what is queerness?

As writer and activist Shon Faye puts it, “Queer is about removing labels and replacing them with a question. It is a side eye and a challenge back to mainstream society and politics. It says, ‘I don’t know the answer, but why are you asking the question?’”

Kissing is the ultimate act of estrangement, queer in the stretchy sense of “strange” that many queers prefer to distinctions between straight and gay.

As poet Brandon Wint wrote in a much-quoted social media post several years ago, “Not queer like gay; queer like escaping definition. Queer like some sort of fluidity and limitlessness all at once. Queer like a freedom too strange to be conquered. Queer like the fearlessness to imagine what love can look like, and to pursue it.”