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Queerness is not a monolith
This section is not directly backed up by any scholarship or research but covers my own understanding of Queerness through my experiences within the community, my own identity, and the scholarship/research I have engaged with throughout my education. I touch on this in a lot of my work as well as the synthesis of my work in the following tabs, but Queerness as an identity and a community is filled with unending complexity and nuance, many folx have very different experiences holding any number of queer identities which can provide further nuance to intersectional approaches to research, life, and everything.
As I have mentioned before I identify as Queer and use they/them/theirs pronouns, I experience fluidity in my gender expression as well as my sexual orientation, and while there are terms for this I choose to identify solely as queer as that is what feels comfortable for me. Also, while I use different pronouns and experience gender differently than what I was assigned at birth, I do not identify as transgender. I normally don't go so in depth with my identity and I could go further, but I think this description is great for highlighting nuance within the Queer community (which I use to identify myself but also as an umbrella term for many identities) and also how experiences can differ even if, on paper, the identity might be the have the same label. While the statements I just made are true for me, they are definitely not true for all Queer folx though some parts might be, and it's this nuance that provides a plethora of perspectives, especially when considering other held identities on top of Queerness, like my Latinx identity.
I speak about these nuances in my paper about Humanitarian Ideals and Queerness and how there is another breakage of the image of the queer monolith, the presence of biphobia, transphobia, ace/aro erasure and more instances of internalized broad homophobia within the history of the movement and the community today. It is important to understand these nuances and potential interactions to help provide closer and more accurate explorations of intersectionality in various contexts as not only will different identities have differing contributions but the differing experiences within the queer community will too. An example of how this might be applied could be with the recent overturning of Roe vs. Wade and the implications it holds for people holding the trans identity as well as potential future dangers that Lesbian, Gay, and Bi folx have been talking about with it as a pretense for overturning other laws. Of course that issue is incredibly complex but the nuance of the queer community can add any number of perspectives to analyze the issue.
I hope that this section and Capstone in general serves as inspiration to think critically about the nuances of various identities, be it your own held identities or identities you interact with in everyday life or academically. As the contents of this work don't speak of a protocol or ways of operation to conduct research, I hope that the display of orientation as an approach can serve a variety of folx in their lives. Academics have unending use for intersectionality in research, be it how I showcased it highlighting the complexity of human identity and how the various interactions between these identities can shape interactions and provide more accurate findings, but it can also be used to bring in other academic disciplines. For example, when doing political science research about particular societal issues, one might find it illuminating to include theories and contexts from international relations, economic, psychology, or even stem fields to augment findings and provide additional contexts. Activists can also benefit immensely from using an approach such as this, and many already do use and advocate for this orientation. Using intersectional approaches allows for more targeted and impactful actions in an activist environment, understanding the nuances of a broad identity ground and how identities interact allow for complex solutions to complex issues and a breadth of strategies to help a number of folx. A great example of this in action can be seen with Immigration Equality or The LGBTQ Asylum Project as orgs that specifically tackle broad issues through an intersectional approach to provide support to those complex identities. Apart from those, I think anyone, in any field can benefit greatly from this approach, bringing in other perspectives and seeking out nuance can open yourself up to any number of approaches and solutions in a variety of contexts and it encourages more equitable processes as we engage in a form of empathy.
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