00:00:24.380So last week, someone on Instagram sent me this essay called Annoying Queer People Are Not Why We're Oppressed, which was about the way queer people police each other's behavior, casting out the weirdest and freakiest among us, and how we tend to cling to this belief that being less annoying, you know, less flaming, less out and in people's faces will make it more likely that the rest of the world will stop discriminating against us.
00:00:51.160This mindset is one that I have at times adopted personally. It's one that I think about literally all the time. It's one that people online have used when they try to make the case that like I and people like me are like bad representations for the community because we're too flamboyant or something.
00:01:12.400And it's a topic, respectability politics, that I've wanted to dig into on this podcast
00:01:19.040since I started the show. So I reached out to the author, and today we are joined by
00:01:25.640Devin Price to talk about what it means to be the wrong type of queer person.0.85
00:01:31.500Devin Price is an author of the books Unmasking Autism, Laziness Does Not Exist, and Unlearning0.76
00:01:38.040Shame. Devin Price, welcome to the show, and thank you so much for being here.
00:01:42.400Hi, Matt. I'm so happy to have this conversation. And I'm so glad it's this is a problem that's
00:01:48.000been annoying other people as much as me.
00:01:51.440I want to start today's episode by showing you an image. This is a meme that circulates the
00:01:59.760internet like kind of a lot. And it usually gets a lot of traction. In this case, it was tweeted
00:02:04.720recently by a cisgender white gay man named Tyler, who's like a, you know, conservative influencer
00:02:11.480on Twitter. He wrote the caption, know the difference, we are not the same. And it's a
00:02:17.720picture where it's okay, it's split into two sections. On the left, it says LGB. And on the
00:02:24.860right, it says TQIA plus. And over the LGB part, there is a photo of the gay recently out gay0.81
00:02:33.740football player Carl Nassib. He's like hot, hunky, white, all American looking dude. And then over
00:02:40.360the tqia plus it is a picture of jeffrey marsh who is a queer tiktok influencer who makes these0.64
00:02:51.440like tender tiktoks that appeal to like young people who don't have accepting parents and they0.65
00:02:56.480are visibly androgynous wearing a dress and eye makeup and have facial hair the way that you're0.94
00:03:02.980supposed to read this image right is like lgb people are you know normal and we're football
00:03:08.520players and we can pass in society and we don't push anyone's buttons. And then the TQIA plus0.63
00:03:15.360people are freaks and we're flamboyant and we're cross-dressing and we're in your face.0.84
00:03:21.520And there's an obvious connotation here with how you're meant to feel about each of these people.
00:03:26.940And so I want to get your reaction to this image.
00:03:29.200God, it reminds me of things that I used to hear as a millennial who was coming up during
00:03:35.620like the gay marriage fights of the early 2000s the things people would say about like i don't
00:03:40.380care if you're gay as long as you don't shove it in my face like that kind of messaging that is so
00:03:45.980tired and you'll still sometimes hear this idea that some people just how they live and how they0.94
00:03:51.420present is like shoving it in your face in some way because when people say things like that
00:03:55.940they see being queer as so other that it feels in their face for somebody to just live it's just so
00:04:02.480tired because the reason that we even have people who are the more respectable straight-laced seeming
00:04:08.280out queer people today is because of the people who are willing to be the bold ones to kind of0.68
00:04:12.700be in people's faces the jeffrey marshes of the world yeah i mean i i skulk around conservative0.78
00:04:19.980lgbt internet way more than i should because it's a form of self-harm for me at a certain point
00:04:25.620something that happens a lot there is this like revisionist history where people will say the goal
00:04:31.520of the gay rights movement was to assimilate into society. And I'm like, which gay rights movement
00:04:37.580are we talking about? Not the one that I'm familiar with. It's totally ahistorical. So
00:04:42.620before pride parades, before Stonewall, there were these events every year put together mostly by0.74
00:04:48.940white cis gay men called the annual reminder parades. And they started in the 50s and 60s.0.57
00:04:55.280And they were, again, very cis male, very white, they would wear suits, they were very subdued,0.93
00:05:01.520And they would just like march calmly in the streets saying, this is what gay people look like.
00:05:05.680See, we're normal like you, accept us.
00:05:09.940It didn't score any political victories.
00:05:12.020It wasn't until Stonewall and fighting against the cops and this really diverse coalition of sex workers and trans people and queer people and homeless people all fighting the police that we actually started to see any kind of social gains.
00:05:26.640So when people regurgitate that same logic now, so many decades later, it's just really sad.
00:05:33.280How would you describe respectability politics?
00:05:36.520I would say that respectability politics is the idea that if, as a member of a marginalized group, if you would only act correctly, you would somehow win the approval of the majority and no longer be oppressed.
00:05:50.940that it's on you as the individual to just somehow be the perfect type of queer person,
00:05:56.860a person of color, whatever it is, to earn your right into assimilation.
00:06:01.160The definition, according to Wikipedia, is the assimilation of LGBT or otherwise marginalized
00:06:07.160people based on sexuality or transgender status into a hegemonic and heteronormative society.
00:06:12.800This can be achieved by downplaying stereotypes or behaviors associated with homosexuality,
00:06:17.380for example, cross-dressing or flamboyant dressing, public displays of same-sex affection,
00:06:22.480or participating in cisgender heterosexual institutions. And there is a version of
00:06:27.460respectability politics, I feel like, in every marginalized group. And I feel like every
00:06:31.680marginalized community has their own infighting about this, right? Yeah, I think everybody
00:06:36.760internalizes that stigma, right, of what everyone from the outside says about your group. And you
00:06:42.100really don't want to live up to that stereotype, even though actually most of the time those
00:06:46.900stereotypes there's nothing wrong with them right like what's the problem with being flaming what's
00:06:51.280the problem with not wanting to get married you know and like having a million partners or whatever
00:06:55.200it is we internalize that self-loathing and then we hate anybody in our own group that reminds us
00:07:00.540of what we're the most embarrassed about about ourselves yeah i mean i feel like respectability
00:07:04.960politics i mean it's usually expressed in my experience on like through our judgment of people1.00
00:07:10.540in our group right and so in this case lgbt people who we don't want to be associated with0.61
00:07:16.600And so I feel like in queer communities, it's like this judgment that's levied against like very flaming and flamboyant gay men or queer people who are in kink communities, fat queer people, sex workers, drag queens, non-binary people, people who use neo pronouns, oftentimes autistic queer people.0.99
00:07:38.300There's almost a sense of like, if you're too frivolous, you don't deserve rights, that like queer rights are this very serious thing. And we're trying to get these legal protections and get plugged into the legal existing, you know, cisgender heterosexual system. But if you need a surgery that's like too weird of a surgery that we can't understand, or the way you present is unprofessional, you don't really need to do that. Really, do you?
00:08:04.320Like, can't you quiet it down while we're in public?
00:08:27.760We devote huge amounts of time to complaining about the types of queer people that irritate1.00
00:08:31.880us and develop complex taximonies for describing why they are so annoying and why defeating that1.00
00:08:37.000annoyingness matters i feel like that's the whole thing what you just said right they're making us0.99
00:08:42.800look bad the cringy queer tiktoker is giving queers a bad look drag queens being too in public0.94
00:08:51.580or people at kink festivals or the senate twink who we will get to like they're making us look1.00
00:09:01.540bad that as a thought process is what we're going to attempt to unpack today right they're making0.84
00:09:08.440us look bad who are they and are they making us look bad so we're going to look at a bunch of
00:09:13.640examples of that today and try to get to the bottom of this like do we have to cast out weird1.00
00:09:19.520queers if we do i'm first to go so uh-oh most of us are pretty weird and that's the thing too it's0.97
00:09:28.020like when you start scraping back like okay who doesn't belong to any of the groups that are
00:09:33.380considered weird it's like literally just pete buddha judge and even he like is like you know
00:09:38.200how he like edits his own wikipedia to like list all of his like watches that he collects and stuff
00:09:42.520this is a whole thing somebody did this whole investigation and they proved that he was editing
00:09:49.900his own wikipedia from like his his like professional office and it like updated all
00:09:54.520he has like this watch fetish or whatever or you know special interest so even he's a freak0.59
00:10:00.760you know like we're all like weird and pathetic and cringy in some way or the other like
00:10:05.520some of us attend kink festivals and some of us update our own wikipedia pages to uh reflect our0.54
00:10:12.320updated watch collections and you know what good for pete like i like pete more now yeah that's
00:10:19.420like his one redeeming personality okay so that's so funny because we're on a podcast that some
00:10:29.020people might be consuming through youtube i want to start with some youtube-based examples and i
00:10:35.900actually think especially towards younger people who are sort of maybe coming into their queerness
00:10:41.980or just coming into like politics in general the first place where they learn to adopt this mindset
00:10:47.600of like we need to cast out the weirdest among us so that us normal gays or whatever that means so
00:10:54.100that we look good for the rest of the world there are people who devote their entire like careers in0.64
00:11:00.680media to making content that feeds that explicit impulse one of them is blair white who is someone
00:11:07.880who i think about a lot like i i don't know i actually all of the people on this list that i
00:11:12.380have Blair White, Ariel Scarcella, Buck Angel. Like, I wish I didn't think about them as much
00:11:17.560as I do. But I'm so fascinated by their ability to churn out the same video every single week
00:11:25.660for years on end. So what do you know about these people?
00:11:30.700I remember when Ariel Scarcella first became like explicitly transphobic,
00:11:34.840and people fighting against her. And she kind of pulled a JK Rowling a little bit where it was
00:11:39.100like, well, now that you've criticized me, I'm going to be even more trans misogynistic.
00:11:43.960See, won't that show you? And then of course, Blair White has been the subject of so much
00:11:48.640complaints and speculation about like, do you even believe this stuff that you're saying all
00:11:53.240of the time? And just that weird, just soulless career path of I'm going to make videos about
00:11:59.200cringy trans people while being a trans person and like just how soul rotting that has to be.1.00
00:12:04.000And then Buck Angel obviously has been the subject of many a controversy over the years,1.00
00:12:07.960since the basically early 2000s when he outed one of the Wachowskis against their will and has been
00:12:14.840basically dunking on other trans people to lift himself up, I guess, ever since.0.81
00:12:19.560Yeah. So these are all people who have ended up in the YouTube sphere. If you're listening,
00:12:23.300you might already know who they are. Blair White. I just collected like a collection of titles from0.95
00:12:28.560her rich body of work online. Here are a few titles of recent YouTube videos. Okay. Wait.
00:12:36.160also yes this is important to note Blair White is a trans woman she's very pretty she's very feminine
00:12:41.800so okay here's some titles Mr. Beast's trans friend is a nightmare the trans lesbians of0.99
00:12:48.480tinder are a big problem reacting to insane trans tiktoks with buck angel how tiktok is convincing1.00
00:12:56.620teens they're trans and mentally ill okay the truth about Dylan Mulvaney Dylan Mulvaney I'm so0.98
00:13:05.340sorry sister the disturbing lgbtq kids show needs to be stopped it's it's the same video over and0.99
00:13:12.500over and over again and arielle scarsella too she was i mean she is a lesbian she for a long time0.58
00:13:19.780for years on youtube got her start making just like lesbian content and then at some point started
00:13:25.360like wading into the waters of transphobia of like i don't know these trans people are doing a little
00:13:30.240too much and they're making us look bad as a queer community and then she gets pushback for that and
00:13:34.660instead of like reflecting she just like jumps into the deep end and now literally every video
00:13:39.840she makes is like trans craziness on woke tiktok and they all get so many views and it's just like
00:13:47.940like i don't know if all i was interested in was like making a lot of google adsense revenue i
00:13:54.420think that's like a really dependable way to do it people seem to just keep falling for it and
00:13:58.720then it also gets the rage bait of us watching it because we hate it and because it hurts it's
00:14:03.200like picking a scab what's interesting to me is less these people because like i said like we
00:14:07.700could debate until the sun comes up about like whether or not they actually believe what they're
00:14:12.640saying or they're just doing it for like the endless amount of clicks that they know they
00:14:16.720will always get but what's interesting to me is like i think the fact that people tune into this
00:14:22.760type of content and like all of the comment i mean there are thousands of comments on all these
00:14:26.680videos being like yeah i can't believe that person really thinks they're trans when they're just a
00:14:31.540non-binary freak and it's all of these people who are like inside the queer community who so0.96
00:14:37.920consciously want to push themselves away from other people in the queer community by like0.96
00:14:42.480becoming the bully kind of to one of your points like a lot of kids watch this content a lot of0.73
00:14:47.280queer kids or people who are just questioning their identity or coming into themselves newly
00:14:51.540out people and it's almost like this stage i think for a lot of us of identity development
00:14:57.400where you're trying to figure out what kind of person can I be? What am I allowed to be? And what
00:15:03.260am I not allowed to be? And so a lot of really impressionable people or people who are in a
00:15:08.560really vulnerable spot, they see this stuff and then they say, oh, I can't be these blue-haired
00:15:14.340pronoun users. That's become such a thing that people literally do actually make decisions about
00:15:19.200what they do with their hair and their body based on not wanting to seem like the wrong kind of
00:15:23.700queer person and then of course conservatives lap it up too and it's like when we have these0.81
00:15:27.640conversations we're doing the work of conservatives for them by saying more and more people are
00:15:32.740realizing they're trans online like the implication of that video is being trans is supposed to be
00:15:38.260weird and rare and there shouldn't be a lot of us you know that's like the unspoken premise of a lot
00:15:44.200of this stuff like these messages discourage more people from being queer and it's like why we see
00:15:50.080this so much from inside of the queer community right like this judgment calls made about who is
00:15:55.560really queer and who is not really queer so many of these like blair white buck angel type videos
00:16:01.640which we're gonna get to him in a second buck don't go anywhere i saw that tweet you wrote
00:16:07.020about me last week and it pissed me off so you're included in the outline
00:16:09.840buck angel does not like me and that my friends is fine there's so many of these videos like as
00:16:18.260a real trans person i can say who all of these like fake trans people are who are not really
00:16:23.560part of the community but cis queer people do this too especially i feel like with bisexuals
00:16:28.340there's like this delineation around like who is really bisexual and who hasn't and like for as
00:16:33.760much progressive conversation as we have about no one owes anyone their dating or sexual history
00:16:39.540we do this thing a lot where i feel like especially towards bisexual women where we're like tell me
00:16:45.180which women you've slept with or else, as far as I'm concerned, you're a straight woman.
00:16:49.620I wonder if a lot of this stuff comes from like queer trauma and this idea of, you know,
00:16:55.620reproducing the abuse you went through of like, it was so hard for me. I had to fight so hard
00:17:01.260to transition or I had to fight so hard and deal with overt homophobia every day. And so how dare
00:17:08.060you come waltzing in and you don't even want to get surgery or you were in relationships where
00:17:14.840you were basically closeted. People didn't realize you were queer all your life. It must
00:17:19.220have been so easy for you. And now I'm going to beat up on you. Even though that's not actually
00:17:24.060the case, right? Where being closeted or not being seen for who you are, or not having the freedom
00:17:30.500to explore who you are, that itself is a very traumatic thing that I think all queer people
00:17:36.940undergo. We're all made to suppress ourselves. So it's so counterproductive. And I think it
00:17:42.420really does just come from that place of resentment of I suffered so you have to suffer too I had to
00:17:47.060work so hard to make myself pass so why why don't you even want to pass that completely devalues0.74
00:17:52.380the thing that's the most important thing to me like if you're Blair White like and so you know0.60
00:17:56.720she lashes out at it or you were in a straight marriage for many years and of course you were0.82
00:18:01.140like quietly really unhappy and lonely and detached from the queer community like it's not0.63
00:18:05.500easy to be a closeted bisexual person actually it's not easy to be straight passing but from
00:18:10.660the outside we say how dare you you got to walk down the street without being hate crimed or
00:18:14.880things like that something that i think about a lot is like how we identify with our pain
00:18:20.520and especially for queer people how we assume like we we define our queerness by the pain involved
00:18:27.380in our like coming out experiences and stuff and i see that a lot i mean there's a lot of asexual
00:18:32.260discourse on twitter around like well what what oppression do you deal with for being asexual
00:18:37.820which like first of all i don't even really understand because do we not know about like
00:18:41.940corrective rape like that's a thing it's really infuriating to me especially the asexual stuff
00:18:47.280because so often and and the way bisexual women get treated because the rest of us in the queer
00:18:52.060community will talk and talk and talk about how those groups aren't oppressed and we'll never
00:18:56.620actually listen to the members of those groups when they try to speak up and say i experience
00:19:01.400like you said corrective rape i live in a world that's built all around marriage and so if i don't
00:19:07.760connect to people romantically and I don't want to get married. I'm aromantic or whatever.
00:19:12.340I'm structurally excluded from a lot of economic benefits. We just don't listen to them because
00:19:17.280we've already decided as a community, oh, they're annoying and they're just complaining about the
00:19:22.340smallest things, but they have it so easy. And I think it kind of still does come from there's a
00:19:28.960tiny Blair White potentially in all of us. The Blair White within.
00:19:34.620Yes. Yeah. You have to question the Blair White within and ask yourself, am I moralizing suffering? Do I think that my suffering makes me a better person? Because suffering doesn't make you a better person. It's just a horrible thing that happens to you and it can rot inside of you and make you lash out at other people or it can be something you choose to learn from and a reason to empathize with people whose struggle looks differently from your own.
00:20:01.420And again, I just keep coming back to that idea of being erased and invisible and not even having the chance to figure out who you are, because nobody around you has even heard of a demisexual before.
00:20:13.500That doesn't sound anything like privilege to me.
00:20:16.180That sounds like the height of being disenfranchised, to not even know your own people or know that you can be who you are.1.00
00:20:23.160That is one of the most foundational queer traumas.0.99
00:20:25.860and that happens to us whether we're trans or we're star gender or omnisexual or whatever else0.99
00:20:31.600like who's hurt by people finding a term that feels like home to them who indeed there is so
00:20:37.520much back and forth around like neo pronouns and neo labels what do you make of that right
00:20:45.500there are so many people being like okay well i'm fine with like he him she her maybe they them
00:20:52.560But the second you start doing this like Zerzem stuff or go by demisexual or, you know, any star gender or like all of these words, which I got to be honest, I haven't heard of half of these.
00:21:05.200Sometimes, especially when like very young queer people on TikTok are describing their gender and pronouns, like I've never heard of them either.0.89
00:21:13.720But I try to fight back on the impulse to be like, well, oh my God, they're pushing this whole thing too far and they're going to rock the boat and I'm going to lose my rights as a result of this.1.00
00:21:25.600When people say things like that, it's like they think those queer people are asking too much.
00:21:30.100And it's like they think acceptance is this like finite pie.
00:21:34.140And it's like we can get being he himed or she heard.0.99
00:21:37.080But if you ask to be ZZMZERD, oh, that's going to ruin it all for all of us because it's asking cishet people to do too much work.0.97
00:21:45.680And the project of queerness, I think, is for us to just kind of like flip everything over on its head.0.93
00:21:51.320You know, like we want people to rethink how they think about gender and sexuality and gender roles and roles in relationships.0.86
00:21:58.000And so it seems like to me, the more and more people we have that are just doing things their own freaky queer way that we've never heard of before, that like helps really change the paradigm that helps set all of us free. It's not a threat to us. If anything, the queer people that are more willing to be out there and do something that we've never heard of before, that is totally baffling. That makes us all question the like cishet conditioning that so much of us still have, even if we're in the queer community.0.87
00:22:25.320There's a little bit of this discourse. It happens in trans circles all the time, like passing versus like fuck passing, where a lot of trans people, especially trans women and men, they do want to seamlessly pass, if not as cis, but then as the gender that they identify as because they want the safety of that. They want people to know how to treat them. And that's just true enough for them that that's the easiest way to move through the world.0.73
00:22:49.040but there's also a lot of queer people who there is no such thing as passing as what they are0.94
00:22:55.000because society has like no conception of it yet like for the most part there is no passing as
00:23:00.220non-binary still for most people like you're if you use they them or if you use zizim zur you're
00:23:05.660pretty much going to have to correct people you're going to have to assert yourself or just tolerate0.82
00:23:10.020people being wrong and so you might seem like a more annoying queer person because you have to0.82
00:23:17.360assert yourself because there is no structure in place for you. We put this weird onus on queer1.00
00:23:23.780people again to ask, do I really need this? What do I need to make people understand about me?
00:23:30.560And I don't think we get to ever decide for someone else what they need and what's a life
00:23:35.940and death or even just an important validating issue for them. And yeah, we get into a lot of
00:23:40.620trouble as a community when we act like, okay, being able to use a bathroom that aligns with0.83
00:23:45.500your gender. That's important because it's so you won't die. But wearing an outfit that you feel0.62
00:23:51.340comfortable in, if it's a little obnoxious, you don't really need that. You don't need that badly
00:23:55.460enough. That's not acceptable or whatever the case may be. I want to revisit Buck Angel really
00:24:00.140briefly. Buck Angel is a trans man. He is a former porn star. And my understanding is that his porn
00:24:12.160has been very influential i mean i think it's introduced people to trans people i remember in0.99
00:24:17.400his porn he used to call himself the man with the pussy which like even that is kind of treating0.99
00:24:22.660even himself as like a novelty like he's the only guy with a pussy that was how a lot of people got0.99
00:24:27.460introduced to him yeah it worked for him he got very famous in the porn industry and now he's just0.99
00:24:31.700like i don't know which is such a cool story right like you were a you were a trans guy porn star in
00:24:37.440the early 2000s and now he's just like a blair white like he's just doing conservative social0.95
00:24:45.320media like we have to stop the crazy woke tiktok teens from like making our community look too bad
00:24:51.240like dude whatever all right in preparing for this episode i was going through all these people's
00:24:56.680youtube channels and again with him as well as the rest of them it's the same video over and over0.99
00:25:02.580again reacting to cringy queers on tiktok like oh my god you are like 40 fucking years old you0.98
00:25:09.160should not be reacting to cringy tiktok teens you should be going to the theater anyway yeah0.99
00:25:15.040join the symphony get some culture love yourself one of his recent youtube videos is called0.56
00:25:21.420delusional trans tiktok featuring fake trans people okay buck um but so i want to play just
00:25:31.980the first clip for you and we will talk about it together. The first part of it is like the first
00:25:38.120TikTok that he opens the video with and then his immediate reaction to it. Being told that I can't
00:25:43.580identify as trans and also non-binary, being told that non-binary doesn't exist, being told that
00:25:48.500non-binary people are just ruining everything for trans people. Hey everybody, welcome back to my
00:25:55.140channel and today I'm gonna do some reactions on some weirdo TikToks. These people have lost their
00:26:00.840minds it's so crazy i mean if you don't see mental illness come on man we gotta really just get it
00:26:06.480together these kids need help but i'm gonna laugh at them anyway i don't care because if you're0.99
00:26:10.720stupid enough to put this on the internet sorry but you open the door for all of us to start0.99
00:26:15.740making fun of you maybe if we make fun of you you'll start to realize that whatever you think1.00
00:26:20.360you're doing it's actually damaging to you as well as to this community somebody needs to remind him0.97
00:26:28.660that being trans was considered a mental illness until a couple of years ago that being gay was0.99
00:26:34.800considered a mental illness so if you're trying to say you're crazy for being a part of these0.96
00:26:39.520groups that's what's going to be said about all of us and has been said about all of us
00:26:44.260all of our identities have been pathologized as mental illness at some point in the very recent
00:26:50.040history and also like oh you need help so i'm gonna just bully you i'm gonna just bully teens
00:26:55.000online that's going to help them that's going to protect the community yeah how does scrutinizing
00:27:00.100that protect anyone yeah no the only thing you're helping is is once again your google adsense
00:27:05.560account it just strikes me how like people like this they've cut off everyone in their own
00:27:10.460community so much that all they have left after they do that is to pander to the conservatives
00:27:16.100like that's that's the ultimate sadness of it like i think we can resent them for running this grift
00:27:21.780and making a living out of exposing young teens, that's absolutely vile. But it's also just so
00:27:28.140pathetically sad that there are very few places that the Ariel Scarcellas can go anymore0.99
00:27:33.100among other queer people. It's such a lonely existence and they're just licking the boot1.00
00:27:38.880of the cishet people now for the rest of their lives. That's all they can do because they're1.00
00:27:42.860so isolated. Yeah. And then whenever you say something to that effect, they'll always turn
00:27:47.240it around and be like well whatever happened to the tolerant left queer community and then they
00:27:52.660use it as further reason to like well i don't associate with the queer community anymore because
00:27:56.500i expressed some questions and now they don't want anything to do with me and it's like yeah0.96
00:28:02.860your questions were like fucking bullying 14 year old non-binary kids on tiktok like correct i don't0.93
00:28:07.840want anything to do with you the only people who are ever saying whatever happened to the tolerant0.99
00:28:12.700left are like people who just are expressing the most vile viewpoints that i don't feel the need
00:28:17.840to tolerate and also just side note on like tolerance my goal personally and i won't speak
00:28:23.660for other queer people i won't speak for people on the left my goal is not uninhibited tolerance
00:28:30.400and i don't know how you feel about this but like my goal is liberation for my people yeah there's
00:28:35.900a big difference between tolerance and actual political gains where we actually have power
00:28:42.160And I think that is where it breaks down that a lot of these respectability politics, queer people, they want to just lobby for the straights to approve of us and tolerate us. They don't actually want us to have enough power to be a threat to the cishet system. And I think that's what a lot of us are actually gunning for, is for us to actually have the ability to change society in really dramatic ways and reclaim our power.0.50
00:30:13.560I think more people should be having should be having sex in in federal buildings.0.76
00:30:18.760In December, a few months ago, a video of yes, this congressional staffer is like a0.99
00:30:25.380white gay twink in his 20s, soon to be known as the Senate twink.0.96
00:30:30.540A video of him having sex with another man in the U.S. Senate hearing room leaked online by The Daily Caller, which is a very far right publication online.0.99
00:30:43.880And it's just interesting that the fact that this boy's sex tape was leaked to The Daily Caller.0.57
00:30:49.580Like, I don't know. I always felt like that should have been more of a story. Like, it seemed vengeful. And there was some discussion about the fact that this was actually punishment for this congressional staffers having held pro-Palestinian views, which is why the sex tape was leaked.
00:31:05.320i don't know the merit to all of that and it also kind of strays from the point but i do think how
00:31:12.700this video came to be was never enough of a conversation but anyway the people's reaction0.73
00:31:18.020to this congressional staffer having gay sex in the u.s senate hearing room was it was explosive0.60
00:31:25.940it was like all anyone talked about for a week and it really kind of dimmed the light of george0.93
00:31:31.240santos which i do think like i think george santos was pretty pissed about not being the
00:31:35.580most chaotic person in federal office for for a little bit there he needs the attention at all
00:31:42.560times yeah yeah what do you remember about how people reacted um i remember seeing some of the
00:31:48.900like criticism happening on twitter about it just being like really unprofessional or like
00:31:53.760sometimes people bring wrap their homophobia now in like language of like consent in these weird
00:31:58.640ways, you know, where people are saying, oh, it's so inappropriate and dangerous to have sex in a
00:32:04.020public space. That gets lobbed at especially gay men a lot these days. So I saw a little bit of0.98
00:32:09.880that kind of hand wringing where people are pretending to care about like propriety and
00:32:15.780consent and protecting other people. But it's like, you know, somebody having sex in an office
00:32:20.540after hours isn't actually hurting anyone. So let's be real. This is about them being gay and
00:32:25.340about queer sexuality making you uncomfortable i mean we're we're getting into i already know0.99
00:32:29.820people are in the comments being like why do you have to defend like fucking in the government0.98
00:32:35.120building whatever okay be patient with us let's take our time here a little bit so this this point0.99
00:32:42.680this twink this twink was immediately canonized by some as you know a gay icon right some people0.62
00:32:51.440immediately were like oh my god this is so cunty he was derided by most i would say within the0.84
00:32:58.300community this was very much an in intra-community conversation like i don't think that many straight0.85
00:33:03.760people were talking about the senate twink but it felt like every gay person was and the main0.84
00:33:10.480thing that i saw over and over and over again was this will set the community back this makes us0.57
00:33:16.840look bad. This Kansas Justice, Justice Horn on Twitter wrote, in a perfect world, one's actions
00:33:24.560would only be their own and not reflective of the entire LGBTQ community. But we don't live in that
00:33:30.300perfect world. This will likely give our oppressors another tool to target us, especially LGBTQ folks
00:33:36.460in public service or those wanting to serve. What do you make of that? It is just the worst flavor
00:33:43.200of respectability politics, there's something that I talk about in my most recent book,
00:33:47.040Unlearning Shame, about something called systemic shame, which is this idea that we
00:33:51.880blame marginalized individuals for the problem of their own oppression. And we task them with
00:33:57.800solving their own oppression. So every single thing you do as a queer person becomes a political0.99
00:34:03.300symbol or a political statement. You're never allowed to just be a human and just live and be1.00
00:34:08.860flawed and messy and do dramatic things. And so I think it's kind of doing that, right? It's
00:34:15.440putting the Senate twink or any other gay person on this platform where we've been accused of being0.96
00:34:23.180hypersexual perverts and dangerous for so long that if any single one of us is openly sexual,0.98
00:34:30.360they get lobbed with all the blame when they're going to call us hypersexual perverts for0.99
00:34:35.140drag story time. That's already happening. You can do the most tame, family-friendly stuff,0.71
00:34:42.740and you'll still get accused of being a pervert and dangerous and grooming children and all of
00:34:48.880this stuff. So it's just not reality to say that the Senate twink is what's setting us back. We're
00:34:55.540already set back by a rising conservative movement that's going to latch onto anything about us.
00:35:00.780So we have to own that stuff so that they can't use it against us.0.87
00:35:03.840We need to be having more sex in the Senate chamber, is what we're saying.
00:35:10.460Because I kind of think that because the Senate doesn't have any respect for our bodies and what we do with our bodies as queer people.
00:35:18.900They're trying to legislate away our rights to transition, to have birth control, to have queer sex, to have queer relationships.
00:35:25.940So if they don't show any respect for our bodies and our sexuality, why would we show any respect to them?0.99
00:35:31.240Like, I think kind of defiling it with our sexuality and messiness is what they deserve. And I think it's like a very, I mean, maybe saying somebody like fucking after hours isn't always a revolutionary act in their office. I'm gonna give it to him. Like, you know, if he wants to say it's a political statement, I think it's like actually it is but in like a like very transgressive revolutionary way.0.96
00:35:54.240I think when you zoom out a little bit and you look at the bigger picture here, it's like two men were having consensual sex in the room where millions of people are regularly stripped of human rights.
00:36:07.700I'm not so offended by this. I'm just not.
00:36:10.700But there was so much of that hand-wringing, right?
00:36:15.520This will likely give our oppressors another tool to target us.
00:36:19.300There are like 400 over 400 anti-trans bills going through state and federal governments last year. They are cracking down on trans people's right to play sports use bathrooms. I know people are eyeing marriage equality from the right discrimination against us socially has become so normalized in the last two years. It's like what tool are we handing them. I don't think any conservatives are waiting for us to hand them a tool.
00:36:47.100I don't think anyone saw this happen and was like, ah, yes, now my oppression of the gays is justified.0.82
00:36:53.240Finally, I can begin to discriminate against him.0.98
00:36:55.960Were Republicans on the precipice of being nicer to us?
00:36:59.400Yeah, like if the burden is every queer person needs to act exactly perfect and be in this somehow perfect line of like family friendly, but not so family friendly that they'll call you a groomer, you know, like and do everything right.
00:37:13.500And that's the only way that we're going to have rights.0.98
00:37:16.440that's impossible and that's a burden that we can't put on a marginalized group like if you only
00:37:23.100think that a group can find liberation if everybody in that group is an angel you don't
00:37:28.240actually believe in the liberation of that group people need to have the right like in disability
00:37:32.120justice we talk about the right to make mistakes like if somebody is a human with full legal rights0.86
00:37:37.420they're allowed to be stupid and messy and impulsive and make mistakes and they still have0.98
00:37:42.940the same rights. Yeah. And I'm curious what you make. I'm returning to this tweet because it1.00
00:37:47.180really did encapsulate so much of the discourse. I'm curious what you make of what he said.
00:37:51.720In a perfect world, one's actions would only be their own and not reflective of the entire
00:37:55.740community, but we don't live in a perfect world. How would you push back on this? Like, okay,
00:38:00.720I wish we lived in a world where we could make mistakes, but we don't.
00:38:04.260I hate that logic that people often trot out of like, oh, sure. You know, I wish the world
00:38:09.480work differently, but this is how the world works. And so you need to just deal with it.
00:38:14.240My counter to that is always, what kind of world are we trying to build? If we don't want to be
00:38:19.620in this world with these sets of rules of respectability politics, we have to be, as
00:38:25.980human beings, the ones to create it. I think if we say, yeah, so this twink had sex in the Senate0.93
00:38:31.500chambers, and what about it? That is how we help counter a lot of these conservative talking0.98
00:38:37.900points. If we're not scared of them bringing this stuff up, then it isn't ammunition for them
00:38:42.560anymore. We have a little bit of that power to say, we're not afraid of this. Our sexuality is
00:38:48.340beautiful. It's neutral. It's just a human thing that happens sometimes. And that doesn't have
00:38:54.340any bearing on whether or not we're human beings who deserve equal political representation as
00:38:58.900anybody else. Whenever this stuff is happening, I think about the question I always ask myself,
00:39:03.200right it's like okay if a heterosexual or cisgender person did this would it reflect badly
00:39:09.480societally on all heterosexuals or all cisgender people like would they all feel responsible for
00:39:18.000the greater perception of the community if the answer is no then it's no in this case too and
00:39:24.100your anger at the senate twink is misdirected like i believe that and look i don't think you
00:39:30.840necessarily have to get a life-size poster of the senate twink and put it on your bedroom wall
00:39:35.420i'm going to do that because i think this twink is an icon i'm not saying you have to do it i'm
00:39:40.740not saying you have to approve of this person that person's actions i'm not saying you have
00:39:45.040to go have sex in the senate chamber as a revolutionary act but you'd also be wrong in
00:39:52.040blaming him for the systemic oppression of queer people like i understand it feels good too because0.72
00:39:59.120you're like, well, I would never behave that way. And I would never behave in a way so unbecoming1.00
00:40:03.100of a sexual minority. But it's literally just incorrect blame. Like the Senate twink isn't why1.00
00:40:10.140there is a rampant anti-LGBTQ effort on the right of this country. It's kind of that just world
00:40:16.080theory that people sometimes practice of, oh, I would never get assaulted because I don't dress
00:40:21.120that way. Like, oh, I will never be the victim of homophobia because I'm not being the bad kind of
00:40:26.540gay. It's like this illusion that we can control whether we're going to get targeted with our
00:40:32.340choices, because that is very comforting to think like, oh, I'm the right kind of gay. I'm not the
00:40:37.400annoying kind. I'm not the impropriety behaving kind. I'm going to be safe. But actually,
00:40:43.840you're never going to be safe. They could target you at any time. And so we have to actually
00:40:47.880stand together against that, because it could happen and come for all of us eventually.
00:40:53.600Yeah, wait, can you describe the just world theory? Because I think that applies really well here.
00:40:57.980Yeah, yeah. So the just world theory in psychology is this idea that people believe that things happen for a good reason, that people deserve what happens to them. The most famous example is like victim blaming sexual assault survivors.
00:41:10.680So people who are too promiscuous or who dress in a really slutty way, they are the ones who are more likely to get assaulted. Or people who are irresponsible and walk home alone late at night, those are the people that are victims of crime.
00:41:24.560people really believe those myths, even though, first of all, it's just really a messed up
00:41:29.540morally belief system. But it's also just statistically not true. Things can happen
00:41:33.540to you no matter where you're sitting and no matter what choice you make. And even though
00:41:37.660it's comforting to say, I have control over what's going to happen to me and the world is just and
00:41:42.140right. I think if you're a marginalized person, you have to realize the world isn't just and
00:41:46.140right. That's why we're fighting because it's not. I was reading back last night and getting
00:41:51.600ready for this episode some old discourse i was dusting it off some old senate twink discourse
00:41:56.660going through the archives and i found this really great post on tumblr from tumblr user marissa
00:42:02.340tomei of course tumblr user marissa tomei has a good take on this they wrote there are rapists
00:42:09.820in the u.s supreme court and i'm supposed to clutch my pearls over two men having consensual0.93
00:42:14.340sex in the senate oh heavens to betsy the first time sex acts have been committed in a government0.92
00:42:19.460building? Are the shades of Congress to be thus polluted? But for the record, no amount of0.98
00:42:24.600sanitizing your sex life or sanding down of your LGBT edges will make bigots accept you.
00:42:29.760So don't debase yourself by capitulating an inch to them, especially in ways that throw your fellow
00:42:35.100community members under the bus. That really resonated with me. Yeah, it's beautiful. There's
00:42:39.660nothing sacred about the Senate. You know, I nothing at a time when they're approving bills
00:42:45.120to just send as many weapons and as much funding to Israel to commit a genocide as possible.
00:42:50.820I can't speak for the Senate twink. If he was a staffer, that means he's probably like0.69
00:42:54.840pretty like moderate liberal pills just because most people are who are working in the government,
00:42:59.460but I don't know him. But like, I think we should defile these, you know, it might not
00:43:04.900have been a political stance on his part, but I think we should defile these institutions because
00:43:08.980they're violent, they're homophobic, they're transphobic. There's nothing to respect about
00:43:14.360them so why are we like trying to make ourselves be respectable inside of them yeah oh this video
00:43:21.280is getting demonetized all of my videos get demonetized sorry no no it's my goal i think i
00:43:27.560think something that i do with myself at this point on this podcast is i see how many minutes
00:43:31.920into the show i can get before absolutely knowing that this video will not be monetized did i need
00:43:37.620to use like a tiktokism like what's the tiktok word for genocide no what's that we we we should
00:43:46.380be having more segs in right in the senate hearing room yeah and we should be having more segs in the
00:43:55.500senate hearing room where people are unalived the last thing i want to say about the senate twink
00:43:59.520and this is kind of unrelated to anything but i just think it was so camp he issued an apology
00:44:05.640via linkedin i think this is from linkedin based on the format of the screenshot but
00:44:12.620the beginning of the apology reads as such this has been a difficult time for me as i have been
00:44:17.640attacked for who i love to pursue a political agenda while some of my actions in the past have
00:44:23.040shown poor judgment i love my job and would never disrespect my workplace any attempts to
00:44:27.940characterize my actions otherwise are fabricated and i will be exploring what legal options are
00:44:32.880available to me in these matters and like okay i wish him luck in those legal in that legal recourse
00:44:38.660i don't know what success he's gonna find but i love i love the first sentence as i have been
00:44:45.340attacked for who i love he he really went for the like love is love like which is like kind of a
00:44:55.540respectability politics thing right like it's like it's very funny to take the talking point
00:44:59.660that like we used to use to like justify gay marriage like it's not all a sex thing totally
00:45:03.980it's about love he's like this is too also about love like like i don't actually think this boy
00:45:12.180ever meant to be like like i don't think this was like a politically revolutionary act for him like
00:45:17.440i think he just thought it was really hot which i'm sure it was and i'm happy for him in that like0.94
00:45:21.600i think he was like i just really want to get fucked in the senate chamber and i love that0.96
00:45:26.080neither of them could host you know maybe neither of them had a place to go and he was like i have0.98
00:45:31.440keys to this office this is the new answer to can you host is well i am an intern you're a senate
00:45:38.580intern at the senate yeah yeah i just i love that so much i've been attacked for who i love
00:45:45.380oh it's amazing it's amazing he walked it back with this like very like hillary clinton love is
00:45:50.780love sort of thing. In staying on theme with like sexual and kink, what some people would like to be
00:45:58.420outcasts in the community and something that stirs discourse every single year. I want to talk a
00:46:03.620little bit about the Folsom Street Fair. Devin, what is Folsom? Folsom is an annual street fair
00:46:10.600in San Francisco. And it is cordoned off. It's outside, but it's adults only. And videos from
00:46:17.880constantly get reproduced with people intentionally excluding the fact that it's adults only and not
00:46:22.500mentioning that. But it is a big kink event where there are demos on flogging and leather. There
00:46:30.740are people having sex in the street. There's people in fursuits having sex, wandering around,0.99
00:46:36.780selling kinky wares. And yeah, it's just a big celebration of queer and kinky sexuality out in0.99
00:46:43.180the open but only for adults yes it's in the open it's a street fair but it's in a cordoned off0.65
00:46:50.180area where there are no children there are no children you are id'd to attend this event and
00:46:57.140like you said every year there is media that circulates the internet from Folsom and goes
00:47:03.700to places where it was just never intended to go for example like last year during Folsom
00:47:09.580there there were two things that i really remember one was a guy getting fisted in the street and0.91
00:47:17.280then the other was a guy like smeared shit across i think his chest and his back and what's0.88
00:47:25.260interesting is i don't even know that that was a fetish thing i actually think it was a political0.97
00:47:30.400thing because apparently the the motivation behind doing that was to make a statement about not
00:47:35.140wanting to be touched which i think as a piece of like performance art at a sexual street fair
00:47:41.460is really interesting but both of these things went totally nuts on twitter there was so much
00:47:49.120discourse of like especially from younger queer people of of like how are we ever gonna stop the
00:47:55.720discrimination against us if this is how we behave and then the second you say anything about like
00:48:00.660well this is sex negative and you know this is a conservative talking point there is this very0.99
00:48:05.840knee-jerk response of like i'm conservative because i don't want people to smear shit on0.99
00:48:10.640themselves in the street you know it's there's this very kind of like heated debate that takes0.99
00:48:15.600place around how people are supposed to behave and like what constitutes a conservative talking
00:48:20.960point i want to appeal to younger queer people here because i came out when i was 15 and i
00:48:28.760remember for the first at least like four years of my being out I clung pretty tightly to this like0.80
00:48:36.600well I'm not that type of gay sort of thing which is amazing because now fucking look at me0.95
00:48:43.560I lost it somewhere as it turns out I am that type of gay but I spent my whole life feeling1.00
00:48:52.180like the outcast and feeling like the person who could never fit in and feeling like the faggot1.00
00:48:58.300And all I wanted for myself was just to feel like the normal one for once.1.00
00:49:02.180When I see people react to something like Folsom this way, a part of me identifies with
00:49:09.100them because I had years where I would have reacted the same way.
00:49:12.000First, I think it's great that you bring up why you had your own reservations about this
00:53:57.960Yes, you can. You can be the most boring dude in the world and that's fine. You're still part of0.95
00:54:02.700us. And I don't understand why that nuance is so hard for people. I feel like a lot of people just
00:54:08.700need to take five deep breaths and say, okay, I'm not under attack right now just because I'm
00:54:14.260uncomfortable. And yeah, again, even if you're never going to be the person who wants to get
00:54:18.180fisted or like, you know, do suspension play or whatever. Just ask yourself, what about myself am
00:54:23.360I ashamed of? What about me? What hidden things behind the trap doors would other people look at
00:54:29.860me that way? Or I'm worried about people seeing me that way. And like, how can you give yourself
00:54:34.480some of that self-compassion and get over that a little bit? And then maybe you won't feel so
00:54:38.580threatened by other people being freaks and perverts and wild and annoying and whatever else
00:54:43.780it is yeah and i mean with this whole thing of like oh well look at these videos of someone
00:54:49.540getting fisted in the street like they're gonna take our rights away because of this honey they're
00:54:54.960going to take our they are taking our rights away they're taking our rights away whether you give
00:55:00.040them a video of someone getting fisted in the street or not because you know what if they don't0.94
00:55:04.180have a video of someone getting fisted in the street they just make shit up anyway like the0.81
00:55:09.200biggest things that right-wing media as a whole latched onto over the last couple years aren't1.00
00:55:14.840like aren't fulsome they're not even the senate twink they're like made-up shit that libs of0.98
00:55:20.200tiktok puts out about like random queer people just like existing in public teaching positions0.99
00:55:25.380or whatever they will find whatever they want to find in order to discriminate against us
00:55:30.100it's not it's it's not this just world theory people who say this stuff i wonder what they
00:55:35.980even want like if if falsim if an 18 plus cordoned off event is unacceptable then it's like a private
00:55:42.560dungeon in somebody's house unacceptable like is again i just remember like the early 2000s and
00:55:47.820just how overtly homophobic that era was as a queer teen at that time and we're back there again
00:55:53.740where like the people protesting at the pride parades back then and i'm sure many places still
00:55:58.300are they would have signs that would say things like this is like one that i actually saw back0.99
00:56:02.060in the day eating shit is not a human right they were treating gay men having sex as if it was0.99
00:56:09.520the most vile fetishistic in their mind right like those things are linked like that it was1.00
00:56:15.800the same thing as the guy with the shit on his chest yeah so if they already see this that way0.99
00:56:20.020we have to stand with the dude with the shit on his chest you know like maybe we want to keep our0.99
00:56:24.960distance scent wise but like he's one of us he's our dude like if he's not free we're not free0.99
00:56:30.180I want to give baby gaze, as I've attempted to do throughout, you know, this conversation, just as much grace as possible, because I really understand why respectability politics, I understand why that's an attractive mindset, especially, you know, if you've lived your whole life in fear.
00:56:46.940And so I was like perusing Reddit and I found this person, Reddit user Lauren M, who wrote something that I thought really gave grace to this idea in a beautiful way.
00:56:58.420They wrote, making yourself smaller is a dysfunctional fear response that people cling to as a result of abuse in an effort to make the abuse stop.
00:57:14.760don't let them use divide and conquer while dangling a reward you'll never get
00:57:19.060i think that was really beautiful that is beautiful i love the last line like
00:57:23.200the reward of cishet approval it is not worth it that's the kind of stuff that keeps us in the
00:57:29.680closet we have to dream past that i want to wrap up today's episode by reading a portion of an
00:57:36.520essay that i clipped together from tumblr it's by a tumblr user called va spider and this essay
00:57:43.120went viral some time ago when it was published. It's called Pete Buttigieg is just a faggot.0.99
00:57:48.260So here it is. Pete Buttigieg is just a faggot. It's very important to me that younger queers1.00
00:57:53.740understand this. To the people who you're trying to be more respectable for when you say things
00:57:58.560like neopronouns set the trans movement back, or you're why the cishets don't accept us, or
00:58:04.220including asexuals or bi people with the wrong kinds of partners, or non-binary people, or
00:58:10.440kinksters or non-passing trans people or furries or polyamorous people just hurts us. Can't you0.63
00:58:16.320wait until we get all of our rights before we talk about some of yours? To those people, Pete
00:58:21.320Buttigieg is just a fag. On Sunday night at Pride Northwest, some kids, late teens, early 20s,1.00
00:58:28.500asked us what our I survived Reagan for this button meant. All of the queer adults at the1.00
00:58:33.780tables making up our ad hoc counter looked at each other and sighed a little. Emmett and another1.00
00:58:38.960adult started to explain the way the reagan administration handled or didn't handle the
00:58:43.240beginning of the aids crisis how many people died how much we were ignored the ashes action
00:58:48.840the time magazine article which explicitly blamed bisexual men for passing the pandemic0.99
00:58:53.740to the cishet community playing on all the worst stereotypical bullshit the way that even when the0.99
00:58:59.900cdc started paying attention they were so focused on gay men that they ignored aids in the lesbian0.99
00:59:04.440community, leading to the, quote, women don't get AIDS, they just die from it, poster, and so on.
00:59:11.120That's what I need you to understand. The people for whom you are folding yourself into smaller
00:59:15.660and smaller boxes will never see you as anything but a freak, a queer, a fag. Never. These are the1.00
00:59:22.440people who will stand by and let you wither away and die alone, gasping for breath in a cinderblock
00:59:27.340room and not even claim your ashes, and they will say you deserve it because of your lifestyle.
00:59:32.600If they speak of you at all, it will be by the wrong name with the pictures you hate the most.
00:59:37.840They will curse at your lover, throw him out of the home you shared, and steal the gift you gave last Christmas to throw it in the trash just so he can't have it.
00:59:45.600And they'll say Jesus loves you while you do it.
00:59:48.400They'll feel good and righteous and blessed and holy and pure for doing it.
00:59:52.400And for them, you spit in the eye of your sister.
01:00:37.720That's the part you don't seem to get.1.00
01:00:39.880When they abandoned us, they abandoned all of us.
01:00:43.000Rock Hudson was a beloved movie star and even personally friendly with that horrid pair of ambitious jackals, referring to the Reagans.
01:00:52.120Nancy Reagan refused to help him get into the only place in the world that could treat him at the time, and he died.
01:00:57.980It was 1985, four years after the CDC first released papers on what would eventually become known as HIV-AIDS,
01:01:05.060and seven years after the first known death from an infection from HIV-2.
01:01:09.740Reagan hadn't even said the word AIDS by the time Hudson died.1.00
01:01:13.340I need you to understand that if Pete Buttigieg is just a fag,1.00
01:01:16.280if that human embodiment of a Wonder Bread, Mayo, and Oscar Mayer bologna sandwich is not1.00
01:01:21.300respectable enough for them, and he's not, then the rest of us have absolutely no hope of measuring
01:01:26.800up. Not even if we trim away every colorful, beautiful piece of our community. Not even if
01:01:32.440the sisters of perpetual indulgence vanish into the ether. Not even if we sacrifice the five
01:01:37.500elements of vogue on the altar of white supremacist cishet middle-class conformity.
01:01:42.340We can't trim ourselves down to something they'll accept.
01:01:45.520The only other option is radical acceptance of our queer selves.
01:01:49.640The only other option is solidarity.0.90
01:01:52.040The only other option is for fats and femme queens and drags and kinksters and queers and zine writers and sex workers and furries and addicts and kids and the ones who can look us in the eye and see all of us to say we're here, we're queer, get used to it.0.97