Whiskers on Kittens // 2
The queer things we’ve been up to and into
We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.
~Audre Lorde1
Neptune Frost co-directed by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman. We lost ourselves in this beautiful Black queer anti-colonialist and anti-capitalist Afrofuturist cyberpunk musical that is poetic, vibrant, and confrontational. Neptune Frost is a vision for nonnormative fluidity and the power of the collective over the individual, a vision that asks us to rebel against and resist the status quo. Watch this visually arresting and sonically enveloping film to witness how queer art can open us all to worlds of possibility.
Hideous by Yann Gonzalez. In our first Roundtable chat, we dive into why we both loved Knife+Heart with our comrade May Santiago. So, now we are on a bit of a Yann Gonzalez kick, which lead us to multiple viewings of Hideous, a queer horror music collaboration between The xx’s Oliver Sim and Yann. These short films along with Oliver’s haunting songs speak to the monsters, both real and metaphorical, external and internal, that the LGBTQ+ community survive. Bonus: a glittery cameo from queer icon and singer Jimmy Somerville.
Ses Etme by Athena. We were introduced to this song back in 2016 and keep coming back to it. This video for the band Athena, one-time Turkish representatives for Eurovision, is a bittersweet day-in-the-life portrait of a queer life in Türkiye portrayed by drag performer Cake Mosq. It is both warming and harrowing to witness, showing how the queer community in Türkiye faces violence and lack of safety (or legal protections in employment, housing, and health care), yet is full of queer joy and resistance. The controversial video was banned from airing on TV by RTÜK (the Turkish state’s Radio and Television Supreme Council) and the YouTube comments had to be turned off to stop the flood of hate, yet the nearly 10M views on YT are another signal that we will not be hidden or silenced.
Heather
The Founding Mother of Southern California’s Chicano Drag Scene by Dakota Noot. That feeling when one friend writes an article that not only highlights the work of another friend, but also reveals the importance of contemporary queer artists receiving inspiration from their queer ancestors and elders. Dakota traces the lineage of queer Chicano artists from Southern California starting in the 1960s with Cyclona, Robert Legorreta’s performance persona, and into today with artists such as Christopher Velasco, who was inspired in part by Cyclona to create his drag character Krystal Lake Carrington. These performance artists have challenged and redefined Chicano conventions on gender, identity, and body. Don’t miss the photos at the end of the article.
Halberstam in Interview. Halberstam has long been one of my very favorite thinkers and theorists, so I was thrilled to come across this interview from July 2020 that reminds me why I admire and connect with them. For one, I am an “angry queer,” too. Reading this interview in January 2023 also reminds me how clearly Halberstam sees our society. In the summer of 2020, Halberstam feared, in going back to “normal,” that everyone would feel “confirmed in the very activities and behaviors that created this disaster in the first place”... a truth that illuminates our collective failures and complicity in the ongoing capitalist attempt to return to a “normal” that shouldn’t be.
The Renegades: Butches and Studs from T: The New York Times Style Magazine. The Big Dyke Energy harnessed in this April 2020 video, essay, and photo deserves to be periodically revisited because visibility is power—and seeing this many butches and studs is powerful. For queers of a certain age, there is no queer memory without a sheath of mourning. While I mourn who I could have been had mainstream culture not rendered people like me invisible, I celebrate that young queers can revel in the glorious butch/stud energy and camaraderie on display.
Amie
Want to Understand LGBTQ Life in America? By Lydia Polgreen. A high-profile lesbian journalist, Lydia spent some time in Alabama recently to, as she says, “try to understand the state of queer America today.” Not an easy nor simple task. Not because queer existence is actually that hard to comprehend, but because The Right’s attacks on our freedoms, body autonomy, identities, and mere existence are increasingly visible, virulent, and violent—especially for Black and/or trans* people. There are no tidy answers or easy solutions to what we are facing, but Lydia reminds us, whether we live in Alabama or a coastal state, “Silence equals death.”
Sheet Pan Kimchi Fried Rice by Eric Kim. I really like cooking and baking from good recipes (and ideally not from annoying long-story-ladened and pop-up-heavy mommy blogs), but focusing on just those by queer chefs and bakers has been one of the more challenging aspects of The Queerest Year for me so far (besides the fact that I only have the ability to cook once a week at most)—mostly because I don’t yet know enough of them. I’m working to find more, so please send reccs! Eric Kim is one of the first I’ve honed in on because he has a bunch of recipes in the NYT Cooking app and I love Korean food. I made this recipe this week and am pretty chuffed with how good it turned out, especially considering I had neither gochujang nor kimchi in the fridge, so I made fridge-and-pantry-raid approximations that I am both proud and ashamed of. I’ll get proper ingredients and try it again, but it’s sure to be delicious. I’m eyeballing his Gochujang Caramel Cookies next.
Artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase. Their art is at once erotic and electric, expressive and figurative, soft and hard, beautiful and challenging. I am always captivated by the bodies in their work and the sumptuous worlds they inhabit.
From ‘The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action’ in Sister Outsider, Penguin Books, 2020 (originally published 1984), p. 32.
From the Halberstam interview: "protests have to be equal parts creative (in the way that early Gay Liberation Front zap actions and ACT UP protests were) and they have to channel a clear threat of violence against the status quo in some way" -- YES, exactly. Absent that threat of violence then it's not really a protest is it?
The Butches and Studs article - yay for a boost of BDE! Somewhat related: on my trip, after I visited her, my very favorite 89-year-old aunt wrote in the family WhatsApp chat that "Baby looks more like a man. Oh, sorry, I forgot that she functions as the father in her family, her sons are handsome". For the record, I think she just forgot how I've presented myself for decades now, but it's just a reminder for me that the softest butch appearance can be very queer to Indonesians of her generation.
Lydia Polgreen's article - totally agree with doing away with the meek 'Love is love' and with 'We need to reach into our past as well and remember the time we chanted, “Silence equals death.” And an old favorite, a mantra for all time: “We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.”