“Why are these queer spaces so sexual? We need places for queer youth like bookclubs.”
Hold up a sec. Who says all queer youths want that? Who says all queer youths need that?
You know what a lot of young queer kids have? Sexual feelings and desires.
And you know what helps them give those desires a safe and comfortable place in their lives as they grow up? Learning that their queer sexual feelings and desires are not shameful. Seeing sexuality celebrated. Having open conversations about sexuality.
You know what does NOT help those queer youths give those desires a safe and comfortable place in their lives as they grow up? Your ‘think of the children’ LGBT bookclub where saying ‘fuck’ means putting a dollar in the swear box.
Yes, we need diverse queer spaces for people of all kinds. We need spaces that feel comfortable for queer youths that don’t want to be sexual at this point in their lives and who never want to have sex.
And yes, sexual queer spaces sometimes have problems.
There are big consent problems in a lot of gay clubs and queer communities invested in proving how ‘not like the evil outside’ they are often spend a lot of time hiding and protecting the bad people in their spaces. We need to deal with that, we need way better conversations about consent.
But the answer to that is more openness and less shame about our sex lives. And the answer to safer queer youths who can assert their own boundaries is allowing queer youths to feel good about their sexuality, not to hide it as if queer love is okay but queer sexuality is something nasty.
Queer youths don’t need your ‘think of the children’ shit. They don’t even need your puritanism in their bookclubs. They need to feel good about who they are, sexual feelings and all. They need access to safe shame-free nonsexual AND safe shame-free sexual spaces.
QueerAnarchism 