Queer as in embodying change

It's the brick we remember, the brick that began to symbolize “you are safe here, because WE protect US.”

Queer as in embodying change: examined through the lens of Audre Lorde’s “The tools of the master will never dismantle the master's house” 

As a queer business existing in the realms of late stage capitalism, when the air warms and the flowers have come and gone, the pressure rises. Pride month has arrived. Corporations with billions of dollars, posting their same products drenched with rainbows. The NYPD throwing pride flags on their cars, cars which have come to symbolize the death and control of the people. Us, the queer folk, battling the algorithm with the reminder each year that pride is a riot. Pride is a riot against police brutality and transphobia. Pride was started by trans black women and drag queens. This reminder is the responsibility and duty of all queer folk, that we may celebrate because of the labor of our ancestors. Especially our queer black ancestors. The conversation, however, seems to stop there. Sent out like a virtue signal ahead of the cheap liquor shots and face sparkles. Do not get me wrong, I am not here to tell you how to act, but please get your sparkle on as long as that is what warms your heart. However, each year as pride arrives it feels more and more like a capitalist trend cycle. In fact, all holidays do. If it weren't the awe of seeing the sky void or null of the moon, that cycle may feel like a forced point of merchandise promotion as well. Nevertheless Pride, queerness, the cosmos, this Earth, I deeply want to invoke celebration for.

 “What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow parameters of change are possible and allowable”(Lorde)

Imperialism and late stage capitalism have functioned through the thorough beating, mentally and physically, of the ideals of individualism and white supremacy into the consciousness, or subconsciousness, of most in the western world. It is the job of the police and military to carry out these beatings, and it was the regular beating and arrests of the most visibly queer members at the Stonewall Inn on June 28 1969 that prompted coins, bottles, and bricks to fly. It's the brick we remember, the brick that began to symbolize “you are safe here, because WE protect US.” It's this brick from the hands of Black trans women that paves the way for rainbow painted streets and the continued fight for life. I guess what I have come to realize, as a young queer, granted the privilege of freedom of expression and love, is that this reminder and these parades don't feel like a celebration. They feel like the allotted time given on the stage of the oppressors and, while the tools of the oppressor may serve as a life raft floating between life and death, they do not dismantle the house. While each win and life gained is a celebration, waiting for the next murder of one of our siblings does not feel like living life. This year as pride arrives again and we are queer folk building a system for other queer folk to feel and know themselves deeply, “Happy Pride” and “Pride was a riot” do not seem to cut it. I want to build a new house, a village where all are welcome and I want to shout about the love we give,  how much more love we can tap into, and how much grief we allow ourselves to feel. That brick promised that we are here and we are not going anywhere, but more than that it promises the destiny of our entire species’ evolution. 

“Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. […] Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters.” (Lorde)

If you have followed queer conjure for the past year, you may have noticed the trend of adventure time related messages, I bring here another parable from the show. A tale of two siblings, spawning from the mother gum. One slowly drips to the floor before waving up at her siblings (all is safe here!) the other falls in a tumble landing on a sharp stalagmite (a world that punishes) he is Neddy. Neddy runs into the world, the burning sun, the large predators chasing after him, while his sister, Bonnie, follows behind met with beautiful views of the forest floor and butterflies. Neddy finds a tree that makes him feel safe and as he…connects* to it he produces a fluid that turns out to be the lifeforce for the whole village. The world outside of this tree is extremely terrifying and overstimulating to him. Bonnie, who had only experienced beauty and wonder in her first moments, went on to become a scientist and eventually build that city. The Empress and The Emperor tarot cards come to mind here. There are those who connect and tend to the inner world, feeling so deeply that turning outside brings overwhelm, and there are those who feel deeply and see the world in wonder, so much so that it frightens you to look away. They rely upon each other to evolve. After explaining this creation story, Bonnie concludes with “People get built different.  We don't need to figure it out we just need to respect it” 

“Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.” (Lorde)

What if Neddy was taught from birth that he must continue to push through his feelings and tree he loves was killed? I wonder how he’d act. I wonder if Bonnie would need to put all her scientific research towards weaponry to protect herself from him. I wonder how they would break that cycle, take space? Plant a tree? The Trees know something. Surely speaking to a tree is not a tool of the master. Trees know how to sooth a sobbing beast. White supremacy culture has severed us from these relations, and continued to sever us from each other. 

“[...]survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”(Lorde) 

It is no revelation to express that we white folk have lots of work to do. We carry on the torch of segregation and hierarchy to this day. We have known for centuries that total liberation is a movement sown, watered, and nurtured, by Black people Indigenous people and People of Color. The role of the cop lives on within most of us and the cycle continues by ignoring that fact.

“I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices”.(Lorde)

As long as our needs are unmet and our society is reliant on the oppression of truth tellers, Pride will be a protest by simply existing. Celebration is a protest. To me this means that we (I’m looking at you, fellow white folk) must go beyond knowing the facts of oppression. We must, and I am echoing the majority of BIPoC activists here, embody and be active in anti-imperial and anti-facists action. To me this embodiment contains envisioning a future and nurturing our collective on a spiritual level. I would like to platform the indigenous teachers of the world by saying this celebration and respect must also be given to our tree siblings.We are not celebrating queerness if we are excluding our plant and non-human kin. If we are excluding the protection and love of our planet. There is an energetic component to the respect and connection given to all who feed us, shelter us, sooth us, protect us. Respect and connection for the people who have always loved the trees. Who care for and listen to them in return for their fruit. Maybe celebrating pride as a queer business that focuses on and communicates through spirit is about making a platform for, and loving deeply, those who recognize the entire community as community. To be queer is to expand ourselves and our love beyond the imperial norms. Strengthening the muscle of recognizing . May we each heal the cop inside us, may The Cop dissolve, compost, and float away until we are all holding trees or being held by them.  

P.S. One of our goals at QC is to expand our team beyond just Jasper and Ava (Queer BIPoC to the front). By opting for a paid subscription you open doors for this possibility

*please just watch season seven episode one of adventure time  

Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Ed. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. 110- 114. 2007. Print.