Right, queer book people, some thoughts about the own voices queer discourse and why it seemed to hit us in different ways (though we shared a conclusion), and what we can learn from it—

It’s misleading to flatten queer identities when they’re oppressed with different mechanics.

I think we all agree compulsory outing is bad and part of what that represents is a concern for safety over authenticity, which is particularly relevant because of something I want to call authenticity regulation.

One of the primary material foundations of all queer oppression is *ostracism.* This is often talked about exclusion, erasure, etc, but those can mean general lack of inclusion—I propose we define ostracism as specifically *the removal of a support network*

Humans need social support to live and lack of a support network is predictive of everything from mental illness, to substance dependence, exposure to violence, and early death.

Modern society relies on the household as a core social unit; the household takes in money from the work the family does and it supports itself individually (in theory) and must hold resources against other households (capitalism is individualistic).

The household is built in part on the heterosexual institution, which supposed straight mother and father, and thus by implication, cis mother and father. Their children are to form their own households through participation in the heterosexual institution

Queer oppression represents an exile from the household. You may be forced out of your family with violence or disowning, but all queers face exile in potential by being alienated from the process of creating your own household (the cis heterosexual institution)

So a major response to this (e.g. in the US) is the formation of a surrogate queer family network, often called the queer community. This is basically where we get the idea of “queer,” combining different exiled identities together under an umbrella

IOW the queer community is supposed to counteract ostracism. But this is still under the individualism of the marketplace and of resource ownership and so queer communities become careful who they let in; we have “households withholding from other households”

Thus is born “queer gatekeeping.”

For bi people, being deemed not queer enough is a very real and lingering threat of ostracism, because the stigma is about being a “fake queer” and thereby not able to access the surrogate community.

But bi people still struggle at best to have any compatibility with the heterosexual institution, in part because our lives are shaped by desire but also because sexual connection is related to gender roles, through which most queer existence is violently regulated.

Authenticity regulation is the litmus test of your right to enter the surrogate community. This effectively mirrors the same process by which your support network was threatened in the first place, because of the tenuity of entry into the household.

(Brb)

Gah got the thread mixed up https://twitter.com/maidensblade/status/1304630059509014528?s=20