Queer Activist Quotes

When you live in a community of queers, anarchists, & activists, crisis is the baseline and stability an outlier.

Of course, I know there are LGBTQIA activists out there who fought for centuries for me to have the right to fuck up like this

Being radical is a choice, and it takes work. A person with a marginalized identity can engage in conservative, oppressive political work, and activists, organizers, and intellectuals living under capitalism, colonialism, anti-Black racism, and patriarchy require years of unlearning or decolonization.

Black feminists and LGBTQ activists are labeled “hijackers” and said to be divisive or co-opting or distracting from what is important, and what is “important” is the mainstream narrative propped up by patriarchy and misogyny (straight-up hatred of women).

We work side by side, and some of us imagine that because we are equal under the law, we are also the same. We are and should be equal under the law. But we are not the same - despite what some activists and politicians, journalists and academics would have us believe.

While radical queer activists around the world have been fighting against wars, military, and white neocolonialism, privileged white GGGGs in America have been fighting for their right to participate.

And what the right wing and conservative forces fear, is true: rights are rights are rights. When you do start to fight for the equality of LGBT people, it will at some point lead to calls for marriage equality, and that’s terrifying, even if marriage equality is not what activists are asking for today in, say, Nigeria or Russia. They are simply asking to live in peace and not be killed, to have the same basic protections as everyone else.

Amor Apocalypse is headed our way, Now that Roe vs Wade is overturned. Love is where the scrotum-brain scotus, Will lay next their filthy hand. First they came for our choice, Then they'll come for our love. Soon they'll go for good old lynching, Land of the free will be land of the shrubs. Straight and queer are products of a bipolar world, In the sanctuary of love there's no straight, no queer. In love's domain queer is straight, straight is queer, A heart full of love and light is radiantly nonpolar.

Finally, the attempt to make all analyses of gender intersectional, to focus relentlessly on a simplistic concept of societal privilege, rooted overwhelmingly in identity (and not in economics) and to incorporate elements of critical race Theory and queer Theory, results in a highly muddled, Theoretical, and abstract analysis that makes it difficult—if not impossible—to reach any conclusions other than the oversimplification that straight white men are unfairly privileged and need to repent and get out of everyone else’s way.

In my past life, there were a number of LGBTQ activists who had criticized the entertainers using their flamboyant sexuality as a selling point on TV. I think their criticism was likely on point. But here’s what else I think: Without going so far as to say it’s the right or wrong thing to do, some people out there can’t live their lives without making light of their problems. Of course these entertainers were contributing to homophobic stereotypes. And of course I’d prefer it if we could eliminate homophobia altogether. But some queer people living in the real world will also, inevitably, act in ways that highlight the prejudices they experience. Maybe they’ll have other reasons for acting the way they do, but I think that need to lampshade their problems is one of them. Some people can’t live with their burdens without cracking wise about them. When you’re queer and you fall in love with someone who can never respond to your feelings in kind, they often still behave more intimately with you than they would with someone of the opposite sex. But after the moment you realize you’re in love with them, that just makes them feel even further away. If you run into this problem again and again, before you realize it, you might become the kind of person who can only helplessly laugh the whole thing off. Not everyone ends up like that, of course. It just so happened that I had.

Somewhere in between are the rest of us natives, in whom such change revives long-buried anger at those faraway people who seem to govern the world: city people, educated city people who win and control while the rest of us work and lose. Snort at the proposition if you want, but that was the view I grew up with, and it still is quite prevalent, though not so open as in those days. These are the sentiments the fearful rich and the Republicans capitalize on in order to kick liberal asses in elections. The Democrats' 2006 midterm gains should not fool anyone into thinking that these feelings are not still out here in this heartland that has so rapidly become suburbanized. It is still politically profitable to cast matters as a battle between the slick people, liberals all, and the regular Joes, people who like white bread and Hamburger Helper and "normal" beer. When you are looking around you in the big cities at all those people, it's hard to understand that there are just as many out here who never will taste sushi or, in all likelihood, fly on an airplane other than when we are flown to boot camp, compliments of Uncle Sam. Only 20 percent of Americans have ever owned a passport. To the working people I grew up with, sophistication of any and all types, and especially urbanity, is suspect. Hell, those city people have never even fired a gun. Then again, who would ever trust Jerry Seinfeld or Dennis Kucinich or Hillary Clinton with a gun? At least Dick Cheney hunts, even if he ain't safe to hunt with. George W. Bush probably knows a good goose gun when he sees one. Guns are everyday tools, like Skil saws and barbecue grills. So when the left began to demonize gun owners in the 1960s, they not only were arrogant and insulting because they associated all gun owners with criminals but also were politically stupid. It made perfect sense to middle America that the gun control movement was centered in large urban areas, the home to everything against which middle America tries to protect itself—gangbangers, queer bars, dope-fiend burglars, swarthy people jabbering in strange languages. From the perspective of small and medium-size towns all over the country, antigun activists are an overwrought bunch.

The different strategies and visions of ‘reformists’ and ‘radicals’ are not the only subject of major debate within lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer politics. The fact is that only a tiny minority of non-heterosexuals are involved in any sort of political activism. Various writers and activists have noted with rising alarm an almost mass depoliticisation of lesbian and gay communities in the 1990s. The crass commercialism of the gay scene and the rise of the so-called pink pound and of ‘lifestyle’ as a signifier of sexual identity (and human worth) has allowed huge profits to be reaped. Playing on the insecurities of people sells ‘packages’ which can include everything from ‘gay apartments’ to ‘gay holidays’ and ‘gay clothes’ to designer drugs.

No individual or single organization can speak for nonwhite people, women, the world's colonized populations, workers, or any demographic category as a whole--although nonwhite, female and queer, and labor activists from the Global North routinely and arrogantly claim this right. Black liberation, civil rights, feminist, labor, and decolonization struggles clearly reveal that if resistance is even slightly effective, THE PEOPLE WHO STRUGGLE ARE IN DANGER. The choice is not between danger and safety but rather between the uncertain dangers of revolt and the certainty of a world with no future. Original pamphlet: Who is Oakland. April 2012. Quoted in: Dangerous Allies. Taking Sides.

Civilization is Not A Place (The Sonnet) No matter who likes it not, Say Gay anyway. Compliance to discrimination, Is the coward's way. A true leader once said, women belong in, All places where decisions are being made. I say, fudge it all, Women just belong, period. They say, they don't want their kids, To be hurt learning history. I say, if learning history makes you hurt, You are in dire need of therapy. Civilization begins when we acknowledge our primitiveness. Civilization is not a place, it's a people, it's a process.

The postmodern view wrongly insists that scientific thought is unable to distinguish itself as especially reliable and rigorous in determining what is and isn't true. Scientific reasoning is construed as a metanarrative -a sweeping explanation of how things work- and postmodernism is radically skeptical of all such explanations. In postmodern thinking, that which is known is only known within the cultural paradigm that produced the knowledge and is therefore representative of its systems of power. As a result, postmodernism regards knowledge as provincial and intrinsically political.

The principle of skepticism common among postmodernists is frequently referred to as -radical skepticism-. It says, -all knowledge is constructed: what is interesting is theorizing about why knowledge got constructed this way-. Thus, radical skepticism is markedly different from the scientific skepticism that characterized the Enlightenment.

Progress ocurred fastest of all in the 1960 and 1970s, when racial and gender discrimination became illegal and homosexuality was decriminalized. This all ocurred before postmodernism became influential. Postmodernism did not invent ethical opposition to oppressive power systems and hierarchies -in fact, much of the most significant social and ethical progress ocurred during the preceding periods that it rejects and continues to be brought about by applying the methods of liberalism.

Almost every social significant category has been intentionally complicated and problematized by postmodern Theorists in order to deny such categories any objective validity and disrupt the systems of power that might exist across them.

We therefore might think of postmodernism as a kind of fast-evolving virus. Its original and purest form was unsustainable: it tore its hosts apart and destroyed itself. It could not spread from the academy to the general population because it was so difficult to grasp and so seemingly removed from social realities. In its evolved form, it spread, leaping the species gap from academics to activists to everyday people, as it became increasingly graspable and actionable and therefore more contagious.

Although prison officials warned her that many of the women would lie to her about their backgrounds and crimes, she found them to be fundamentally honest. She also felt it critical to note something she did not expect: 'the cheerfulness and gaiety which abound in the House of Detention so much of the time.' This should in no way distract from our understanding of the prison as a brutal place; rather, it reflects the strength and hope of those incarcerated. As activist Jay Toole said, 'A lot of us called it the playground. A lot of us called it a prison. I called it both.

Scholarly debate won't do - intellectual argumentation won't do - ideological intimidation won't do. What's needed is a heart of honey primed by the steel-strong conviction of collective uplift. And I mean collective uplift - that is, the uplift of everybody -- not just the rich, white, christian, straight males - but everybody - the uplift of women, the uplift of the poor, the uplift of the colored, the uplift of the queer, the uplift of each and every person on earth, across the ignorance-induced divisions and discriminations of our prehistoric days.

Modern gay rights politics has depended on a certain representation of the transgender women who participated in Stonewall as spontaneous subjects who were seized by an apolitical rage. It was necessary to erase the drag queens as activists prior to Stonewall in order to produce them as pre-political subjects who merely provided a stepping stone to a presumably more mature and single-issue gay rights politics. Rendering them into pre-political subjects was also a way to erase the active dialogue that was taking place in and between movements, and a way to obscure the role that transgender women played in that dialogue. As Rivera's remarks suggest, it is more accurate to say that trans women were the intersectional linchpins between anti-racist, queer, and transgender liberations.

The inner school is home to activist academics, organizations, subject-matter experts, teachers, consultants, and policymakers who have undergone cult initiation and are familiar with the cult’s teachings and practices.

Those in Queer Theory’s inner school are called Queer Activists.

Queer Activists advance cult doctrine by studying the gospels of the cult and by conditioning the beliefs and behaviors of lower cult members and potential initiates.

Queer Activists are wholly committed to the cult and have mostly severed ties with anyone who doesn’t share their faith.

The inner school Queer Activists defend the cult at all costs.

Like all cult recruiters, Queer Activists use emotionally manipulative methods to control cult members and recruit new outer school initiates.

Queer Activists welcome recruits into a “safe” and “inclusive” environment where they feel like they are the most important people in the world and in which they are protected from ideas that might challenge cult doctrine, something experts in cult psychology call milieu control.

Queer Activists offer them solutions to resolve all of their confusion, alienation, loneliness, and pain, an affirming social environment, and something to do that feels meaningful and productive.

Sadly, in the volatile arena of the sexuality/Christianity debate, interaction is often reduced to name calling by angry gay activists and self-righteous Christian conservatives. Name calling never enhances conversation, rational discussion or creates a constructive dialogue. It only reinforces each other's perceptions/positions. It must be remembered however, that one of the reasons some LGBT people are quick to revert to name calling (bigot, homophobe, hater) is because they learnt about its impact early in life (faggot, queer, pervert).

For nearly two centuries, everyone but trans women have monopolized the meaning of trans femininity. Fearful of interdependence, many have tried to violently wish trans femininity away. The non-trans woman has become gender critical, willing to dispose of her trans sister to secure her claim on womanhood. The gay man celebrates queens as iconic but separates himself anxiously from faggotry’s intimacy with trans femininity, claiming he is only on the side of sexuality, not gender. The straight man acts out in violence to disavow his desire for the girls he watches in porn, the girls he cheats on his wife with, and the girls from whom he buys sex. The state has used trans femininity most of all to generate the pretense it needs to expand its sovereignty as a monopoly on violence. And even queer and trans people, whether as cultural producers, activists, or scholars, have used the symbolic value of trans femininity to guarantee their political authenticity. But this is only to tell half of the story. The anxious and angry rejection of everyone’s interdependence with trans women is an attempt to refuse a social debt accrued, to refuse the power trans femininity holds.

Queer Theory defines another ideology called “homonormativity,” which doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means. “Homonormativity” is an ideology that brainwashes people—especially homosexual people—to believe being gay or lesbian is or can be normal, as opposed to intrinsically radical. It convinces people—especially homosexual people—to believe gay and lesbian people should be accepted as a normal variation of human sexuality and even to “pass” by dressing and living their lives in ways Queer Activists deem to be “coded as” “normal,” what might be described paradoxically as “the straight people of gay people.” Queer Activists believe being gay or lesbian should be a front of radical potential and Queer Activism, not just another normal variation of human experience, and so they believe the adoption of “homonormativity” further oppresses “queer” people by normalizing homosexuality.

Queer Activists are narcissists who want the world to bend to their will, and they think that anything that tells them “No” must be destroyed.

The goal of Queer Theory is to use political activism to make people conscious of the “prison” society locks us all into, thereby making people conscious of the prison they have constructed for themselves. This queer consciousness is the state of being awake to the “truth” of Queer Theory. In developing a queer consciousness, one becomes a radical activist who uses Queer Theory as the lens through which they view all of society. Queer Theory informs how those with queer consciousness think and act in the world. Queer consciousness inspires one to view society as a prison they must dismantle and break free from to free their soul. In short, Queer Theory is a vehicle for a complete and perpetual cultural and personal revolution.

Boycotts have served as a form of discursive enfranchisement and political empowerment that queer Palestinians have, in many ways, used to globally reclaim their voices from the Israeli state and its satellite institutions and their formidable resources. In turn, boycotts have become a primary form of transnational queer Palestinian solidarity activism. Augmenting them with openness to differences in ideology and strategy is critical for movement growth. Radical purism has created conditions in which activists often wind up just preaching to the choir. Avoiding this trap requires a commitment to deep listening, the formulation of means that mirror the ends we seek, a generosity of spirit, and a fierce kindness toward ourselves and others. Such steadfastness is essential, even in the face of cruelty, if the movement is to achieve peace and justice.

Queer Theory is dominated by the problematizing of discourse - how things are spoken about - the deconstruction of categories and a profound skepticism of science.

The main industry of queer Theorists is to intentionally conflate two meanings of "normative," and deliberately make strategic use of the moral understanding of the term to contrive problems with its descriptive meaning.

Papers that use queer Theory usually begin by examining an idea, problematizing it in queer (or "queering" or "genderfucking") ways, and eventually concluding that there can be no conclusions.

This radical neglect of biology limits the ability not just of queer Theory but of all scholarship on these topics to rigorously investigate socialized aspects of gender presentation and expectations - while rendering potentially valuable insights from queer Theory nearly completely irrelevant to those serious about such questions.

Judith Butler, a feminist and LGBT scholar and activist who was foundational to the development of queer Theory, epitomizes the opposite approach to this dilemma. In her most influential work, Gender Trouble,17 published in 1990, Butler focuses on the socially constructed nature of both gender and sex. For Butler, “woman” is not a class of people but a performance that constructs “gendered” reality. Butler’s concept of gender performativity—behaviors and speech that make gender real—allowed her to be thoroughly postmodern, deconstruct everything, and reject the notion of stable essences and objective truths about sex, gender, and sexuality, all while remaining politically active. This worked on two levels. Firstly, by referring to “reality-effects” and social or cultural “fictions,” Butler is able to address what she sees as the reality of social constructions of gender, sex, and sexuality. For Butler, the specific constructions themselves are not real, but it is true that constructions exist. Secondly, because the “queer” is understood to be that which falls outside of categories, especially those used to define male and female, masculine and feminine, heterosexual and homosexual, disrupting and dismantling those categories is essential to activism. “To queer” can therefore be used as a verb in the Butlerian sense, and the “queering” of something refers to the destabilization of categories and the disruption of norms or accepted truths associated with it. The purpose of this is to liberate the “queer” from the oppression of being categorized.

Queer Theory is dominated by the problematizing of discourses—how things are spoken about—the deconstruction of categories, and a profound skepticism of science.

Queer Theory is about liberation from the normal, especially where it comes to norms of gender and sexuality. This is because it regards the very existence of categories of sex, gender and sexuality to be oppressive. Because queer Theory derives directly from postmodernism, it is radically skeptical that these categories are based in any biological reality. It thus ignores biology nearly completely (or places it downstream of socialization) and focuses upon them as social constructions perpetuated in language.

Like the other postmodern Theories, queer Theory is a political project, and its aim is to disrupt any expectations that people should fit into a binary position with regard to sex or gender, and to undermine any assumptions that sex or gender are related to or dictate sexuality.

In Marxist thought, power is like a weight, pressing down on the proletariat. For Foucault, power operated more like a grid, running through all layers of society and determining what people held to be true and, consequently, how they spoke about it.

This is how we make all lives matter (The Sonnet) Wherever a black life is shot of suspicion, I am that black life that didn't matter. Wherever a woman is forced to remain pregnant, I am that woman who doesn't matter. Wherever a muslim is presumed terrorist, I am that muslim who doesn't matter. Wherever a queer life is persecuted, I am that queer who doesn't matter. Standing up to cannibalism requires, No exclusive background and identity. All that matters is that you are human, Only requirement of justice is humanity. This is how we make all lives matter, all lives free. Injustice on anyone anywhere is injustice on me.

Could these groundbreaking and often unsung activists have imagined that only forty years later the 'official' gay rights agenda would be largely pro-police, pro-prisons, and pro-war - exactly the forces they worked so hard to resist? Just a few decades later, the most visible and well-funded arms of the 'LGBT movement' look much more like a corporate strategizing session than a grassroots social justice movement. There are countless examples of this dramatic shift in priorities. What emerged as a fight against racist, anti-poor, and anti-queer police violence now works hand in hand with local and federal law enforcement agencies - district attorneys are asked to speak at trans rallies, cops march in Gay Pride parades. The agendas of prosecutors - those who lock up our family, friends, and lovers - and many queer and trans organizations are becomingly increasingly similar, with sentence- and police-enhancing legislation at the top of the priority list. Hate crimes legislation is tacked on to multi-billion dollar 'defense' bills to support US military domination in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Despite the rhetoric of an 'LGBT community,' transgender and gender-non-conforming people are our 'lead' organizations - most recently in the 2007 gutting of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of gender identity protections. And as the rate of people (particularly poor queer and trans people of color) without steady jobs, housing, or healthcare continues to rise, and health and social services continue to be cut, those dubbed the leaders of the 'LGBT movement' insist that marriage rights are the way to redress the inequalities in our communities.

Once in the cult, Queer Activists use abusive techniques to condition cult attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

Queer Activists threaten a loss of salvation anytime a cult member or initiate steps out of line.

Queer Activists isolate, punish, and exclude anyone who contradicts cult doctrine, ritual, or practice.

Diana Adams is more interested in seeing increased social protections for alternative families. While same-sex marriage was an important victory for gay rights and opened up a cultural conversation about the definition of marriage and love, she says, we shouldn't forget that the movement was also "a queer critique of the nuclear family and traditional monogamous sexuality." The same is true of monogamy's insurgents. Rather than "cram people into the institution of marriage," she says, "we ultimately want to get the government out of the business of deciding whether you get tax benefits, health insurance, and immigration status based on whom you're having sex with." Her thoughts remind me of the late psychologist and gay activist Michael Shernoff, who reflected critically on the shift "from gay men radically transforming American society" to gay men "assimilating into it in conservative and hetero-normative ways." He lauded consensual nonmonogamy as a "vibrant, normative, healthy part" of the gay community, and expressed concern that the advent of gay marriage might consign this "venerable, multigenerational tradition" to the category of adultery. "Couples who succesfully negotiate sexual nonexclusivity," he wrote, "are, whether or not they are conscious of it, being genuinely subversive, in one of the most constructive ways possible...by challenging the patriarchial notion that there is only one "proper" and "legitimate" (hetero-normative) way that loving relationships should and need to be conducted" Monogamy was once a subject that was never even discussed in the therapist's office, but today as a matter of course I ask every couple, What is your monogamy agreement? Marriage without virginity was once inconceivable. So, too, sex without marriage.

As writer and activist Shon Faye puts it, “Queer is about removing labels and replacing them with a question. It is a side eye and a challenge back to mainstream society and politics. It says, ‘I don’t know the answer, but why are you asking the question?

Recently he would have encountered this outlandish tweet from Elizabeth Warren: “Thank you @BlackWomxnFor! Black trans and cis women, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary people are the backbone of our democracy.” Warren has also pledged that, if elected in 2020, she will fill half her cabinet with “women and non-binary people.”2 FDR would probably have no idea what she was talking about. Who are these people and how could they be the “backbone of our democracy”? They certainly seem to be the backbone of the socialist left. At a recent meeting of the Democratic Socialists, FDR would have encountered a strange menagerie of activists calling themselves ecosocialists, Afro-socialists, Islamo-socialists, Chicano socialists, sanctuary socialists, #MeToo socialists, disability socialists, queer socialists and transgender socialists.

The struggle to name anti-black sentiment and anti-queer sentiment in the early 2000s was a very isolating experience. Further, naming the way that assimilationist politics were framing the LGBTQIA movement in their fight for marriage equality over against homeless queer youth and discrimination was also part and parcel of my work of naming the ways we all capitulate to the logic of the norm, an ever-expansive fold that flattens out differences and demands that we all acquiesce to the dominant culture.

Disability justice” is a term coined by the Black, brown, queer, and trans members of the original Disability Justice Collective, founded in 2005 by Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, Stacey Milbern, Leroy Moore, Eli Clare, and Sebastian Margaret. Disabled queer and trans Black, Asian, and white activists and artists, they dreamed up a movement-building framework that would center the lives, needs, and organizing strategies of disabled queer and trans and/or Black and brown people marginalized from mainstream disability rights organizing’s white-dominated, single-issue focus.

Andrea Smith explains that “the pro-life versus pro-choice paradigm reifies and masks the structures of white supremacy and capitalism that undergird the reproductive choices that women make.” As Smith and other activists and scholars detail, the language of choice presents women more as consumers than citizens, opening the door for some women to be cast as bad decision makers and for some choices to be deemed bad or inappropriate. Moreover, the language of choice fails to take into account how different women have different access to different choices; it removes from analysis the conditions under which women and families make decisions about reproduction.

A political/relational model of disability, on the other hand, makes room for more activist responses, seeing “disability” as a potential site for collective reimagining. Under this kind of framework, “disability awareness” simulations can be reframed to focus less on the individual experience of disability—or imagined experience of disability—and more on the political experience of disablement. For example, rather than placing nondisabled students in wheelchairs, the Santa Barbara-based organization People in Search of Safe and Accessible Restrooms (PISSAR) places them in bathrooms, armed with measuring tapes and clipboards, to track the failures and omissions of the built environment. As my fellow restroom revolutionaries explain in our manifesto, “This switch in focus from the inability of the body to the inaccessibility of the space makes room for activism and change in ways that ‘awareness exercises’ may not.” In creating and disseminating a “restroom checklist,” PISSAR imagines a future of disability activism, one with disability rights activists demanding accessible spaces; contrast that approach with the simulation exercises, in which “awareness” is the future goal, rather than structural or systemic change.

As many historians of feminism and women's studies have noted, feminism has long been interested in bridging theory with practice. Activists and scholars alike continue to explore the ways in which theory can inform political practice; conversely, feminists often theorize from practice, developing concepts and frameworks based on the strategies, conversations, conflicts, and achievements of feminist activists.

Disability activists have long railed against a politics of endless deferral that pours economic and cultural resources into “curing” future disabled people (by preventing them from ever coming into existence) while ignoring the needs and experiences of disabled people in the present.

For Sedgwick, productive political work can be achieved by forcing the maintenance of a clear contradiction because doing so undermines a stable sense of meaning for the relevant concepts. The incoherence of endorsing two contradictory models of sexuality at once can help us accept the complexity and mutability of sexuality. Thus, we see here, yet again, the commitment to rejecting objective truth and concrete categories and the idea that incoherence and fluidity are liberating and politically necessary. Queer Theorists can expand this thinking to encompass almost anything and they think of this as “queering” the topic. Theorists have, for instance, queered categories of time and history42 and life and death.

Universality is therefore queer-impossible, as this would require a common human nature—a concept that queer Theory utterly rejects.

Queer” refers to anything that falls outside binaries (such as male/female, masculine/feminine, and heterosexual/homosexual) and to a way of challenging the links between sex, gender, and sexuality.

Nevertheless, David Halperin attempts to define “queer” in his 1997 book, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography, in which he argues that Foucault’s idea that sexuality is a product of discourse revolutionized gay and lesbian political activism. He describes “queer” as “whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence.”8 (emphasis in original) Because the central feature of queer Theory is that it resists categorization and distrusts language, it is generally difficult to work with. Queer Theory is not only resistant to definition in the usual sense, but also to functional definitions based on what it does. Papers that use queer Theory usually begin by examining an idea, problematizing it in queer (or “queering” or “genderfucking”9) ways, and eventually concluding that there can be no conclusions. As Annemarie Jagose, the author of Queer Theory: An Introduction, puts it, “It is not simply that queer has yet to solidify and take on a more consistent profile, but rather that its definitional indeterminacy, its elasticity, is one of its constituent characteristics.”10 The incoherence of queer Theory is an intentional feature, not a bug.

To be queer allows someone to be simultaneously male, female, or neither, to present as masculine, feminine, neuter, or any mixture of the three, and to adopt any sexuality—and to change any of these identities at any time or to deny that they mean anything in the first place.

Queer Theory presumes that oppression follows from categorization, which arises every time language constructs a sense of what is “normal” by producing and maintaining rigid categories of sex (male and female), gender (masculine and feminine), and sexuality (straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and so on) and “scripting” people into them.

To queer something is to cast doubt upon its stability, to disrupt seemingly fixed categories, and to problematize any “binaries” within it.

Francisco was an underdog city struggling to absorb an influx of aspiring alphas. It had long been a haven for hippies and queers, artists and activists, Burners and leather daddies, the disenfranchised and the weird. It also had a historically corrupt government, and a housing market built atop racist urban-renewal policies—real estate values had benefited as much from redlining as from discriminatory zoning practices and midcentury internment camps—but these narratives, along with the reality that an entire generation had been prematurely lost to AIDS, undercut its reputation as a mecca for the free and freakish, people on the fringe. The city, trapped in nostalgia for its own mythology, stuck in a hallucination of a halcyon past, had not quite caught up to the newfound momentum of tech’s dark triad: capital, power, and a bland, overcorrected, heterosexual masculinity. It was a strange place for young and moneyed futurists. In the absence of vibrant cultural institutions, the pleasure center of the industry might have just been exercise: people courted the sublime on trail runs and day hikes, glamped in Marin and rented chalets in Tahoe. They dressed for work as if embarking on an alpine expedition: high-performance down jackets and foul-weather shells, backpacks with decorative carabiners. They looked ready to gather kindling and build a lean-to, not make sales calls and open pull-requests from climate-controlled open-plan offices. They looked in costume to LARP their weekend selves.

asexual activist Swank Ivy explains the problems with the misconception “You just haven’t met the right guy” (ranked second most common in a list of ten): What I don’t like about this suggestion (or accusation) is the idea that there *must* be *someone* that’ll do it for me. I don’t like people giving me that “oh, one day you’ll understand” condescension. I don’t consider my sexual orientation to be a less-than-mature state. I also don’t like people assuming that there definitely is a right guy for me. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe there isn’t a right girl or non/between-gender person for me either. Maybe I just *am* asexual.29

I also explained to this activist how ironic it was that Abu-Seif and I, as queer Palestinians, were being asked by a non-Palestinian to censor a film about queer Palestinians because of the solidarity activist’s belief that the film is pinkwashing and does not “properly” capture the experience of queer Palestinians. The empire of critique has reached a point at which activists feel entitled to serve as arbiters of which queer Palestinian voices should be considered the most authoritative and archetypical.

You are the pigs who make it possible for the cops to beat homosexuals," Alinder told Bieber. "They call us queer, you—so politely—call us sick." Alinder says that Bieber responded, "I never said homosexuals were sick, what I said was that they have displaced sexual adjustment." "That's the same thing, motherfucker," one of Alinder's fellow activists countered. Bieber replied, "I don't want to oppress homosexuals, I want to liberate them, to liberate them from that which is paining them—their homosexuality." Alinder ends his account by noting, "That used to be called genocide.

Whether you identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, trigender, multigender, two-spirit, furry, queer, demiflux, otherkin, or as a mermaid, a British Columbian wolf, or an avian-human hybrid:15 Not one of those things is like being black.

For decades, Israeli intelligence and security services have targeted queer Palestinians and used homophobia as a weapon, threatening to out them to their families and communities if they do not serve as informants and collaborators. At the same time, some Zionist institutions have worked over the past decade to co-opt queer Palestinian voices in order to attempt to justify Israel’s military occupation of Palestine to global audiences. It is in this context that queer Palestinian activists built a movement to respond and resist.