Monday, February 20, 2012
Queer
Queer is permanently outside the culture and therefore in opposition to it. Queer does not look for a time in the future when there will be resolution, when the failures of today will be corrected and those outside brought in. Queer neither seeks nor wishes for acceptance. Queer seeks to understand today. Queer accepts today what is—the crimes and the radical failures—and accepts that today doesn’t lead to any change for tomorrow. Queer does not mature into anything. Queer is not a transitional state. Queer is final. Queer understands that same-sex is only one aspect of queer. Queer stands in opposition.
Queer does not fit in. Queer isn’t smooth. And there is some question whether Queer is cool. Queer is not dependent on what anyone else does or even anyone else’s understanding of it. And it is certainly not dependent on whether anyone else accepts it. Queer is independent of all that and stands alone. Proud, independent, unmoved. It is enough to learn what I stand for.
I suspect that there are a number of ways to become Queer. One grows up and into Queer. One realizes at last that, after one has been everything else, one is Queer. It is therefore a state for old people. It is also a state for kids, who understand instinctively that they don’t need to try all those states that aren’t going to work, because they are temporary. Kids understand, having cut out all the transitional stages, they can go right for Queer and have done with it. Hey, this’s the way I am. I’m not ever gonna be part of that other stuff..
Gay used to be like this. It was way out there. It was not respectable. But Gay started trying to fit in and be respectable. It started being a transitional stage on the road to fitting in. But Queer is truth, right now, until everybody gets used to it, when we’re going to need a new word for this old truth. Something to describe those of us not on the path to anywhere. Just me. Just us. Out here. Queer.
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