the queer nietzsche

After recent events — about which I will later write — I penned this email to the students in the "Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Culture" course, enjoy:

Dear students in Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Culture,

Over the course of the semester, some of you have raised questions about “microaggressions” (using varying terms; the word itself dates back to the early 1970s and the study of racial discrimination, and is today considered a controversial and contested concept). I don’t teach that material, nor do I use that term, and as you can see on the course outline on the first page of the syllabus, the course was not intended to be about “microaggressions” or even about gay rights or gay politics, though we did touch a bit on the latter. The course was designed to be about queerness, in its psychical and social formations — what it feels like to be gay, our queer identities and our queer desires. But I have a word to say on the issue, tangentially and elliptically.

Throughout history, queers have been the offensive and the inappropriate. We have offended with our desires, our sex, our words, and our relationships. Our desires and pleasures have been deemed inappropriate. We are the original offenders and transgressors. Historically, queers have reveled in inappropriateness and celebrated the crass. We are the improper and the impolite. As the gay filmmaker John Waters has said, “have faith in your own bad taste."

But in recent times, it seems like gay people have become the offended, trading out our historical role as the offenders and the rebels for a new unhappy role as the aggrieved and the resentful. We have become the indignant and the wounded. We have become the offended and the disgruntled rather than the offensive and the provocative. Being offended and aggrieved is not political empowerment. Being resentful and wounded is not queer aesthetics. It is sour moralism. This moralism originates in a strange confluence of weakness and privilege. I regret that this has happened.

I think that at its best queerness is about being the offender, what Kate Bornstein, as transgender, refers to as the “outlaw” (or “jester"). This theme — play and passion in badass expression — animates most of the texts that we have read this semester. Queers have always been the ones who are offensive, inappropriate, and abnormal, with strength, power, charisma, and force. In short, we have moxie. The best definition of queerness is this aesthetic and style. A good historical and theoretical referent for this ferocity and fire is the work of the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.This playfulness is also visible in the work of Jean Genet, whose novel, “Our Lady of the Flowers,” we read earlier in the semester. The work of Halperin, Dyer, Edelman, and Frye is animated by this sensibility. So is any drag performance.

Being queer requires force and artistry, with playful expression and emotional strength. Part of being the queer offenders and the gay outlaws is developing a thick skin. This will serve you in your life. You will be happier, and you will be more playful, for it. Don’t demand that others make you feel safe and comfortable. Instead, make yourself feel safe and comfortable — just do it, force it, be courageous, be present — and then bring that attitude into whatever space you occupy, with moxie and wit. There isn’t a set of rules or laws for this. It’s a sensibility and an aesthetic — strong character.

I will leave you with an aphorism from one of my favorite authors, the Romanian existentialist philosopher, Emil Cioran:

“Noise: listening to someone who has never suffered."

Andy Pink