One thing that really stuck in my head from Tara Houska’s text is the principle of living a “we”- instead of a “me”-life. As Houska describes, Western Society mostly lives in a world of individualism that mostly operates on “me” instead of “we”, also regarding the climate movements (214). Houska also offers options on how to reconnect with the “we”, namely by returning to humility, recognizing our fragility and our role in the wider, interconnected net of nature, including empathy, courage and respect (218).
I think queer communities hold the power to reconnect us with each other and create a “we”-feeling instead of operating as “me”-individuals. Further, I think that by experiencing and living a “we”-life, we can reclaim our true individual self, a “me” that many queer people had to lose on the way or hide due to the expectations and norms society presses us into.
As we talked about in one of our class discussions, being together and having a community (the “we”) can help us reclaiming our bodies (and therefore finding ourselves, the “me”). This can also be seen in Brokeback Mountain, where Ennis and Jack were able to use the mountain as their safe space where they could simply exist. For short periods of time, they were able to form a “we”, even though they never verbalized it, connecting their bodies where words have failed them, overcoming the restriction of not being able to form a personal connection (a “we”) that society imposes upon them. On page 17, Proulx writes “As they descended the slope Ennis felt he was in a slow-motion, but headlong, irreversible fall”. I interpreted this as the double-meaning of on one side slowly starting to “fall” for Jack, and on the other hand falling out of the “normal picture” he was trying to uphold of himself “down there” (in town). Some aspect about him seems to have changed on that mountain, and while in the safe space of the mountains it didn’t matter, it does seem to matter “down there” in the real world, where society and its expectations are portrayed on Ennis.
I know these are two very different situations, but I can relate to that feeling of coming “back to reality” after you had a break/ an escape from it by temporarily moving to another place. Especially the aspect of having changed personally while being gone and the unsureness of how to fit back into the “old” world is something I experienced before. Whenever I come back from college to my parents’ house, I struggle with who I am, because I have changed so much regarding my identity and became more open and proud of who I am at college, but once I am back home I struggle to implement these aspects of “me” and instead I tend to slide back into old patterns and “my old role”. It sometimes feels as if I get to “reinvent” myself and “play a new role” whenever I start at a new place, but then once I’m back “home” I have those many fragments of “me”, different roles, and it’s incredibly tough to combine them.
I think having that “we”-feeling of community might support me in ultimately finding the real and “full” “me”-feeling as well, instead of trying desperately to puzzle all those different fragments of “me” that I have collected over the years together. If I had a “we”-community around me that supports me, there would be no need for different versions of “me” (each version trying to conform to the picture the respective person has of me) which would result in the true and real “me” being able to finally become “me” because the pressure of conformity to things that are not mutually conformable would be gone. This is why I think that we first need a communal “we”-feeling instead of a “me”-feeling in order to find our way to our true “me” and survive.
I love this connection you make between Houska’s writing and queer communities. I agree that having a “we” versus a “me” perspective would take the stress off so many of us as individuals. Your blog post got me thinking about Jay Walker’s post on “queer fear.” So much of this isolation present in Brokeback Mountain is due to the pressure of the “me” and what implications our individual labels have. I think there may be a direct link between a “we” perspective and a decline in queer fear. If, in general, people were more supportive and understanding of one another, there would be no need to have these fears. A world in which fear isn’t an integral part of queer identity might seem idyllic, but I think it could happen if we begin to test western views.
I feel like how these ideas can apply to our own lives is a really useful tool and I’m really grateful that you made the point of comparing this idea to the experience of coming home from college. I totally agree, there is a sort of split-personality feeling of “who you are here” vs. “who you are at home, ” trying to fill roles and expectations placed upon you that you are free of when here. I think that this experience is really similar to queerness, too. We seek out the places where we can be a part of a “we” and decipher for ourselves who exactly we are supposed to be by escaping those very expectations. Whether that be a straight person in the eyes of society or a lawyer in the eyes of our parents, we need that resource of community and anonymity in the “we” in order to find ourselves.
I want to start by saying that this post is such an interesting combination of our course material! Your writing really emphasizes the way queer experience overlaps and reflects other queer experiences even when it may initially seem completely unrelated – maybe this even speaks to this connection between “me” and “we”! I completely agree with you that community is an essential part of developing and discovering one’s personal identity. Selflessness is of course wonderful, but I believe that identity is essential when it comes to creating valuable interactions. I can think of many times where I found a sense of “me” through my experience with others, I love how well you were able to put that feeling into words.