Queer Interruptions

Queer Interruptions: Straight Time and Normativity Our lives seem scripted to follow “straight time,” where life trajectories often follow the path of birth, adulthood, marriage, reproduction, retirement, death and the passing on of assets to kin. These heteronormative timelines emphasise the importance of reproduction and child-rearing and shape our ideas around what it means to live a meaningful, successful and “good” life. But queer people who choose not to marry or have children are seen as ‘developmentally stalled’ and are living an unhappy, empty life (Muñoz 2009, p. 98). The fans in this video discuss the various pressures to live a “good” (heteronormative) life and the ways they deviate from those expectations. While some queer people are able to get married, are they merely reinforcing heteronormative values or do they allow us to envision a queer form of marriage? In what ways do some queer relationships continue to be excluded or devalued under straight time? Muñoz, J. E. 2009, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, New York University Press, New York. EndFragment

“Getting married was not something I ever particularly wanted to do or expected to do - but then, for most of my life “getting married” would have meant getting married to a man. No thanks. Of course I think things have improved - I’m married to the woman I love. Didn’t see that coming. Didn’t believe it would happen.” - Okimafan, 64, USA

“I have seriously told my mom that I don’t want to marry or have kids… At first, she just rolled her eyes and waved me off as if the normative was getting married and having kids and not doing it was like choosing a different lifestyle, an alternative one, like moving to the mountains and hunting my own food or something as crazy." - Adriana Ledesma, 26, Mexico

“I didn’t really get those “first” experiences most girls do with their boyfriends in middle school, and I to this day still haven’t experienced my “firsts” with a girl. In some ways, being WLW feels like it can set you on the slow track to love and relationships, because we have to spend so much time figuring out what we feel and why we feel it.” - Annie, 18, USA

Queer Interruptions: Delay, Belatedness and Wasted Time It is said that queer people experience time differently. The world seems to function on “straight time”—the life paths and cultural milestones of adolescence, marriage, reproduction, retirement and death. But queer people often stray from that path, being excluded from marriage and child-rearing or experiencing these rituals in a haphazard or disordered way. So queer time is marked by a sense of this disorder: a sense of delay and a stumbling through self-discovery; a rebirth and a resetting of oneself; and a feeling of being out-of-sync with the life trajectories reserved for the more “valuable” and “productive” (heterosexual) members of society. In this video, the fans discuss how they feel a sense of delay, belatedness or wasted time compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Many recount feelings of being “behind” in their development or of having to “catch up” to their heterosexual peers in terms of romantic or sexual experiences. This sense of delay can be a result of homophobic environments, a lack of opportunities to explore their same-sex desires, an absence of queer role models or peers as well as a lack of social scripts to help them negotiate their queerness. Some fans also describe experiencing a belated adolescence in their 20s or 30s rather than during their teenage years. By exploring the ways these fans feel out-of-sync, we can identify how heteronormative lifecourses, milestones and values continue to shape ideas around maturity and what it means to be an adult. EndFragment

Queer Anachronism: Bury Your Gays and ‘Feeling Backward’ Content warning: this video contains footage of Lexa’s death from 00:49 to 01:13; a discussion of conversion therapy from 03:56 to 04:20 and a description of homophobic violence from 11:06 to 11:45. When Commander Lexa was shot dead on The 100, her death harked back to numerous queer female character deaths attributed to the “Bury Your Gays” trope—also known as the “Dead Lesbian Syndrome”—where queer female characters commonly meet violent, untimely ends. For many, Lexa’s demise caused them to relive past homophobic experiences, where her onscreen death resonated with their previous experiences of rejection, erasure and fear of violence. This video explores these “time-traveling wounds,” specifically how Lexa’s death could transport fans to painful personal histories. This topic draws on the work of Heather Love in which she characterises the contemporary queer experience as ‘the odd situation of “looking forward” while we are “feeling backward”’ (2007, p. 27). By ‘feeling backward,’ Love refers to the feelings associated with queer suffering in the past: feelings of shame, self-hatred, despair, depression and loneliness. Exploring the ways that fans felt backward after Lexa’s death allows us to see the similarities between the homophobia of the past and how it persists in the “liberated” present. While progress has been made for some members of the LGBTQ+ community (namely white, economically mobile gays and lesbians) others continue to be excluded and oppressed by systems of power such as race, gender and class. Rather than promising a future ‘hospitable to all,’ the progress made in contemporary gay and lesbian politics merely promises that ‘it gets better for some’ (Carillo Rowe et al 2015, p. 36). Popular cultural memory and history tells us that homophobia has been overcome and exists only in the past. Despite this apparent triumph and the increasing number of rights afforded to members of the queer community, these backward feelings persist. For these fans, these feelings challenge assumptions about how much society has progressed from the homophobia and oppression of the past and points to the progress still needed. Carrillo Rowe, A., Tiffe, R., Goltz, D.B., Zingsheim, J., Bagley, M. & Malhotra, S. 2015, ‘Queer Love: Queering Coalitional Politics’ in D.B Goltz & J. Zingsheim (eds), Queer Praxis: Questions for LGBTQ Worldmaking, Peter Lang Publishing, New York, pp. 123-139. Love, H. 2007, Feeling Backward: Loss And The Politics of Queer History, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts. EndFragment

“Every time I see people like me meet tragic and violent deaths in fiction I am reminded that I am not safe in a real world that seeks to punish me for the way that I love… I am not being represented in the media. I am never a protagonist. I am never a hero. I am never someone that an audience would aspire to be like. I am not in the room. If I am in the room then I am the punchline or the butt of the joke, or a device to be used and abused at the whim of The Plot. When I was little I was promised that this nonsense would be sorted by now and it isn’t and I’m mad about it!” - Joabobs, 34, England

Content warning: this video contains footage of Lexa’s death from 00:49 to 01:13; a discussion of conversion therapy from 03:56 to 04:20 and a description of homophobic violence from 11:06 to 11:45.

“Lexa’s death just… absolutely terrified me. When they destroyed it, it shattered us and suddenly we were reliving every version we’d experienced, every character we lost, every person who argued we aren’t allowed the same rights, every person who claimed we have a fiery hell awaiting us, every book we read, every movie or TV show we watch that completely ignores our existence, everything that constantly reinforces the idea that we are other and we are not enough." - Des, 24, USA

Queer Futures: Potentiality and Unboundedness Queer history is marked by pain and tragedy, and it is this pain that persists in the present—in our own queer stories; memories of seeing characters like ourselves discarded again and again; and the homophobia that persists despite the calls for pride and defiant marches down city streets. The pains and losses of queer history are ever-present and lead us to imagine futures where queer love is not only possible, but plentiful. We are not only feeling backward and lingering in the past, but we are also dreaming of queer futures of potentiality, boundless and open. Heather Love argues that the queer community are decidedly forward-looking and optimistic, stating that ‘despite our reservations, we just cannot stop dreaming of a better life for queer people’ (2007, p. 3). When we envision queer futures of boundless possibilities, we combat the oppression of heteronormativity which erases, alienates and dismisses queer lives as unhappy and unfulfilled. Love, H. 2007, Feeling Backward: Loss And The Politics of Queer History, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts. EndFragment

“The guy always gets the girl. “Epic love stories.” Everyone everywhere seems to be finding these happily ever afters. I can never see what my happy family might look like.” - Brooke Grey, 25, Australia

'This time doesn’t have a place for me’ - With Dr Rebecca Hall The fans’ experiences of feeling backward, delayed and out-of-sync while also looking towards the future are examples of how queer time collapses the past, present and future into one fluid, living entity. For these fans, the past is in constant engagement with the present. This video is a monologue by lawyer and historian, Dr Rebecca Hall, in which she discusses her experience of Black time and how it overlaps with the past-present-future warping of queer time. She discusses the erasure, sanitisation and reclamation of Black history, and how envisioning Black futures is a radical political project. Dr Hall has recently published a book, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts which explores the untold stories of enslaved African women and their role in resistance and revolts aboard slave ships. The book’s release has been covered by The Guardian here. EndFragment

My name is Evangeline Aguas (she/her) and I am a queer Filipinx-Australian. I completed my PhD at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in 2023. Previous to this, I completed a Bachelor of Arts (Media Arts and Production) at UTS in 2007 and then worked as a freelancer in the advertising industry for ten years. With a background in film and television production, my research aims to combine the fields of queer theory, digital media and fan studies with creative practice. My work has recently been published in Queerbaiting and Fandom: Teasing Fans through Homoerotic Possibilities (2019), the first book to analyse queerbaiting, exploring its history and its impact on fans. I have also appeared as a panellist speaking on The Power of Queer Fandom at the Mardi Gras Film Festival in Sydney, 2020. I live in Sydney, Australia with my wife and our three-year-old child. My queer awakenings occurred with Xena, the 1999 Joan of Arc miniseries and Rachel Weisz in The Mummy (1999). If you have any questions or would like to get in touch, please feel free to contact me via email, Twitter or Tumblr. EndFragment

I acknowledge the Gadigal and Bidjigal people of the Eora Nation upon whose ancestral lands I live, learn, and work. I pay respect to Elders past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for this land.

INTERRUPTIONS

I would like to sincerely thank all my participants for generously sharing their time and experiences, from completing email surveys and sending messages on Tumblr to filming interviews. Those featured in the videos and the quotes on this website are listed below: Annie (she/her) legendofbisexuals.tumblr.com Dr. Elizabeth Bridges (she/her) @EGBridges Robin Boye Danielsen (she/he/they) @ItsRobinHoot / thefriendlychiip.tumblr.com Des (she/her) dreamsaremywords.tumblr.com Nicole Espinosa (they/them) @decolesinize Brooke Grey (she/her) @AuthorGBrooke / authorgreybrooke.tumblr.com Javi Grillo-Marxuach (he/him) @OKBJGM Dr Rebecca Hall (she/her) @rhallphd / @WakeRevolt Haley Hillman (she/her) Jay (she/her) @jayenator565 / jayenator565.tumblr.com Joabobs (she/her) Adriana Ledesma (she/her) @adrykomclexakru / adrykomclexakru.tumblr.com Rae D. Magdon (she/her) @RaeDMagdon / raedmagdon.tumblr.com Mochi (she/her) @immochiball / immochiball.tumblr.com Okimafan (she/her) @Aokimafan Kellymarie Perez Schwartz (she/her) @cruez2788 Spencer (they/them) @RiotEarp666 Many thanks also to crew members Robin Boye Danielsen, Evan Gorman, Amanda Moon and Louise Tonge for their assistance during filming. I would also like to thank my supervisors, Dr Greg Ferris and Dr Liz Giuffre for their invaluable guidance and support throughout my studies. All ethnographic research was conducted in line with the standards of the University of Technology Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee (approval number UTS HREC ETH17-1663). This project is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. EndFragment

CREDITS

This online documentary is part of my PhD project on fandom and queer time. With the death of the popular lesbian character, Lexa on the television series, The 100, many queer fans began to question the progress made in LGBTQ+ rights after seeing themselves killed on screen yet again. Focusing on the queer female and genderqueer fans of the series’ same-sex couple, Clarke and Lexa—the “Clexa” fans—I explore how they experience time: in what ways do they feel out-of-sync or delayed compared to their heterosexual peers? In what ways do they feel backward while LGBTQ+ rights advance forward? How do they envision a queer future for themselves? My project uses the death of a queer television character as an entry point to discuss how these fans experience time differently—a queer experience of time—when surrounded by the heteronormative world around them. In keeping with the non-normative nature of queer time, this website is laid out in a non-linear fashion allowing you to navigate backwards, forwards and sideways between videos (best viewed on a desktop). The five short vignettes have been set out in a clockwise flow, though they can be viewed in any order. They can also be viewed via this Vimeo playlist. Each vignette is accompanied by a short description of the ideas and themes it explores and can be accessed by a button to the side of the page. The website background consists of the names of more than 200 lesbian and bisexual female characters killed on television since 1976, an exhaustive list compiled by Autostraddle. The majority of interviews were filmed in Las Vegas with fans who were attending Clexacon 2018, with additional interviews done via online surveys. EndFragment

CONTEXT

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‘Straight TV writers will never understand how they can inflict time-traveling wounds that hurt us as scared gay children all over again.’ —Autostraddle editor, Heather Hogan (Twitter, 4 March 2016) On 3rd March 2016, the popular lesbian character, Commander Lexa, was shot dead on the television series, The 100. Lexa’s death triggered an intense and sustained period of viewer backlash, which received mainstream media coverage by Variety, the BBC and The Washington Post. Many fans took to social media to vent their frustration, with much of the criticism centred on accusations that the show employed the “Bury Your Gays” trope—also known as the “Dead Lesbian Syndrome”—where queer female characters commonly meet violent, untimely ends. For other fans, Lexa’s death brought up painful memories of coming out and of previous experiences of social marginalisation. My own feelings of shock and loss gave way to memories of growing up queer, struggling with my sexuality and fearing coming out. I found myself reeling from these ‘time-traveling wounds’ and feeling like the ‘scared gay child’ of my youth, unable to explain how the loss of this fictional character could transport me to such a painful period of my past. My research focuses on these ‘time-traveling wounds’ and asks: how do Clexa fans experience this sense of feeling backward—this experience of dislocated temporality? In what other ways do fans experience a sense of being out-of-sync with normative, linear time? Drawing on queer theory, my research explores how queer female and genderqueer fans experience a sense of asynchrony and anachronism—the felt experience of temporal dislocation and the inhabitance of queer time. EndFragment

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