Words to live by.

Every person who comes to a queer self-understanding knows in one way or another that her stigmatization is connected with gender, the family, notions of individual freedom, the state, public speech, consumption and desire, nature and culture, maturation, reproductive politics, racial and national fantasy, class identity, truth and trust, censorship, intimate life and social display, terror and violence, health care, and deep cultural norms about the bearing of the body. Being queer means fighting about these issues all of the time, locally and piecemeal, but always with consequences. It means being able, more or less articulately, to challenge the common understanding of what gender difference means, or what the state is for, or what “health” entails, or what would define fairness, or what a good relation to the planet’s environment would be. Queers do a kind of practical social reflection just in finding ways of being queer.

                                                                                                                 ---Michael Warner

Warner, Michael. Introduction. Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory. By Social Text Collective. Cultural Politics Vol.6. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1993. vii – xxxi.