I love Love how many folx are flirting with an individual and collective queering of intimacy, sexuality, relationship.
We’ve been snookered - I mean SNooOoooOoKereD!!!- into believing in allonormativity and amatonormativity (the ideas respectively that all people are and should be sexual + romantic and that all people are better off in exclusive, monogamous, romantic-sexual relationships, and that everyone is seeking such relationships).
Constantly undone and licked clean by the layers upon layers of unlearning I do writing this blog, the last three months have offered an extra dose of opportunity to look at what I’ve bought into- especially related to sexuality and romance.
Similar to trashE wisdom (inspired by Lama Rod Owens naming white supremacy’s rigidity), I’ve been playing with new colors, words, flavors using the aspec umbrella and a poetics of wrongness. Author Rachel Zucker’s book examines her belief ‘that being wrong is not the opposite of right; instead, it is an act of opposition itself, a seating of oneself at a table piled with so many "wrongs" that questioning the idea of "right" becomes inevitable’.
Asked to creatively, erotically, and professionally return to themes of how normative sexuality is embedded everywhere within patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism, I admit my narrow understandings (the humility in being snookered!) of sex, romance, and sexuality force me into relationships that are one dimensional. I, like every humanoid, find myself with a slightly different social order and cultural expectations than the next person. However, to be queer and to queer is powerful. Especially related to sex and romance. Queering aka de-snookering equals ccontantly dissecting and critically reading the motivations behind social structures that are common, broad, and harmful.
Audre Lorde writes, “The Erotic is so feared and relegated to the bedroom alone because once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives/loves, we begin to demand from ourselves and our life/love pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of.”
I’m turning “this-is-how-we-do-it” on its head thanks to badAss young creatives using an aspec (folx on the asexual and aromantic spectrum) framework. Under this umbrella of brilliance, we’re challenging normativity aka “the fakeness" behind the rituals of allonormative dating + sex and finally - Loudly - identifying them as constructs (hooHa ideas made up by humans with Lots of power (historically cis white men) to maintain the status quo). Also humbling, how eventually/easily these constructs became hard and fast rules, imposed by society on us all, that I’ve followed! Rules that impact me on the daily and limit how we build relationship and engage definitions + practices of intimacy.
As I engage with my new aspec lens and continue to identify and dismantle systems that oppress, I’ll be writing more here. I’ve just gotten started. To doing good work y’all. To doing good work!