Confessions of a Lipstick Bear

was at an underwear dance party this past weekend, met some cool kids and some not so cool kids. even in alternative queer-positive spaces douches manage to lurk camoflaged by supposed “good politics” and warby parker eyewear.

“how can you be against gay marriage?” the young gay centrist asked me. “don’t you believe in equal love?” i’ve been teaching all day and i’m tired, near the end of the lecture i let my critiques of the gay marriage/hrc establishment slip out. big mistake.

you see, when you’re precariously employed it doesn’t matter how much they love you today, that could change in a nano-second if they think you’re too radical, too leftist, pro-palestinian or lacking in patriotism. you see dear reader the problem is i am many of these things.

i sigh. and try to find the words to express the frustrations i have with discourses of equality. or as i increasingly call it ‘the tyranny of equality’. 
“it’s not that i’m against marriage,” i explain. “people can get married if they want to, i just don’t think that having the right to participate in a heteronormative institution is liberatory.”

i can see his eyes glaze over. it’s not the conservativism i mind, or the centrist attitudes of most of my students. it’s the lowered expectations of political discourse, the lack of willingness to dream of something different. the apathy is what kills me. i was this person once. voting for moderate, fiscally conservative but socially progressive candidates, a believer in the two state solution, thinking that a well regulated market was the key for a prosperous and secure future. 

then i woke up. woke up to the realities of capitalism and injustice. woke up to queer theory, judith butler and kate bornstein, woke up to foucault, staceyann chin, malcom x… suddenly my world became a darker and crueler place but also became a place of new kinds of joy: of the dance floor, poppers, angry debates over too much wine and not enough vocabulary. to writing, books, politics. to refusing to be happy because it’s what is expected of me. to being queer as in fuck you. 

i resign myself to explaining to the centrist student that the transphobia of the hrc is what frustrates me, which is true, but is only the tip of the iceberg why i don’t like marriage and why i shouldn’t have to be like straight folk or love like straight folk to be given rights. he leaves and i try to remind myself that once not so long ago i had similar conversations with professors who gave me just a glimmer of information that started a political awakening for me.

maybe i’ll start one too.

xoxo

lipstick bear

THIS. I LOVE THIS.

agnesgalore:

It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that, though I didn’t think about this at the time, I probably started a blog because I need somewhere to vent my boundless rage that is not random people’s Facebook walls. I mean, one thing among the many thousands of things that are guaranteed to raise my blood pressure is when folks get all “the internet isn’t real, and it’s not a viable platform for communication,” but also like, Facebook fights are dumb, I’m supposed to be an adult now.

So here’s the thing that got me all het up this week: gay marriage.

 

Specifically, these goddamn things: 

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I’m finding myself increasingly angry these days.

I’m angry at the pseudo-liberal politics that seem to have overrun the bear scene in my town. Admittedly being angry at a group of fat white guys isn’t all that shocking, just because they suck dick doesn’t mean they are going to have good politics.

I’m angry at the gucci left dudebros in my grad department who love to “mansplain” things to me because as a queer and latino I couldn’t possible understand class politics. Fucking assholes.

I’m angry at myself for just coming into these politics now and not 10 years ago.

This is the space where I want to work out how to be a bear without being a racist, macho asshole.

Where I revel in my love of all things hello kitty. Where I make sucking dick a political act again.


xoxo
Lipstick Bear