In Caleb Luna’s Queer Nightlife, “Introduction,” & “Jockstraps and Croptops,” he introduces the readers to the politics that are involved in queer night time clubs that one may have thought were abandoned due to their common queer identity, emphasizing how even minority LGBTQIA+ members are unable to find acceptance in their own communities sometimes. He also introduced the idea that queer nightlife isn’t limited to the club and traditional spaces but also found in parks, streets, online, etc. In the 3rd chapter, fatness and queerness are explored as minority identities, both together and alone, especially in stores where money isn’t an available method to let you in.
In the introduction, one’s femininity/ women identity serves as a barrier to accessing queer nightlife. Instead of the rumination free zone and accepting place one might expect it to be, one of the women- identifying LGBTQIA+ researchers experiences prove the scene otherwise. Although she is let in, she is missing a part of the experience, namely being patted down and actually having someone pay attention to her within these spaces, showing how entrance isn’t the same thing as acceptance. The discrimination and deciding who gets to be a part of queer nightlife begins at the door to the clubs where gay man dominated spaces exclude other identities.
In the 3rd chapter, a queer individual criticizes the fashion world for their lack of clothing possibilities for fat people and within that category, fat queers who don’t dress in basic normative styles in which the barely available clothes do come in. Thin bodies are given privileges that fat bodies aren’t which also include access to stores where they can find clothes that do match their aesthetics and allow them to express their identities, even queer ones although it is harder, using clothes.
These texts combine the queer identity with another marginalized identity, exploring how one identity may dominate another in different settings, not by choice, but in the eyes of the outside world and other individuals who don’t share both identities as them. This issue reminds me of the documentary we saw in class, Flag Wars, where people who were both queer and black long term residents, were not featured. The issues stemmed from two opposing sides, showing how two parts of a person’s identity were welcoming of only one side of them, making it difficult to imagine where they would have stood on the issues.
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