"What does your queerness mean to you?"
A collection of the most beautiful answers from humans following my page
Yesterday, in an Instagram story, I asked the following question in a sticker, “What does your queerness mean to you?” with the following text:
Heppy pride month!
From what I have observed, and I could be wrong for some, but queerness is a spiritual identification. From what I have witnessed, it’s more than just who you’re attracted to. It is something I yearn to identify as but would like to do so only when I feel like it is the absolute truth coming from my roots.
Otherwise it would feel like a complete ignorance of my privileges I enjoy as someone benefitting from systems that oppress queerness.
To that end, I would love to know more about your queerness to the extent that you are willing to share.
What makes you queer?
How do you see your queerness?
What does your queerness mean to you?
I would love to learn in this way. I wish I did it earlier.
***I would like to collect and share as many of these as I can on a carousel post. If you would like me to tag you for credit, please submit your answer with a rainbow emoji. 🌈
Here are answers separated by asterisks.
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My queerness has been a path away from rigidity and towards freedom 🌈 IG @_bea.bop_
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Loving outside of structures and expectations. Loving wildly.
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Refusing heteronormativity and finding my own ways to enjoy and appreciate love and sex.
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Queerness is community. It’s culture. It’s the act of loving & existing radically! Queerness is tearing down what is old to build something better for all.
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Someone can be LGBT but not necessarily identify as queer; queer has political associations. “Not gay as in happy, queer as in fuck you.”
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Ocean Vuong summarized it: “Queerness demanded an alternative innovation from me.”
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Creating my own way of loving, looking, and existing in this world.
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From bell hooks: “Queer' not as being about who you're having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but 'queer' as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”
(two people submitted this quote from bell books)
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Possibility to be me in every color & challenge heteronormativity, binary gender systems, and monogamy. 🌈 IG @m_de_mamba
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For me, it means not fitting into cis het male culture, not limiting who I love.
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My queerness is a rejection of societal norms and a fluid approach to life.
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It’s so special and core to my sense of self. It’s freeing, it’s loving, it’s exploring and discovering.
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Listening to my body as the source of truth for who I am, who I love & how (/=society)
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To be like nature 💕
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It means I’m a cuttlefish, not a dolphin.
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It’s new, exploring, dungarees, ppl stopping me in the street, ❤️ anyone twirling their hair
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🌈 I just feel a deep “hell yes that’s me” when I hear the word “queer” IG @janisvogel
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My queerness means I can be and do whatever I want with my fking life!
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I value+prioritize than hegemony dictates. I live on my own terms.
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Queerness to me is a sense of belonging, feeling loved and being celebrated for my differences. 🌈 IG @ohkaydoris
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Queerness to me is about seeing life as an opportunity to create. To love in ways that feel true to us.
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It’s about abolishing gender, sexuality, and relationship norms. Just be yourself yall
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It means exploration, curiosity, learning, growth, connection, community, and love! 🌈 IG @peppertheshrimp
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Actively combating violent systems to the best of my ability when capacities allow 🌈 IG @moontwerk
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It means I have fluid. My attraction is fluid and shifting and changing.
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Queer means existing joyfully & lifting others outside the prescribed norms set by any system. 🌈 IG @the_s71n4
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For me it’s political and spiritual. It’s change. It’s liminal. But it’s been hard. Struggle.
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My politics, values, morals? All queer. It’s queerness, all the way down. It’s innate + a choice.
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Feeling the wholeness & sweetness of love vs. setting it through a window.
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Queerness for me is a sexual, relational, and political identity.
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🌈 Queerness is anything sections of conformist society would shame in someone’s their lifestyle. IG @i_am_missing_autumn
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Queerness is more than a gender/sexual expression, it’s political. #freepalestine
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Queerness is breaking the mold and rebuilding it in a new, shameless, free way. It’s political & spiritual.
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Perpetual self and relational exploration.
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My poly feels like a part of my queer to me. Queer is my all expansive humanity reaching.
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Being united by our love for each other.
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Defying cis-hetero-mononormativity in love no matter how that looks like.
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I remember the bliss after accepting I was bi. Mental walls take a lot of energy. 🌈 IG @andypucko
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It’s a desire and willingness for any story to be mine.
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To me, queer means I feel attraction to people regardless of their gender. *pan for life 🌈 IG @dinixidoula
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It’s def not about attraction! Poly n queer means freedom to love who and how you want 💕
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Open to love in all its forms - including loving and accepting myself.
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🌈-ness for ME means being attracted to a person, their spirit, their energy, not their body parts. IG @honeythelovely1
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To me, being queer means being seen as a person before being seen as a gender. This means my queerness is expressed in the actions of others and its co-creation.
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I created me!! I am a creation of myself!!! My transness is creation!!!
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Fluidity, being one thing then changing my mind later if I wanted to or felt like it.
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Liberation from societal norms. And deep love and yearning.
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The thing that makes me queer is my refusal to conform. My queerness is about living the life. I want to live without making concessions to people who don’t want me to be happy. Queerness, to me, is about love, radical joy, collective action, and shaping new possibilities. 🌈 IG @jckofallnames
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I think respecting and identifying with other marginalized people makes sense but being queer is very much about our genders/orientations as much as our politics/spirituality. Why do you want to identify as queer rather than an ally? Because my queerness is about my community, my truth, being a raging dyke in tune with my ancestry, letting myself by curious about the world. Thanks for the ponder. 🌈 IG @bifariusaf
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Queerness is in my spirit, even before you know the word or its meaning the way you see people and the world around you, there are endless open possibilities with how you can connect and what a person can mean to you and the beauty in calling yourself queer and recognizing that you aren’t limiting who you can hold in your heart to love, spend your life with, fuck, anything you want can be yours when you are kind and let you queer spirit shine. There’s also such a shared experience between other queer people of homophobia that we can just understand each other and our struggles which is nice to feel that bond without so many words exchanged.
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Freedom in who and how I love, and what I prioritize in my life. The freedom to live free from the cishet male gaze. The creativity to design my gender and sexuality based on what feels affirming to me.
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Decentering men, dismantling patriarchy, questioning beauty standards and ableism.
Queerness is often considered a political identity and/or philosophy that informs someone’s relationship style/sexuality because “queering” something means to step outside of the norm. Therefore, being LGBT =/= queer (but there is often overlap). However, I think there’s an argument for straight people being able to engage in queerness (in the same way monogamous people can engage in RA) - this would require a high degree of unpacking monogamous culture though (imo those who are straight and poly often engage in a lot of oppressive practices because of patriarchy, but I digress).
Queerness is about questioning norms which often leads to people “coming out” in various parts of their lives (kink, poly, LGBT, etc.)
For me, being queer means recentering men, questioning beauty standards, ableism, and what is seen as “attractive.” It’s about addressing supremacy and power dynamics.
Queerness for me personally looks like being a lesbian who could have sex with a man in the right context (such a taboo) but not for his sake - for mine.
It looks like me not finding conventionally attractive people attractive.
It’s about being honest that I can never be monogamous, and yet, my poly identity also remains fluid. I am open to relationship styles that lie between ENM and RA depending on my partners. AND I still always want a nesting partner.
It looks like no longer believing I need to fulfill a partner’s every need, nor they mine.
It looks like me moving in and out of kink dynamics with people of all genders depending on the connection.
It looks like acceptance of my disfigurement and disability and acceptance that this isn’t a life sentence of loneliness.
It looks like being able to call in community members without cancelation because that is another form of supremacy.
It looks like understanding where you can share, and where you need to protect the self.
It’s about consent and relearning your mind and body.
I am a queer woman who enjoys looking like a woman and acting like a man - in that I embrace having normal bodily functions, swearing and taking up space unapologetically with heels and wing tipped eye liner on point.
Being queer means I continue learning to remove shame where I diverse, while questioning, understanding, and accepting where I want to participate in normalcy without guilt.
🌈 IG @samantha.june.artworks
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My queerness is a practice. To defy/subvert sex/gender/sexuality norms individually + with others! I feel like there are layers to queerness. I do it by myself through the way I move, dress, or medically alter my body as a gay trans person, and I do it in partnerships which are queer and trans.
But there’s also the element of queerness that comes through seeking community and comrades in this work of gender/sex/sexual defiance and subversion. And because those oppressive norms are far reaching, and inextricable from other power structures like colonialism, ableism, and capitalism - queer work is also to be found in other places.
In the broadest terms, I feel I am most queer when I am working with other towards this desire for myself and others to be able to love, care, and relate in as many different ways as we consent to.
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A defiant expression of everything I am. Fluid, flexible, organic. How I love myself. How I love others. My gender and those roles - I am mother and father.
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Thank you to all of those who participated in this beautiful mosaic of responses.
If you see any errors or would like me to take down credits or add credits, feel free to send me a message on IG @itsangelahan.