Curate, connect, and discover
“Blood may be thicker than water, but shared community and experience are thicker than both” – Alice Austen Lived Here, Alex Gino.
In this world, we keep hearing how important it is to function as a society. We create arbitrary norms about relationships, marriage and gender, and thrust people onto a stage where their true selves can never be exposed - where they have to live a performance. Ironically, it those who perform their lives, their identity, that truly live – queer people, living loudly, who thrive as a community. From lived experience – however short that may be – I have witnessed connections bloom in under seconds between queer people in a way I have never between cishet people; mutual aid, a no-questions-asked kind of support, a sense of belonging, of security, of authenticity pervades queer gatherings and relationships.
As discussions arose about amatonormativity and relationship anarchy, I came to a startling realization that amatonormativity, however ingrained, dominates cishet circles very differently from how it exists in queer spaces. To be queer is to be a part of something much larger than you; it is to find kindred spirits in people ten years younger and twenty-five years older than us; it is to know that I am we, and we are one; it is to be tethered to people who lived a century ago who never used the words we do now, but lived our existences; it is to understand that who we are don’t start or end with us – we are from a long line of survivors who fought to be seen, to be heard, and thus, as a patient tells April Kepner on Grey’s Anatomy, it is our duty to practice ‘tikkun olam’, to endeavor to put together the rest of this broken world for our fellow baby queers. In the end, what it means for individuals is that our community makes us stronger, prouder.
And because of this, while monogamous romantic/+sexual relationships are placed at the top of a hierarchy even amongst queer people, it is not as much a fixed triangle as cishet relationships of the same type are. Because being queer is about finding our non-biological family; and the people we choose on our journey to be our people inspire our identity, shape our life, and establish bonds which cannot be unglued. Friendships between queer people transcend false beliefs about platonic relationships. Because of a long history of disownment, estrangement, and exclusion from biological relations and peers, queer communities are a family in their own right. As we see in Anne With An E, You Me Her, Glee, and so, so many other shows, queer people need other queer people – not just for emotional support, but to know where we come from, to belong, to learn, and to know what could be.
Unfortunately, amatonormativity does persist in monogamous, polyamorous, queer and cishet relationships – and it can only be destroyed with reclaiming our autonomy, destroying long-held beliefs, banning the institution of marriage (just kidding… maybe), and the rise of community. Fortunately, this baby has started walking beautifully (was that an intentional wordplay on ‘baby steps’? Yes, yes it was. Mighty proud of it, I am); all we now need is a village to nurture this baby.
-kpm