Interestingly, the author of this book is a friend of Nguyen Thanh Viet, who won the Pulitzer with his novel The Sympathizer, and Fan Popo, a Chinese filmmaker whom I followed.
This book criticized the stigma against Asian “bottomhood” (coined by the author) in American queer culture in the 90s, shed light on the interwoven problems of race, gender and sexual preferences among gay community in…
Đọc cuốn Homos (1996) của Leo Bersani, Harvard University Press
Thời của Bersani có một sự phân chia rạch ròi đồng tính và dị tính. “Homosexual” lúc bấy giờ là một khái niệm có thể khiến nhiều tín đồ Công giáo thuần thành kinh tởm. Những gã trai thẳng ủng hộ quyền của người đồng tính thì lại ngại bị người ta hiểu nhầm mình cũng là gay. Những người gay kín thì rất sợ bị lộ.
“Don’t,” Peggy said, “Don’t. I’m going to kill them all.”
(~550 words, which are...a fight scene?)
Elisabeth sliced her cutlass across the belly of one man, slammed the hilt into the face of another, kicked him backwards onto Jones’s boarding axe and spun away just as the blood began to gush from his mouth. Pushed for a moment outside the heaving, grunting confusion of bodies, she swiped hair out of her eyes, then braced herself as another raider came at her and their blades met with a jarring clash that left her staggering on the rotten footing of the dunes. Someone was shrieking, high-pitched and furious, audible even over her panting and the shouts and tumult of the fighting.
And then at last the raiders broke, ran for their longboats with the wounded pulled stumbling behind, and rowed out beyond the breakers towards the waiting ship. “Captain?” asked one of her men. “Leave it,” she said. Without boats, what could they do? Little McAirlie bent cursing over the gory slash on her thigh. Ivarsson was down, and Faircroft, prone at the water’s edge with the surf washing pink-foamed around his shoulders.
Peggy had a smear of ash across her cheek, skirt torn and her left sleeve fluttering raggedly, the small knife in her hand bloodied to its silver hilt. Elisabeth let her cutlass fall to the sand and pulled her close. “Don’t,” Peggy said, “Don’t. I’m going to kill them all.”
“You can’t; they’ve gone,” Elisabeth said. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” She allowed herself to be led some distance away from the churned-up, bloody ground, to sit on the clean, hard-packed sand. One of Elisabeth’s men walked by them, a small, shawl-wrapped bundle in his arms. Terrible wailing rose from the villagers clustered by their smouldering cottages. “I can, though,” Peggy said. “Watch.” She slowly reached out her hand towards the retreating ship, and the air around them grew menacingly heavy, so thick with magic that Elisabeth thought it must have been visible to anyone watching them. She felt a wrenching, stomach-dropping lurch, once, and again, and again, and again, until at last Peggy looked away and hid her clenched fist in her skirts. “There,” she said, “it’s done.”
The hair on Elisabeth’s arms stood on end. “You killed them?” she whispered. “Just like that?”
“I stopped their hearts,” Peggy said.
“If you can…why did you ever need me?”
“I didn’t tell them,” she said dully. “I didn’t want to be an executioner. And what good are my scruples? They didn’t save that child, or your Mr. Faircroft. I’ll do it now. No one will land on this shore without my leave. They’ll all learn to hate me, and you to fear me, and soon enough you’ll hate me, too.” She spoke faster and faster, and drew away as she spoke, pulled her skirt close around her knees, and sat looking out to sea, a huddled, miserable figure, with the soot standing out oily black on her bloodless face.
“I won’t,” said Elisabeth.
“You will, but thank you. I know you mean to lie kindly.”
“We won’t tell them. We’ll do something else. Peggy-” Elisabeth reached for her, meaning to wipe the soot from her cheek, but Peggy ducked her head petulantly away. “Leave it,” she said. “I don’t want to be looked after right now.”
“No other captain will sail with her,” the Chamberlain had said, “but I am certain you will be obliging.” And so the sorceress came aboard her own Cygnet without ceremony, passenger and baggage swung up so quickly that the pilot’s cutter was pulling rapidly away before Elisabeth had set her pen aside and gone above to welcome her.
The sorceress was shaking out her crumpled skirts on the main deck, surrounded by chests and boxes and a canary fluttering in its wicker cage. The crew watched her warily from a distance of several paces, while they pretended instead to pay close attention to nearby ropes or the direction of the wind or the ship’s cat perched on the rail or any of half a dozen other unnecessary occupations.
“It cheers me to hear him,” she said, seeing Elisabeth’s wary look at the bird. “Did you think I meant to enchant - oh, goodness, no! I only cast my spells on the willing.” She beamed, a roundly bird-like creature herself: brown-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked as a china shepherdess. “We’ll share your quarters, I presume? I wouldn’t wish to turn you out of your own bed.”
Elisabeth had agreed to be enchanted, but she refused to be charmed: not by the sorceress’s smile, nor the well-turned ankles she’d revealed in setting her clothes to rights. She took up the birdcage and offered her arm. “This way please, my lady.”
“Margaret, please,” she said, giving Elisabeth’s elbow a confiding squeeze. “Or Peggy, if we’re friends.”
“Madam,” Elisabeth said, and led her into the cabin.
The canary’s name was Ambrose.
Throughout the afternoon the sorceress chattered and bustled around the great room, supervising the delivery of her trunks and the arrangement of a second bed, draping a piece of grey silk over the pier glass, whistling - Elisabeth winced - to Ambrose perched on her fingertip. Elisabeth looked over her charts and ignored her. With the fleet away south beyond recall, the eastern coast was vulnerable. If she were in command, she’d harry the fishing villages and set her forces to gain a foothold against the defenses at Heston on Marenwash and the open roads to the west.
Settling at last with teacup in hand the sorceress turned her attention to Elisabeth and stared at her without speaking until she lost her patience and stared rudely back.
“Let me see if I have you to rights,” the sorceress said. “Elisabeth Katharine Lukasdottir, merchant’s child, a respectable family, not politically connected, careful with their funds and their ships. At sea since you were eight and captain on your own merits by twenty-two. Noticed by the government after your work in the western islands, your reputation secured by six raids against shipping out of the port at Colward. Feted around the dockyards for your skill and your bonny brown eyes, and now commissioned to be at my service, but you don’t play the gallant, do you?” She looked serious, the flirtatious pose set aside.
“Madam, was it required,” Elisabeth said. Twilight had fallen, only dim light shining in from the gallery windows. The canary was asleep.
“No, only, it might help if I could like you just a little. As you might like me.”
Elisabeth thought of the other captains who would have been asked before the council turned to her: Lacey, red-nosed with drink. Hasse, striking a boy, off-duty, for dozing in his sight. Arnaud, pleasant enough, devoted to his wife. What she could see of the sorceress’s - Margaret’s - expression seemed pleading. She nodded. “I don’t...dislike you,” she said.
Margaret smiled, more gently. “It will have to do,” she said, and set aside her cup, locked the door and came back to stand behind Elisabeth, resting her hands on her shoulders.“You’ve been at your charts for hours. Are you resolute? Do you understand what I will ask of you when you work this spell with me?” she asked.
“Yes, my lady,” Elisabeth said. She was not ready, but she was prepared, and since she had agreed for love and duty she could give no other answer.
“Then let us begin. Close your eyes, and think of a barrier, anchored all along the coast, letting us pass through but keeping out anyone who ought not to pass it,” Margaret said, and in her mind’s eye Elisabeth saw all the ocean - cape to harbor to rivermouth, all the cliffs and currents of the country pulled from her memory. As she pictured each anchorage, it began to glow as if a shining net had been cast over it, and Elisabeth felt a strange tugging at her heart, as if the line played out of her own breast. “Good. Oh, that’s just marvelous, you’ll do my work for me. On maps the coast is fixed, but for you it breathes, doesn’t it? Elisabeth. Breathe.”
Margaret’s voice was urgent, no longer the dreamy wandering murmur Elisabeth had been chasing. Elisabeth gasped, choked, and the glimmering scene vanished. The blood roared in her ears as she dropped her head between her knees, shivering when Margaret put one cool hand to the back of her neck and rubbed her fingertips gently through the base of her sweat-soaked braid.
After a time Margaret spoke. “Do you often forget yourself during this sort of work?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried - I’m sorry,” Elisabeth said. She lifted her head tentatively, and then sat up, Margaret’s hand still resting comfortingly on the clammy linen between her shoulder blades.
“Oh, darling, don’t be. I ought to have realized - if you’d been practiced at it, I’d never have allowed myself to miss a mind like yours. Tell me, what did they promise you for this service?”
“Any prize I wished to pursue,” Elisabeth said hoarsely, staring into the darkness. “That any door he knocked at would be opened for my brother. That I could endure it.”
Margaret stooped beside her with a rustle of lavender-scented skirts, arm thrown around her shoulders in a bracingly friendly embrace. “You shall have it, and he shall have it, and I promise you, you can do much more than endure.” Her breath on Elisabeth’s ear made her shiver again, and Elisabeth thought that she could easily turn into Margaret’s touch in the darkness, catch the words as they escaped her lips -
“Let’s have a bit more light, shall we?”
“Mind sparks,” Elisabeth said automatically, only to blink as Margaret blew a kiss toward the lamp and it flared to life. The canary woke and chirped. “Convenient, don’t you think?” said Margaret. “Now, look at the flame. I shall pull the hassock up here just beside you, where I can see your face. Look at the flame, and feel my hand on yours, and breathe.”
The lamp swayed gently back and forth on its brass chains. Elisabeth watched its path, and thought about turning over her hand to clasp Margaret’s. She wore no rings - no jewelry at all, that Elisabeth had seen, even the combs in her hair plain horn. Everything had grown quiet around them, as if they were aboard a phantom and not a working ship at all, and Elisabeth felt as though given the slightest urging she could fly up from her seat, up and aloft to look out from the highest masthead at the ever-changing sea. “That’s lovely,” Margaret said, “You’re lovely - such things I could teach you.”
Elisabeth made a small noise in her throat, and let the muscles of her shoulders relax.
“Oh, you enjoy a compliment; that’s three more things I know about you, then,” Margaret said.
“Only one,” Elisabeth said. The chair’s carved wing supported her head so securely, now that she had let her weight fall back against it, and Margaret’s hand was soft and sure on her own. “Tch. Three. First, you are lovely, darling; don’t contradict.” Elisabeth felt her lips twitch. “And you like it when I tell you so. And third, you know the shape of these shores better than anyone else they could have sent me. Would you like to try again?” And at Elisabeth’s nod, she said, “Good. Close your eyes, and this time think of the harbor we’re in now-”
“It’s Clearhaven Bay,” Elisabeth said.
“-the bay we’re in now, and then slowly pull your mind away, as if we were sailing north down the coast-”
“Up.”
“-up the coast, then, and you’ve sailed by every league of it, haven’t you? Don’t do anything more, just lead us along and show me the land as we go by.” Elisabeth imagined how the Cygnet would slip out with the tide, rounding the headland and carrying them along past the furzy bluffs spooling away to larboard, while she listened for the distant ringing of church bells and watched for the girls who sometimes ran down to the shore to wave their scarves to passing ships. Distantly, she thought she heard Margaret laugh to see them.
“That’s enough for tonight,” Margaret said at last.
Nothing had glowed in her vision or tugged at her breath, but she found when she opened her eyes that her head spun and her sight was fuzzy with exhaustion. “Did it work?” she asked, almost beyond caring, save that Margaret would be disappointed if they were forced to make a third attempt.
“Beautifully. Everything from here north to Leaftonness, secure as houses. I’ll show you tomorrow. Now. Sip of wine, glass of water, boots off, and into bed with you,” she said briskly, turning down the blankets as she spoke, and pulling at Elisabeth’s boots herself when her fingers proved too clumsy. Elisabeth watched dreamily as she slipped out of her bodice and pulled the combs from her hair, realizing that Margaret intended to ignore her own bed only when she turned down the lamp and shouldered in beside her with a few soft jabs of her elbows. “Shift over,” she ordered, “with all I’ve heard about sailors, I’d have thought you’d do better at two to a bunk.”
“Not so many clothes, usually,” Elisabeth mumbled, but she obediently gathered Margaret closer, right arm light around her waist, heads side by side on the pillow. “Smells nice, though.”
“Stop talking, darling,” Peggy said. “You’ll make yourself blush in the morning.”
to change and manipulate the normative structure, identity etc.
see also: to change, shape, form
people who use it in this way: mostly queer theorists, anyone who is currently or has studied queer theory for any amount of time, WGST professors, theorists, and students.
Nadja: When I started studying Queer Theories, i fell in love with queer as a verb. Like many of my friends, who have reclaimed queer as an identity and something positive to associate ourselves with, I too identify as queer. I think the biggest limit to using queer as a verb is the connotation that queer always has to be associated with gayness. Donald Hall says that he wants to queer us. And that “the fear is always that the “queer” noun will take on a transitive verb from, will spread its queerness, convert others, awaken discontent, and undermine the system.” I agree with this statement. People aren’t afraid of LGBTQIA+ people, they hate nonconformity, they hate challenges to the system and they hate that the power of the slur being weakened against us. Like the other members of this group, I think that the most commonly known definition of the word queer is the slur, with the reclaimed identity very close behind it. However it’s very difficult to reclaim a word that has been used against you, women have tried to do it with bitch, slut, cunt etc. but they’re still being used in derrogatory ways against women, and against people who don’t identify as women as something you don’t want to be. We can reclaim these terms all we want, but we cant erase the history behind them as much as we want to.
People who use it this way are writers, usually before the 19th century (when it became a slur).
Taylor: I know that I’ve always been strange. I’m a lesbian, I collect trinkets like snow globes and thimbles, I dress like this.Meg-John Barker wrote “in the 16th century English speaking countries, referred to something strange or illegitimate as queer. Like ‘there’s nowt as queer as folk.’” there’s even evidence of this usage in American phrasing “‘queer as a three dollar bill.’ from a similar time, suggesting odd and suspicious.” Nowadays people don’t think of the original meaning of strange when they hear the word queer. It's become a word that’s drenched in hatred and oppression. I think if we could separate certain meanings from the word it would be possible to use it in this way, but there's no way to separate the connotation from it anymore. It will take a lot of time and effort to strip away the power the slur had, and still has to this day.
