Chosen, not imposed: queerness, family, and representation
Too often reduced to just sexuality and gender identity, queerness encompasses much more than that. Queerness has to do with non-normativity: with questioning, defying, and refusing to fulfill the norms, roles, and expectations that are imposed on us since before we are even born. This includes sexuality and gender, but also covers fashion, non-sexual relationships, beauty standards, art, media …
Queerness is about being true to oneself despite the pressures and violence of the extremely rigid cis-hetero-patriarchal colonial system we live in.
The very existence of queer people lays bare the arbitrary and fragile nature of that system.
And that’s why queerness is such a threat to those who benefit from those arbitrary rules.
One of the pillars of that system is the concept of “nuclear family”: a married cisheterosexual couple and their biological children—also cishet, of course. Other family configurations are considered “dysfunctional”, “incomplete” or “not real” and actively punished and discriminated against.
There is no space for queer people in the nuclear family, which too frequently leads to suffering, estrangement, and even abuse and homelessness. Too many young people are kicked out or must leave their ostensible families for being queer.
Family is created, not inherited.
As with almost everything else in life, queer people have had to expand and create their own definition of family. One that goes beyond marriage and biology to be based on love, care, and mutual support. Family is who you care for and who cares for you. Family does not reject you, family embraces you. Family is not blood.
For many queer people family is created, not inherited. “Houses” in the ballroom scene are a good example of this. For decades, queer people have found and taken care of each other; weaving, sewing together, and mending the patchwork quilt that is our community.
Visibility and representation matters.
Seeing examples of queer and non-normative families in media matters. Families that are friends or roommates, more than two people, romantic but not sexual, trans-generational … Non-normative families are underrepresented and misrepresented in traditional media, where the nuclear family is still presented as the default, preferable option, even for queer characters. We need to see diverse families that go beyond the acceptable white, cis, gay married couple with a cute adopted child.
Media shapes individual and societal perceptions of the real world. Positive portrayals of queer and non-normative families in media can help people in difficult situations find hope and encourage them to seek and build their own chosen families. Similarly, positive portrayals of queer and non-normative families can protect those kinds families in the real world against a system determined to smear and erase them.
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