Postmodern Queerness

What does it mean to be queer in the late 2010s, almost two full decades into the twenty-first century? And how can I, a cisgender gay man, even attempt to tackle this question when I am only a shade in a palette with thousands of colors?

I couldn’t even if I tried. But I can try jotting down some observations.

Some queer people are happy. Increased social acceptance and legislation that protects queer people and grants them rights they were denied before has no doubt contributed to that. In many settings, we can be who we are without fear. Sometimes, it seems the bleakest days — those of the AIDS crisis, of worldwide abuse and neglect — are in the past, and that conditions can only get better.

History, however, does not advance in a straight line. Many queer people, especially transgender and gender non-conforming people, still encounter discrimination everywhere they go. People of color and people with disabilities find themselves at the intersection of multiple axes of oppression. Queer people in many countries, furthermore, have not benefitted at all from the progress made in other places of the world. Activists continue to work tirelessly to bring about much-needed political and social change in these regions, but it’s immensely hard when declaring one’s queerness means risking one’s life.

So what is “postmodern queerness,” really? I cannot answer that. Not only because I have not done nearly enough reading in the booming field of queer studies, but also because not a single life experience exists across all queer people.

Every morning, I check my social media. I have queer friends living across the country, around the globe. Some of them, like me, are cisgender gay men navigating adulthood to the best of their abilities, dealing with awkward dating, family drama, body image issues, all kinds of insecurities, dreams, and moments of joy.

Some of them are transgender people, documenting their journey from realizing their gender identity to transitioning and coming out to their loved-ones. Some of them are bisexual, lesbian, nonbinary or questioning their identity — maybe frequently, maybe forever.

I chat with some of them. I flirt with others. We laugh, we dance, we compliment each other — through our phone screens, in real life. We worry because our rights are frequently at risk of being stripped away by the same people who have always been there, waiting for a chance to hurt us. We speak up if we feel that looming threat.

We exist.