Queer joy is stronger than the f*ckery of American fascism
A great party is a political strategy, and why I think we can win.
What creeps me out most about this political moment is the ecstatic revelry of the American fascist movement. A Trump rally is like a cross between a religious revival and a really raucous party. These people are part of a movement that excites them. Their ecstasy is feverish. In the alchemy of their shared cultural spaces, their malice becomes something to be celebrated, rather than awkwardly hidden from polite company. They seem to experience malevolence as a purifying force. That level of righteous fuckery must feel exhilarating. The populist wave roaring in their ears, they rush headlong into a berserk future they are collaboratively summoning into existence, the orange demagogue a dazzling beach mirage sparkling in the sun.
Of course, to the rest of us, that future is a nightmare of violence and erasure. It represents an existential threat to our way of life, our bodily autonomy, self-determination, and safety; our access to basic sustenance, medical care, legal protection; a repudiation of our most deeply held values and our right to exist at all.
The hate-fueled populist movement is like a great wave rising and crashing through the culture. Arguing with these people—or even just having to hear their poisonous doublespeak—is like being pulled into the disorienting swirl of deep water. There can be a visceral feeling of being caught and dragged down in the undertow. A feeling of helplessness. Of moving against a frenzied collective energy. Of not being able to get your bearings.
Jean-Paul Sartre and Judith Butler don’t want you to feed the trolls
There’s a reason fascist doubletalk is disorienting. It is folly to argue with the fascists on their own terms because you can’t really argue with individuals who aren’t acting in good faith. One of the defining traits of fascist discourse is that it plays fast and loose and inconsistent with reality. Jean-Paul Sartre explains fascist rhetorical strategies in a 1944 essay on the Nazis written in the wake of World War II:
Never believe that [fascists] are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
Judith Butler makes the same argument about the present-day “gender critical” discourse:
The anti-gender movement is not a conservative position with a clear set of principles. No, as a fascist trend, it mobilizes a range of rhetorical strategies from across the political spectrum to maximize the fear of infiltration and destruction that comes from a diverse set of economic and social forces. It does not strive for consistency, for its incoherence is part of its power.
That’s why arguing with those people makes you feel like you’re drowning: Their arguments are inconsistent and specious by design. There actually isn’t anything to hold onto. Rhetoric, to fascists, is a convenient tool with which to batter and disorient; arguments are tools of convenience, and can be discarded and picked back up at will. The project is one of mass gaslighting and manipulation.
Who has the energy to push back against that? Who can answer that kind of malice with good faith? In the presence of empty rhetoric and religious, celebratory fervor, of course we feel helpless, of course there’s a tendency to want to shut down, tune out. Dissociate or numb out.
I want to propose that, rather than trying to engage these people on their terms, it’s more effective turn away from the populist dark magic and toward our own, more powerful magic: the ability to dream the queer futures into being in the present.
Queer futurism in the actual 90s
It was the 90s. I was 16 years old. My girlfriend S. and I were co-presidents of our school’s new Gay Straight Alliance (GSA)—an organization that officially consisted entirely of straight allies, since the only out lesbian at school was bullied into transferring the previous year. Queerness hadn’t yet entered our mainstream, even in the liberal area where I grew up. But, squinting hard, we saw glimmers of it everywhere, lurking just out of sight. We hoarded those glimmers. I remember learning what bisexual meant from an interview with Michael Stipe in Rolling Stone magazine and thinking OH MY GOD THAT’S ALLOWED?? I remember trading pirated VHS copies of films that modeled new ways to be in relationship, blowing our teenage minds wide open. Bound, the Wachowski’s campy 1996 lesbian heist drama featuring hard femme fatale Jennifer Tilly and butch force of nature Gina Gershon. Go Fish, Rose Troche’s sweet 1994 indie romance about girls in backwards caps and Birkenstocks finding awkward, adorable love.
We organized a school trip to the nearest urban Pride parade in June of that year. I told my parents I was spending the day at a friend’s house. Late morning, the GSA students piled into one of the school’s dusty white vans with our faculty advisor and drove as close to the parade route as we could get.
There was electricity in the air. We parked the van and fell into step among the most colorful, joyous procession of people I had ever seen. People in fabulous costumes, alive with energy and laughter, moving toward the parade route, the epicenter of the best party I had ever been to. I had never seen a drag queen in person before; with their makeup artistry and fabulous showgirl outfits, confidence and poise, drawling “bitch” and “giiiiirl.” Women wearing Birkenstocks and Save the Earth tees, who gave no fucks what patriarchy said about how they should cut their hair, holding hands, casually kissing under flapping purple triangle banners in the blinding sunlight, butches and femmes topless except for x’s of electrical tape, leatherfolk roaring by on motorcycles, vests and chaps flapping in the wind, shirtless boys gogo dancing on floats, androgyny, mullets, the smell of sunscreen, and rainbows, rainbows everywhere! I’d never seen anything like this crowd, this energy, this level of freedom, queer joy and aliveness.
Love seemed to permeate the air. This giddy, wholesome, gorgeous feeling of liberated energy, as if something repressed had been let out at last, and the feeling was heady and ecstatic. I felt nourished, like a plant in high summer, as if I were absorbing the fabulous vibe of the event through my pores. I felt so high. I was radiant, smiling so hard my face hurt, and everyone was smiling at me. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so euphoric. And afterwards, I was different, because I knew a different world was possible.
Incubating liberated futures: pride as a political strategy
There’s a reason the right is obsessed with shutting down pride parades and drag queen story hours. These events overflow with contagious joy. And the power of queer joy cannot be overstated. The distorted right-wing accusations of “grooming” and “ideology” mask the very real magnetism of queer spaces. Queer joy invites everyone in attendance to imagine radical new futures for ourselves and our culture. The fascists know enough to fear our joy for the fully functioning nuclear reactor it is.
The parade was a gestational space. In retrospect, my own queer future could not have existed without such queer events and spaces. The parade nourished a sense of freedom, possibility, and solidarity that is alive in the present, now, today, in me and in the culture around me, because of the magic that was woven there. Even in times of great repression, queer spaces have been alchemical powerhouses where possibility was modeled and explored, and new cultural forms were nurtured into being.
In short, I think we can win because our parties are better than theirs. By scores and fathoms and orders of magnitude. Maybe I’m naive, but that’s what I believe. I think the best thing we can do is stop letting the fascists set the terms of the debate and start making the political field a ballroom. We need to double down on joy as a political strategy. If we could get more folks out to drag queen story hours, if we lean into that experience of joy, I think we have a better shot transforming the cultural and political landscape in our image.
We throw a much better party
Right now so many people around me are experiencing paralysis and helplessness. Especially in the face of the hypnotic, feverish energy of the dark Trump occultists at their weird hate-fueled revivals. Trump’s culty, ranty megachurch rallies are like the dark mirror of a really good night at the disco. There is such temptation to wither before that energy. To dissociate. But, frankly, we throw a much better party than they do. All they have is hate. We have love. It seems like a cliche, but hey, where do you think most people would rather be? What’s more, every marginalized people have their form of pride. Every culture has sources of identity and joy. Let’s tap into that as a source of strength and magnetism.
I guess what I’m trying to do with this writing, for myself, and maybe for you, is to recall my own form of magic. To move toward solidarity and liberation. To remember that there is unbelievable power there, and that from the soft darkness of those gestational spaces we have already changed the world. A great antidote to despair and paralysis is to go to a drag show or put on a disco album. To find and celebrate community, to gestate queer futures, to remember what is possible.
Last night I had a vision of a disco in the sky
I saw angels and saints dancing together, like a mystical dream inside of my mind, but I remembered to move, I remembered that groove
I remember the thump of the bass and the pump of the kick
Because my heart was almost out my body and I felt free, I felt joy, I felt things I never thought I'd feel before
It was deep, it was soulful, it was techno, it was disco
A kaleidoscope of sounds, it was truly underground
It was an essential mix in the clouds, where we could dance and sing out loud, and everybody loved everybody else
There was no hurt, there was no sorrow, there was no pain
And like children we danced and we laughed, and we played without a care in the world
Without a flicker of despair, it was all about house music
It was that thing that we shared
A tribal feast of rhythm, a ceremony of sound in my mind
I must have went to house heaven…because nothing's that divine.-Jamie Antonelli, “Divine” (Source.)
Party in the comments
Do you have a story of queer joy? Post it in the comments! (And if you’re comfortable, check “post as note” to spread the love.) Let’s inspire each other!
Happy and excited to share a queer future with you, and existing in this queer present. <3
my past is filled with queer joy stories.
my first gf in NYC and I used to go to a bar that was in the basement of a bar that was all oak and hanging plants. the basement was mirrors and chrome and black walls with a dj booth close to the ceiling. we'd dance and laugh and slow dance and hold hands and kiss! (because holding hands and kissing in public was not something you did in 1982 NYC.)
once, one of the execs of the company I was a receptionist for was there with his boyfriend. we all climbed into his limo and bar-hopped in queer NYC, and after that, work felt like a safer place. (after he got over the fact that I had a gf in the first place - we were shocked to see each other.)
more than once my gf and I left a bar where Stormé DeLarvarie was bouncing. she'd talk to us for a few minutes and then she watched us walk down the street and it felt like we had an auntie who was trying to keep us safe and tell us there was room for us in the world.