gay Liberation Front, who decided that “we” would be better off if we threw the Black trans women that started the riots and led the struggle into the street and centered the struggle around the legalization of marriage; the liberal institutionalization of gayness. Because let it be clear, Queerness is not about institutionalization. Quite literally, the word Queer is anti-thetical to institutionalization. How can we build this Queer Coalition of difference and weirdness if the structure of our project is one pursuing normalization and, inevitably, homogenization?
Why are we at all surprised that The Queer Voice is white when our struggle has seemed to be trying to create a single Queer Voice, necessarily producing a zero-sum political structure of representation in a world that has quite literally been structured over centuries to center, empower, and universalize whiteness? Why are we surprised when Queerness has somehow been figured amatonormative when the largest political victory we have to point to is a legalization of marriage? Have we actually ever won anything at all when all we can say is that we’ve rendered gay love structurally identical to straight love? How could trans people have anything to aspire to but passing privilege when the only avenues of justice we’ve ever fought for are to let trans people have the pathways towards passing, and even then fighting tooth and nail and still somehow losing?
I want to ask us to do something really hard. I want to ask us to stop looking at that which the Mythical Norm of Love is, of Cis people, as something that we wish we could have but sadly cannot. I want us to stop trying to imagine a world in which this shaky coalition we’ve managed to string together across time, space, geography, and culture can cease to exist because we’ve managed to enter the institution with permanence. I want you to stop yearning to be less Queer.
If we are to define where we went wrong not as a time or a place but as an idea, then I would argue that where we went wrong is seeking to define Queerness not as a political struggle but as an identity. Maybe we’re born gay, maybe we’re born trans, whatever I don’t really care to debate your metaphysics. But none of us are born Queer. We are born, and society tells us what we must be, and those of us who are Queer say fuck you, I’m not obeying your rules. We don’t look up and say, Please can you give us a shred of respect? We build respect through coalition building. We find each other and build our life how we want, how we imagine. We build a Queer life and a Queer world one connection, one step at a time.
I think one of the few trends of Queerness that is almost universal is that of yearning. We yearn so badly to Love, we yearn so badly to see ourselves in the mirror, we yearn so badly against the cage that society has instructed us to lie in. Yearning is truly an exceptional form of desire―it’s desperate, it’s needy, it’s something we can’t just try to forget or ignore, it’s so all consuming that it’s debilitating, it’s unquenchable. And I think that many of us try to satisfy this yearning in the most readily available way before us. And if that most readily available path means mimicking the norm, it doesn’t really feel possible to take another choice.
I’m not saying that choice is a moral failure, or that it makes you a “class traitor” or whatever. But the reason, I think, why “Queerness” comes with it such a sense of pride, is because it is something that grants credence to alterity. The Queer Coalition literally is built on difference through and through, and it is something powerful, something all can be a part of. The part that I left out, though, is that Queerness brings just as much shame as it brings pride. And that shame is powerful. Perhaps it’s not fair to say that “Queerness,” as the coalition, brings shame, but rather escaping the norm itself is what brings shame. It goes back to Queer as a slur, its very position outside of the norm implicates shame.
But I think the power of the coalition is stronger than the power of that shame. Just look at how rates of Queerness climb, and climb, and climb―look at how language of atypical relationships and new labels and nonbinary identity builds and builds. The coalition continues to expand. The pride generated by this kind of coalition is stronger than the shame of the emptyness of the norm.
I don’t want to suggest that the shame doesn’t matter, or that you’re weak if you give into it, or that embracing Queerness can solve all your problems. But what I do want to suggest is that if we build Queerness as a political project, if we reorient the coalition towards political struggle, if we choose instead to direct our yearning through sociopolitical projects like redefining how we live, building community, building Love, and connecting with our body, not within institutions but literally Without, all the power we find in Queerness will grow, our pride will begin to be more than a sense of identity and become a world in which we live, our shame will become bearable and we will be able to survive.
In the past many decades, Queerness as a political struggle within the state has moved us from the closet to the streets. What could our coalition look like if we begin to orient Queerness as a sociopolitical struggle without the state?