A Noticeable Bend
Acceptance for the idea of queerdom is growing but largely at the expense of culture that used to define the queer. Queerdom is absorbed and neutered so as to be made safe and palatable. The palatability is frequently focused on a renewed identity that is at odds with our learned behaviors and expectations. Pulling from personal experience I address masculinity as it relates to queerdom and what it means to be a “boy” in the United States. Boys are raised in an environment that promotes this alternate mode of relating to the world that mimics both the queer and the heteronormative while still propagating masculinity as the default and binary expressions desired for interfacing with the world.