What I LOVE about being QUEER

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

What I LOVE about being QUEER - Youth Edition. (Made by STARS)

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

-Anonymous (Owen Sound, Canada)

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

What I love about being queer

living how you want

Oh mama in this stillest corner mine your heart listening to resonance of organ beat bone blood blood memory Hopes pumped over and over pumped over and over hopes pumped over and over body cycles round trip fares on a journey always trying to get it right

constant rush and pressure it's amazing how our bodies fare

resilient rib cage of mine still attached still intact still takes the physical always used to the beating of hearts used to holding it all together

pulsing this blood memory is a gift of lives lived for us who hold on so tightly to memoryimaginationmemory rippling every which where we look within ripples of time

Right now in present I love that I can affirm you and I promise I will love your queer as private or as public as you want

actively choosing choosing always always actively actively choosing

receiving forgiving for ever giving within here

Here it's in this place of love that I learned to let my mama know I see her

mama I see you found you amongst mountains of expectations decoded you amongst assumptions of normal realised my femme footstrides and streams of glitter were trails I left for you in plain english phone calls from far away places gave you your memory gave your imagination something tangible

mama do you smile when you hear my words over the phone when I tell you every ounce of queer that I dance with

in life

in show

Here showing my mama queer doesn't always mean elusive doesn't always mean giving up doesn't always lead to the shadow of a life you look for in the burnt ashes of prayer

mama love it's was then love it's yet to come love it's here love again mama you are why I conjure why I appreciate why I cherish why I love being queer

Gein Wong (Toronto, ON)

Written a thousand miles apart in separate cities, the night my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer but didn't immediately tell me. 

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT BEING QUEER IS A LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST!

Huge thank you to all of YOU who have contributed to this project. This truly wouldn't be possible without all of your beautiful words!

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

WILABQ UK Screening

"What I LOVE about being QUEER" is screening @ Queer Media Festival (UK) this weekend!

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

What I love about being queer: 

Being intentional about my gender and sexual identity

Believing in magic and watching it happen

Being intentional about creating community and having a chosen family

Realizing that femme was a thing and that I am femme (so that's the reason I wanted to wear a dress everyday when I was 5)

Knowing that I don't know everything and learning, growing and sharing all the time through conferences, gatherings, workshops, performances 

Trying to be inclusive of everyone (those with (dis)abilities, those who are underemployed, those who have children) in our events and planning (we are working on this and there is a lot of work to be done, but the work has started)

Partying with sexy people (Queers know how to party!)

Finding and being with my love (she is amazing!)

Being my loud, quirky, high femme self and finding a group of people who love me as I am

Conversations that open my mind and heart

Femmes!

Butches and Genderqueer folks too!

Constantly challenging and questioning the status quo

Knowing body hair is a choice

-Sedina Fiati (Toronto)

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

What I love about being queer is that I can dissolve myths and stereotypes about what a girl who likes girls looks like, sounds like and behaves like. I love that I can educate people on queer issues and I love that I will always have that story, that thing that makes me different and interesting. I love that being queer taught me invaluable lessons about myself and the world and its people. 

-Kate (Tasmania, Australia)

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

<3 Queersilver & Ira Briones - PHILIPPINES <3

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

What I love about being queer is people ask me real and honest questions they have about the way I live and love. Most people might find it offensive, but I sincerely enjoy educating them! Also; Females. I mean just wow! With love, Hedwig Elektra Spindler, 19 years old, Stockholm, Sweden.

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

What I love about being queer is evolution. The spaces we hang out in, the people we meet, our lovers, our sex, our souls, our visibility. Forever evolving. I recently went on a trip and met a younger queer from the QPOC community in New York. The laughs, the knowledge, and huge plate of dumplings shared made me realized that we're moving in the right direction. There's nothing more inspiring than hearing someone much younger than me discussing safe space, sex positivity, and creating more events and parties for queers of colour with a passion and dedication as he did. 

Being queer means I can watch my younger brothers in the community pave their own lane. Drive their diversity, passion, and creativity into projects and spaces that educate and help the ones that'll come next. 

The sex is good because queers are bosses. We know what we need and respect what our partner needs. With queer sex there's no compromise. We as a unit set the tone, explore each other's mental and physical state, unlock doors that are kinky and taboo. It's pretty unreal and I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything else. 

-Max (Toronto, ON)

[umistakeme-forstraight-deactiva]

My opinion on the “Born This Way” debate… everyone is entitled to their own opinion—this is mine!

I also talk about Vivek Shraya’s new book “What I Love About Being Queer”

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

What I LOVE about being QUEER featured in ELLE Magazine - MUMBAI. December 2013.

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

"We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality…an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future. The future is queerness’ domain. Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see the future beyond the quagmire of the present. The here and now is a prison house. We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of the moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds … Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.”

- José Esteban Muñoz - Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (via Alok Vaid-Menon)

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

What I LOVE about being queer is constantly finding joy and exuberance in the journey of learning that my hued skin, spirituality, sexuality, politicks and values are not contradictory, but harmonious in the community I have within myself. 

Also, I can fully appreciate Beyonce's Get Me Bodied (extended mix).

-Rafay Agha (Toronto, ON)

[whatiloveaboutbeingqueer]

WILABQ @ Unity Conference (Toronto, November 2013). 

Unity Conference is a one-day gathering of LGBTQ2S youth and their allies belonging to or interested in creating GSA's and other equity groups. Its goal is to support youth and educators in the creation of safe spaces in high schools through education, advocacy and community building.

[teganandsara]

Vivek Shraya is MY superhero and has the best laugh on planet earth. Check out his wonderful book.