(maybe from now on i will trying using “quer” on this blog when i want to use the concept of queer, because i’m a cis girl who passes as straight and i rarely think about passing as straight and i mostly get with with cis dudes, though i have very rarely gotten with people who identify as lesbians or genderqueer. and i feel like queer theory helps me understand my experiences SO MUCH and i think that that’s partly because queer communities are so SMART at theorizing marginality and relationships and at giving terms for things that go really undiscussed in heteronormative relationships —- jane cope said, sometimes I feel sorry for straight people because they just seem to have no reasonable framework for thinking about their relationships!

but I have never experienced homophobia or transphobia, or been afraid for my own safety because of homophobia or transphobia (these first two are BIG ONES), and I am only very very new or liminal to any kind of real queer community, like I have never really actively sought out a queer community either online or in the real world, and I haven’t ever had an intense queer relationship, so I want to be sensitive about taking up too much space in the discussion of queer with my limited experience of it. and i’ve never felt strongly identified as “queer” and i don’t need quer to be an identity either; quer is such an ugly, awkward word; i hope it won’t seem appropriative to use it to talk about my experiences. and that way i can have a word for “not heteronormative” while the queer community can keep a word for their more particularized identit(ies) and experience(s)…) (i’ve been having a long conversation with jane cope about this and we’ve hurt each other’s feelings but are working through it and i am so glad that we are having it.)

and maybe if i ever graduate into becoming a real queer (which i probably will, eventually, given how much basically every straight man i meet horrifies me, ugh, i had a fucking gross night last night getting drinks with a certain hip white cultural studies professor from UC Santa Cruz and his friend) i can add the extra ‘e.’