crashntumble:

beanonwire:

femmesandfamily:

At least not in most people’s definitions.

Not because I believe in captialism or assimillation.  But because I don’t have the privilege to be able to reject these systems and still survive.

Most of the ‘radical’ queers I know don’t work (or work for very little/radical orgs).  Most of them I know have college educations that were paid for by their parents.  Most of them I know police who is and who isn’t radical with no regard to privilege and power.

All very not radical ideas, if you ask me.

So I am very uncomfortable defining myself in that way.  Maybe it is just my experience that lends myself to not IDing this way.

Has anyone felt similarly? Or want to say what being a radical queer means to them?

I identify as radical in the tradition of of roots etymology, in that I don’t believe oppression can be legislated away and that sometimes legal reforms only make it harder to recognize the big picture. That doesn’t mean, however, that I rule out strategic political reforms that can have a major impact on people’s life chances in the here and now. That doesn’t mean I don’t think a legal precident might accomplish a lot more than a brick through a window. But overall, it’s about a major cultural shift that probably requires the eventual destruction of the whole construct of “straight.”

I identify as queer, sometimes, because it’s a single word that most people understand to mean some level of identification with same-gender-attraction and avoids me having to tack on a lot of qualifications to other commonly known words. 

I don’t identify as radical queer because in my experience it’s more of another youth-obsessed subculture like punk/goth/etc. than anything else. In my case, I feel like my own value to “radical queer” community has been based as much on overt sexual availability and expressing myself within certain subcultural parameters as what kind of person I am and what my politics are.

I don’t identify as a radical queer because I recognize that my own former polyamorous casual sex kinky radical queer badassery was an unhealthy outlet for needing to be “loved,” but I have to stay quiet about that lest I get accused of kink-shaming blah blah.

I don’t identify as a radical queer because “assimilation” and “homonormativity” are buzzwords that most people sound like absolute judgmental d-bags trying to articulate. 

I don’t identify as a radical queer because radical queers too often romanticize a highly editorialized bohemian account of queer histories while ignoring the fact that a lot of queers 40, 60, 80, and 200 years ago probably wanted to get married too.

I don’t identify as a radical queer because I’m over 30 and felt serious embarrassment around many of the other over-30 radical queers I’ve met. 

I don’t identify as a radical queer because radical queer community is misogynistic and has tried to entirely dispense with the contributions of lesbian feminism to dyke culture. Even where it responds to widespread absolute worship of maleness and masculinity, it has to be dressed up as gender-neutralized “femmephobia” and the proper response is “glitter! stilettos! look how fucking FIERCE we are!” and not “look at all this misogyny and look at what a fucking travesty it is that dykes are expected to put up with it, and even participating in it.”

I don’t identify as a radical queer because last year I saw Matilda Bernstein debating Dan Choi and telling him, a Korean-American, about racist imperialism, and I just had to back away slowly from all that. 

I don’t identify as a radical queer because nearly all of the prominent radical queer rock stars editing anthologies are really obnoxious people whose male-centric analyses have more to do with public sex and being snarky about the homos they don’t relate to than with power relations.

I know this is going to make people mad, but every thing I’m criticizing here is something I have regretfully taken part in so haters to the left etc.

Love this. I’ve been feeling this a lot over the last two years (especially living in the Bay Area where so much of the “radical queer” community is heavily image conscious, judgmental as fuck, Gay Shame/Mattilda Bernstein-y, exclusive, isolationist, etc.)

I’ll add- I don’t identify as a radical queer because when I was a wee 18 year old trans kid, I helped organize over 200 people to shut down an intersection in SF after prop 8 was passed. We did a lot of coalition/community building with faith, immigrant, and labor communities leading up to the action. When I reached out to the “radical queers” at the community college I attended while also working full time stocking shelves at a grocery store, they laughed in my face and called me an assimilationist. My politics are much more radical and leftier than they were when I was 18- but I don’t scoff at mainstream marriage/military focused folks because I remember the hurt and betrayal I felt at the hands of “radical queers.” I do my best to engage and educate, to have conversations about imperialism with other white queer folks & not presume to speak for folks of color, and to LISTEN to people whose politics aren’t totally in line with mine when I know they value justice and are deeply committed to building a better world. 

^ all of this. i’m so over not feeling queer/kinky/poly/feminist/radical/body positive enough. why do i have to assimilate to this mostly middle class white and cis east coast liberal arts degree having queer brand of radicalism that will never be relevant to my life?