Here are some words I wrote over on Facebook. I’ve got questions, and no answers. Sorry. But maybe you can help me think through this.
So, if you’re willing, come on a thought experiment with me…
Are university queer spaces safe for conservative queer people? (And if not, should they be? And would this create a risk for non-conservative people and how would you mitigate that?)
Are they too ‘left’?
I understand why they are overwhelmingly non-conservative spaces. I understand that they have been fought for, and are the result of activism and personal cost/risk and emotional labor and all of that.
I also know that queer theory has been quite critical of ‘homonormativity’… Im thinking of early 2000s Halberstam, José Esteban Muñoz etc
And there was good reason for that.
And I’m not saying the ‘left-ness’, the non-conforming needs to be pushed into a corner. That there needs to be some form of ‘acceptable gay’.
But, are ‘we’ (i dunno exactly who ‘we’ is here) not supporting conservative – religiously and/or politically – lgbtiq+ people to also feel at home in their bodies (and their communities).
I don’t have an answer.
I rewatched the movie Pride the other day (the story of London based lesbian and gay people raising funds for Welsh miners during the strikes while Thatcher was PM) .. and I love how this film/example encourages unlikely solidarities, support across geographic and cultural barriers, even for those you considered a political ‘enemy’, because maybe you’re both actually fighting for the same thing (but have been taught to fight each other).
Judith Butler has a piece called – i think – Acting in Concert where she says even if cis women, trans women and intersex people want different things for our/their bodies we should be able to stand together based on the fact we want to be able to make decisions for our own bodies and not have them made for us/done to us.
I dunno. Thats all i have. No punchy conclusion. No references.
And i might be wrong here.
Thoughts?
Rosie Clare 