This week, along with co-contributor Tam Gorzalka, Queermonton celebrates its first birthday. In that time we have been offered free porn (well, actually, just Tam has), received fan mail and hate mail, been blogged about (well, actually, just Tam has), lost a good friend in our first editor and champion Ross Moroz and have had the opportunity to explore Edmonton’s homosexual landscape.
For me the fact that we could fill a year of columns and still keep going has been an eye-opener. Early on I was skeptical that there would be enough interest and content to keep going but, as I found out, these are interesting times to be gay, and an even more interesting time if you’re queer.
As the year has progressed, the word queer has become more important to me and more defined in my own mind. At first it was just a word I was experimenting with. I knew that at one time it was a trigger word, but for me it held no baggage. Then I started using it interchangeably for “gay” or “homosexual” or “LGBT community.” Queer became a catch-all for any and all sexual and gender minorities. Then, as I became to further realize that as a sexual being we are also political beings, the word queer began to take on more of a specific yet malleable space in my mind and writing.
It started with me noticing friends using the word queer as a verb: to queer things, to challenge the heteronormative structure embedded in things. At its root queer is to twist, so to queer something is to twist something, thereby challenging it to its limits.
With this in mind I often considered that I am writing this column not just for sexual and gender minorities but also for all those people who don’t fall into those categories but are interested in the LGBT experience and, more importantly, in learning about the queer experience.
Being from the LGBT community is a natural entrance to being queer. As sexual and gender minorities we have already had to do some work on negotiating ideas of what is wrong/right, acceptable and understandable in society. We have already seen behind the curtain to understand that there is no wizard, that we are all our own wizards and that Oz is whatever we make it.
Some of the greatest joy I have experienced this year in writing Queermonton was uncovering stories of how queer people have challenged and changed the world for the better. From ACT UP to Harvey Milk, from the Boys of Bash’d to one of Edmonton’s finest queers, Lucas Crawford, I was excited to share the stories about how simple acts of expression when combined with rigorous thought and passion could have a huge effect. Queers save lives, break barriers, use art to heal and use their minds to help others think differently.
While interviewing Crawford, he said what has become for me a guiding question when writing Queermonton and living my life. We were talking about how to deal with the frustration of witnessing apathy in our own communities and he asked rhetorically, “How did you not learn from what is for me the gift of queerness, an appreciation for difference and an ability to think critically?”
Edited out of the original article, the question was never far from finding its way back into Queermonton. It is for me the backbone of new queer thinking. Contained in its 24 words is permission to choose queerness, permission to think of queerness as a gift and a challenge to embrace difference and critical thought.
Intrinsic in the appreciation of the question, and queerness in general, is the division between gay and queer. Whereas I think being gay for the most part is something you are born with, queer is a choice, a sought-out way of being. Gay concerns biology, queer concerns the social. Of course it is important to remember that gays can be queers and queers can be gay, but they can exist independent of each other as well. A straight person can be queer and a gay person can be not queer.
It’s from this point of view that I began to see more clearly that queer was a strategy for exploring the human experience and a way of curating a life in the face of gentrification, globalizations and assimilation. From barebacking to pregnant men to ever-more-challenging definitions of family and relationships, we are living in a moment where the status quo on sexuality and gender is being challenged and thus changing. In the face of gay marriage and other symbols of homosexuality being accepted, queer people are choosing to remain on the fringes to keep the tribe of difference alive and ensure that diversity in its truest form is maintained.
In the end, queer has gone from a generic word I used to encompass the multitudes of a labels that exist within sexual and gender minority communities to a word I use to describe the multitudes that can exist in life in general.
Twenty-six—now 27—columns later Queermonton has evolved. From finally being OK with being gay to incorporating lessons of queerness into strategies for everyday living there is room for more intrigue, exploits and learning.
Happy birthday, Tam, and thank you for all the presents Luke Foster, Ross Moroz and Scott Harris.
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