The Future is in "Us."
The present moment asks us us to choose collectivity.
Last week, I got into a little online discourse* (*argument) over the word “queer.”
If you’ve spent any time reading my stuff or following me, you know I’m a big proponent of the word “queer.” It’s language I use for myself, but beyond that, I think “queer” is a word with a significant amount of power. It carries some complicated but important history, as both a weapon used against us and for us. It’s identity, theory, culture. “Queer” speaks for all of us in the gender and sexuality-marginalized corners of the world — even when the folks “queer” is speaking for resist it.
In the discourse* (*argument), there were, of course, the folks who insist that “queer” is a slur, and no other understanding of the word holds as much sway. And there are the folks who show up to argue that, even though they get alternate histories and understandings of “queer,” we still have to center and prioritize that some people individually feel bad about it. (Biased renderings on my part? Maybe. But it’s my Substack, my rules.)
The discourse* (*argument) led me to this post:
Look, I absolutely respect the individual experiences of people who had the word “queer” slung at them maliciously. I am one of those people. I grew up in South Louisiana, and I got called “queer” many a time from middle school into adulthood. I get the sting of it. I understand the pain of that. But I also understand that I am one person, living my one individual life. Yet, I’m one of many. My pain is one of many pains. Yes, I and my pain are no more or less than anyone else. But who and what I am as part of the collective is more important and more powerful.
It reminded me of a poem by my favorite poet, Mark Doty, “A Display of Mackerels,” particularly this final moment:
all, all for all,
the rainbowed school
and its acres of brilliant classrooms,
in which no verb is singular,
or every one is. How happy they seem,
even on ice, to be together, selfless,
which is the price of gleaming.
In Leslie Feinberg’s Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue, zie shares a talk zie gave to the 9th annual Texas “T” Party in Richardson, Texas. The T Party was an annual event in the late 80s and 90s that allowed transgender folks to gather and share community. This talk, “Allow Me to Introduce Myself,” was a talk Feinberg gave to 350 straight crossdressers and their partners, and it’s a beautiful, reaching talk that attempts to parse out difficult intersectional questions of sex, gender, identity, how we present out bodies to the world, and how the world perceives those bodies.
As the speech is coming to an end, Feinberg offers this powerful moment on the necessity of coalition:
“The real burning question is: How did we ever find the courage? From what underground spring did we draw our pride? How did each of us make our way in life, without a single familiar star in the night sky to guide us, to this room where we have at last found others like ourselves? And after so much of ourselves has been injured, or left behind as expendable ballast, many of us worry ‘What do we have left to give each other? Upon what basis will we build something lasting between us?’
I think we have a whole world to give back to each other.
We have the material to create the strong structures of each of our communities, while still building the foundation for a coalition of our diversity to fight for common goals. If we want to win our own demands, we need allies. And as we fight for each other’s rights, we strengthen our own.”
It’s a tough time right now to be many things. Tough to be a woman. Tough to be trans. Tough to be poor. Tough to be Black. Tough to be ace. Tough to be Muslim. Disabled. Nonbinary. Lesbian. Latine. Intersex. Indigenous. It’s tough to be, right now. We’ve had to fight to just earn the freedom, within and without, to be those things, and as Feinberg points out, the exhaustion of that fight makes us desire closing ranks, sealing up who we are and the fight we undertook to get there in a protective box, focusing on the individual amidst the terror and uncertainty of Now.
It’s why some folks are so reluctant to embrace “queer.” Their fight was hard, and it can feel as though giving up their fight and their pain to use “queer” erases their fight and their pain. It’s part of why the “LGB without the T” movement surfaced. It’s why we’re seeing queer people silo themselves within their own communities right now, hesitant to trust other communities.
But offering up our hard-won selves to the collective who’ve walked similar pathways isn’t erasure. It’s amplification. It’s multiplication. Black feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins articulated this in a 1990 essay called “Defining Black Feminist Thought”:
“Individual African-American women have long displayed varying types of consciousness regarding our shared angle of vision. By aggregating and articulating these individual expressions of consciousness, a collective, focused group consciousness becomes possible.”
The future is in “us,” not “me.” We are greater than the sum of our individual parts. And Feinberg, in hir talk, offers a question that, for me, is only answerable in the affirmative right now:
“Have we reached the moment in history when this dialogue between our communities can begin?”