Quare/Kuaer/Queer/(E)ntersectionality: An Invitational Rhetoric of Possibility

Abstract

Quare/Kuaer/Queer/(E)ntersectionality: An Invitational Rhetoric of Possibility Amber Johnson I remember the first time someone called me queer. I smiled. Finally, someone recognized that my brain, mind, and desires were different, and accepted me because, not despite, those differences. My queerness may not have been written on my body explicitly back then, but some people saw it, despite my ability to pass… Invitational rhetoric calls for the inviting of the other into the world of the rhetor for the purpose of fostering dialogue, understanding, and possible shared meaning (Foss and Griffin ). Whether the rhetor invites others to share in ideas, perspectives, methodologies, epistemologies, or any category of difference, the goal is to not persuade or influence, but to understand each other. When discussing matters of sexuality and gender, entities as fluid as the water we drink, a space where difference manifests far beyond the essential categories available to avow or ascribe, it imperative that we foster a culture of understanding, engagement, and critical generosity (McCune ). Race, class, gender, and sexuality are complex, pervasive, variable, persistent, severe, and hierarchical systems of oppression (Weber , Yep ). Individuals located at the intersections must negotiate different histories, economic disparities, and sex/gender systems, and experience the violence of racism, sexism, classism, heteronormativity (Yep , 25), and homonormativity. Any type of normativity that privileges certain understandings of lived experiences over others creates an approach to difference that can be problematic, dismissive, and silencing. I want to reduce our reliance on the oppressor's language, troubling the way we talk about sexuality and difference within intercultural communication encounters. If matters of sex are involved, it is almost always intercultural. In this essay I invite you, the reader, to share in my story, my body, and my understanding of queer possibility. I invite you to enter a messy intersection of intr(a)disciplinary difference (performance, autoethnography, critical cultural analysis) where I expose the intersections of my body (black, center of masculine, sometimes feminine, queer, parent of a gender fluid child and a cisgender child) in attempt to problematize the way we talk about sexuality and emphasize the possibility of queering sexual discourse. I am queer. When I tell you about the way my mind perceives sexuality and gender as potential attractions (romantic and platonic), you may be slightly stunned. I am attracted to brain matter. I am attracted to rebellion. I am attracted to the open mind that can craft a radically imaginative, agentic, and inventive way to be sexed and gendered. I remember hearing “O.P.P.” by Naughty by Nature for the first time. I listen to the metaphors, figure out the acronyms: other people's Penises, other people's Pussies, other people's Property. It doesn't resonate. Penises can be tantalizing, beautiful in their erect glory. Pussy is sweet, inviting, open. But for me, the P that I want, that I crave, that I fantasize about most: perspicacity. I crave minds so open, and thoughts so generative that I can walk around, sit for hours, soak in the sex of learning, sharing, and thinking together of new ways to fuck gender. I am attracted to brains. Brain matters. The genitalia the brain sends signals to are merely fun extensions of my fantasy, and not necessarily a part of every fantasy, unless we are fucking the fuck parts into a different existence. Mindfucking to me is real. I fantasize about rubbing against E. Patrick Johnson's frontal lobe in a discussion of quare, or Robert Gutierrez’ occipital lobe during a critical performance of gender outside the confines of the binary. I imagine taking Omi Osun Joni Jones parietal lobe out to lunch, feeding her dark chocolate covered coffee beans sprinkled atop acai and blueberry sorbet with Matcha green Tea for desert because it just sounds gay. I give her brain food, she produces pleasure. I fantasize about massaging Brenda Allen's temporal lobe on a daily basis because Difference Matters, and that is hella queer. Intersectionality, What's So Queer about That? Queer theory's reliance on dominant cultural symbols, or what Adrienne Rich calls the oppressor's language, results in an omission of issues centering on other modes of oppression and...