dreams

Queerness is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the present. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing. - josé estabon muñoz, cruising utopia

this section is for collecting thoughts & resources and envisioning a queer future

table of contents

what is love
  • Dean Spade, For Lovers and Fighters, 2006. "Is [loving other people] about possessing them, finding security in them, having all our needs met by them, being able to treat them however we want and still have them stick around? I hope not. What I hope love is-whether platonic, romantic, familial, or communal-is the sincere wish that another person have what they need to be whole and develop themselves to their best capacity for joy or whatever fulfillment they're seeking."

amatonormativity

This term was coined by Elizabeth Brake in 2011.

"Amatonormativity is a word I coined to describe the widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship."

"The belief that marriage and companionate romantic love have special value leads to overlooking the value of other caring relationships. I call this disproportionate focus on marital and amorous love relationships as special sites of value, and the assumption that romantic love is a universal goal, 'amatonormativity': This consists in the assumptions that a central, exclusive, amorous relationship is normal for humans, in that it is a universally shared goal, and that such a relationship is normative, in that it should be aimed at in preference to other relationship types. The assumption that valuable relationships must be marital or amorous devalues friendships and other caring relationships, as recent manifestos by urban tribalists, quirkyalones, polyamorists, and asexuals have insisted. Amatonormativity prompts the sacrifice of other relationships to romantic love and marriage and relegates friendship and solitudinousness to cultural invisibility."

queer
  • Siobhan B. Somerville, Queer, 2014. Jstor link. (how to get a free account) "'Queer' causes confusion, perhaps because two of its current meanings seem to be at odds. In both popular and academic usage in the United States, 'queer' is sometimes used interchangeably with the terms 'gay' and 'lesbian' and occasionally 'transgender' and 'bisexual.' In this sense of the word, 'queer' is understood as an umbrella term that refers to a range of sexual identities that are 'not straight.' In other political and academic contexts, 'queer' is used in a very different way: as a term that calls into question the stability of any such categories of identity based on sexual orientation. In this second sense, 'queer' is a critique of the tendency to organize political or theoretical questions around sexual orientation per se. To 'queer' becomes a way to denaturalize categories such as 'lesbian' and 'gay' (not to mention 'straight' and 'heterosexual'), revealing them as socially and historically constructed identities that have often worked to establish and police the line between the 'normal' and the 'abnormal.'"
  • Cathy J. Cohen, Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics, 2001. "I argue that a truly radical or transformative politics has not resulted from queer activism. In many instances, instead of destabilizing the assumed categories and binaries of sexual identity, queer politics has served to reinforce simple dichotomies between heterosexual and everything 'queer.'" "[I]if there is any truly radical potential to be found in the idea of queerness and the practice of queer politics, it would seem to be located in its ability to create a space in opposition to dominant norms, a space where transformational political work can begin."

queer friendship
  • The queering of friendship: Rethinking platonic relationships, guided by LGBTQ models by Mia Birdsong, June 20, 2020. Writing about "queerplatonic," "[t]he 'queer' part is not about sexuality, but about the queering of our ideas about what relationships look like."
  • Sex is Cool but Have You Ever Been Touched by the Romance of Queer Friendships? by Tšhegofatšo Ndabane, May 17, 2021. "When I noted the term [romantic friendship], I already recognised that even though I haven’t dated much, everything I now relish and consciously carry about romance has been presented at the altar that is my queer friendships."
  • A love letter to: Queer Platonic Love by Lou Kay, June 19, 2022. "Being queer is more than about my sexuality or my gender, it’s become about how I live my life, do my work, and interact with the world. It is a verb far more than an adjective, I queer everything I touch by nature of being me. It is both unintentional and deeply intentional." "I don’t believe in happily ever after's, I don’t believe in 'the one,' or even much in monogamy. I don't believe that love has hierarchy. I just believe in loving the people you love, how you love them, with the utmost enthusiasm. I am very enthusiastic about those I have in my life at present, and I rate my queer platonic loves 10/10."
  • My Queer Friendships Taught Me How to Love by Olivia Zayas Ryan, October 5, 2021. "Letting go of the hierarchy of relationships that was instilled in me and embracing the love I can give and receive from all the different people in my life feels like just another step toward subverting what we have been taught about what relationships and intimacy must look like." "My friends offered me grace, nuance, and even forgiveness when I needed it the most. They encourage me to take up space, to be fluid in my gender and sexuality, to be unapologetic, to be imperfect. My friends have helped me understand the love I deserve by loving me fully and showing it, too, in ways that are romantic, platonic, sexual, and everything in between. And I am in love with all of them."

relationship anarchy
  • What is RA? “A relationship anarchist begins from a place of assuming total freedom and flexibility as the one in charge of their personal relationships and decides on a case by case basis what they want each relationship to look like.”
  • The Short Instructional Manifesto for Relationship Anarchy by Andie Nordgren, 2006. "Relationship anarchy questions the idea that love is a limited resource that can only be real if restricted to a couple. You have capacity to love more than one person, and one relationship and the love felt for that person does not diminish love felt for another."
  • A Green Anarchist Project on Freedom and Love by Mae Bee, 2004. The below author cites this as "one of the earliest essays on Relationship Anarchy." "the abolition of all power relations includes the abolition of coercive/closed relationships. these are those relationships with fixed stature, those relationships with rules or permanent contracts. these relationships cannot really be part of a free society. and just as with other coercive relations at odds with our freedom they must be confronted by all who seek such freedom and communities."
  • Relationship anarchy is not post-polyamory by R. Foxtale, November 3, 2015. "Point is: Relationship Anarchy isn’t just “non-hierarchical polyamory.” It’s not even “customize your own relationships outside the bounds of amatonormativity.” Relationship Anarchy is a politic and, as both politic and practice, it’s actively anti-monogamy, anti-marriage, and anti-contracts/rules/policing. In a certain way, Relationship Anarchy is exactly what the Poly Movement has spent the last couple of decades trying to convince people its NOT."
    I think this is interesting and it's important to know the origins of anything you may associate with but I don't think it's my vibe to disrupt other people's relationships, which is something that's talked about in the two above articles.

romantic/platonic binary

(very much in progress. please send recs!)

  • Crunching the Umbrella and Spinning the Reinvention Treadmill by Coyote, March 31, 2019. This is an incredibly valuable post imo because it shows how words are coined to address fuzzy and ambiguous feelings/concepts, but over time, they get crunched into more and more specific terms, which then leads to someone else coining a new term to address the ambiguity again, and then that term gets more specific over time, etc. I thought this was !!! so helpful to read because I literally just had a post on my tumblr dashboard with a label for people who don't like labels.

  • The Difference Between Romantic and Platonic Love, submission to tumblr blog by Kieren, September 14, 2014. "I’ve seen several posts about being confused as to what the difference between romantic and platonic love is . . . romantic and platonic love can feel almost exactly the same. They don’t have to be the different and sometimes they aren’t."

  • Alterous attraction from lgbtqia wiki - "Alterous attraction is a form of emotional attraction and desire for emotional closeness. It describes a feeling that is not necessarily platonic, but also is not romantic in nature. For some it may be in between romantic and platonic attraction, and for others it may be completely separate from the romantic/platonic distinction."

    I am still thinking about how I feel about this - on the one hand, it's useful to have vocabulary to describe that feelings may not be romantic or platonic (or may be both, or in between, or off the spectrum entirely) but on the other hand it feels a little bit like when "nonbinary" gets treated as a catch-all third category and how sometimes the addition of a third/other option actually strengthens the primary binary in a like A-B-other, three-option system. But also, see Coyote's post above, which includes concern that alterous has become something "in between" romantic and platonic, rather than staying ambiguous.

  • Resonant Quotes - Quoi/WTF/Grey/Null/Questioning Narratives from the 2019 romantic ambivalence survey by Coyote.

    I really loved some of these and how they really blow up the romantic/platonic binary. Highly recommend reading these. I had been hesitant to continue identifying with quoiromantic because of how I feel uncomfortable with labels (and I especially don't like the "can't tell the difference" definition it gets bc then I have people trying to teach me what they think is the objective truth about the difference between platonic and romantic, which is so annoying, because I don't think my understanding of the world is lacking in comparison to theirs and I don't think theirs is more correct or something)

    but then I found this timeline of quoiromantic that made me like it a lot more because it was actually a reaction to the ace community's insistence on having a romantic orientation.

  • Queerplatonic Ambiguity is a Feature, Not a Bug by Coyote, January 18, 2023. Here Coyote addresses a specific post I saw on my tumblr dashboard recently that was like "queerplatonic is just platonic and if you use it ambiguously you're appropriating a term that was made for aro people" and that's part of why I hadn't been using the term at all. But Coyote links to actual context showing that it was a more ambiguous term for a more ambiguous feeling.

  • another post from coyote, this time about problems with the term "split attraction model." I thought this was very useful and wanted to bookmark it.