Dear Reader,
I worked hard to be as queer as I am and I didn’t expect to have to defend my identity from another person who shares in my struggles.
But here we fucking are.
Fuck Muñoz and his “we are not yet queer.” (Muñoz 1)
This is a problem that I think I’ve struggled with quite a bit, queerness as an ideal rather than a reality, as if there’s some faggot out there that we all aim to be like. This implication that there’s a right way to be queer is so fucking dangerous.
Do you know how much I’ve screamed?
How many streams of salt poured from my puffy eyes?
How much I craved for just one person to see me as a woman?
How many nights I’ve thought that I’d be better off dead than myself?
How many nights I still do?
You don’t and Muñoz sure as shit doesn’t
“We are not yet queer.” (Muñoz 1)
How fucking dare you.
As if queerness is something to be earned.
Even if I had never suffered then I’d still be queer.
Muñoz thinks that “Queerness is a longing that propels us forward.” (Muñoz 1)
It’s not.
Queerness has happened and continues to happen.
Have you ever seen Annie?
Annie’s an orphan and she sings a song called Tomorrow.
It’s a song of longing for a better time, for a then and there, rather than a here and now.
Do you know what the problem is with Tomorrow?
TOMORROW NEVER COMES!!!
Reality sucks but it’s the only place that you can get a decent meal.
It’s the only place that we’ll ever be.
I get Muñoz’s point. I really do. There’s a queer utopia that only exists in our wildest dreams and god be damned if we don’t try to get there.
But to rob queerness of its power by making it seem as if it is unobtainable is fucking diabolical.
I always liked Eli Claire’s Mountain as a tale of telling struggles.
It acknowledges that struggles aren’t one-way streets, that stopping and taking a breath doesn’t make you slow or weak, or that sometimes you even have to go back down the mountain to breathe a little easier.
Muñoz seems to view struggles as a sea voyage, always trying to catch the horizon, and always failing to grasp it.
I like my feet on solid ground and despise the seasickness that Muñoz gives me.
Sincerely Queer,
Carmine “Red” Zingiber
I don’t think that Munoz is suggesting that there is one right way to be queer. His insistence that queerness is always on the horizon comes from the idea that queerness is not just “being” but “doing for and toward the future.” By existing as a queer person, you are advocating for a future queer utopia. That doesn’t lessen the present nature of being queer, but the idea of using the past to inform the present is not a new one. I think the language Munoz is using is quite abstract, and that he’s not always referring to queer individuals, but to a possible queer society as a whole. We as individuals are how that happens, yes, but our queerness is not lessened by the fact that there are others who will come after us.
I honestly really do see your point and what you are getting at. And I especially like that u do acknowledge the interpretation that Muñoz is offering us. Having that room to breathe in Brokeback Mountain is absolutely present and I think more than just telling a tale of struggles it also gives us room to imagination the flip side of those struggles where things work out. Within this imagination is where queerness exists, in a dimension that is utopia and inexistent of tragedies that effect us whether it be violence or a failed relationships because society doesn’t see them as legitimate.
Agreeing to Luicifer, and I kind of touch this in my own post — but at least for Muñoz queerness exists as a personal identity but also this very communal thing that is aimed at seeking an “ideality”. We have earned our queerness in our own rights, but it is up to us in a way to determine how future individuals will also experience their queerness. In my mind, a society that truly sees and appreciates us in all our different facets.