Why I Don’t Give a Fuck Who You Fuck and Other Demure Pondering by a Formerly Queer.

As a formerly queer, I can’t really lay claim on heterosexuality, because I still love the softness of women. And boobs are best, hands down. Don’t come at me yet, I am just getting started.

I call myself formerly queer because I cannot really get into this whole endless number of discourse of sexualities. The constant labeling. There is no possible way to include all intersectionality at every moment of all the things. So, we have to create a framework for what we are looking at, we have to set some semblance of parameters. The gate of those parameters is porous, not fixed.

But why, dear lord, why do we need every sexuality discourse under the sun? No other identity gets this, so what makes this such a rampant identifier. Do we think this is a continuation of sexual freedom or somehow by linguistic magic this will make people accept us? Or we will feel understood by the world, alas. Because as Gayle Rubin can attest, the charmed circle is the foundation for these seemingly liberating sexualities, if you are queer you ain’t at the center.

Why is queer not enough? Seems like a decent umbrella term we painfully refashioned. We made it not the opposite of heterosexual on purpose, to be inclusive. When people get to know you, they get to know your queerness in all its form. Who wants the middle of the book at the introduction?

I don’t care who you fuck. And if you are thinking using a label or 500, somehow “legitimizes” sex the way you are having it or who you are having it with, you need to brush up on some Foucault, or at least pay attention and think critically about identity politics. Particularly, the divisiveness of it all within community and the lack of linguistic efficacy in fighting the powers that be.

Back in my day, when you ran into someone in the queer community, there was an acknowledgment, maybe a quick head nod or a hey, me too as well. This is sadly, not really a thing anymore. This was a semblance of a little spark of tribal pride and a fuck you to any oppressors. Now, I get bombarded with labels.

Recently, I have had experiences where community members have required me to be divisive in queer spaces. I got called a TERF, I’m not even a feminist, but more broadly because I had a different opinion. For fuck sake, because I don’t use the plethora of labels, queer people assume my identity, which is the very thing they attempt to avoid and then get pissed when I talk about queerness. If communities are kept bickering at themselves over semantics, power doesn’t have to pay them as much mind, as they turn on each other, like the gears were designed on purpose.

I have studied theories of sexuality. I stalked the UC Berkeley campus in my free time looking for Judith Butler. I never found her, but I do know at the end of the day we are beings who fuck our lovers (yes, books are considered lovers) and have our own yin and yang.

As Foucault says, “From the singular imperialism that compels everyone to transform their sexuality into a perpetual discourse to the manifold mechanisms which, in the area of economy, pedagogy, medicine, and justice incite, extract, distribute, and institutionalize the sexual discourse, an immense verbosity is what our civilization has required and organized…It is possible that where sex is concerned, the most long-winded, the most impatient of societies is our own.”

Discourse of sexuality gets used by power, it’s how power operates and spreads. These discourses are externally imposed and internally ingested. Creating more identifiers is not dismantling power, this is not radical. What’s radical is living your truth. What’s radical is dismantling the neoliberalism causing cultural trauma to communities. What’s radical is getting to the heart of the system and ripping it right out, to make way for radical acceptance of sexuality, cause I don’t give a fuck who you fuck.