Bad Queers

I twittered something about how Ellen DeGeneres filmed her show despite the fact that the WGA is on strike, after only canceling one taping. I ended this twitter with the phrase “bad queer.”

A little background:

My second semester in college I took a class on race and sexuality that some of you might remember quite well. Anyway, it was an english/women’s studies class and we met in a class room in the geology building. This lead to far too many jokes about rock throwing, but at some point the prof talked about a class that she took it grad school called “bad queers” that was a night class that met in some distant corner of campus on the top floor of a building that was otherwise unused. It was funny, or at least funnier than what we were studying at the time.

The idea of a class about “bad queers” was interesting, so it was an ongoing joke between some of us, in part because we never got a good explanation of what the class would actually be about, or more importantly what could you spend an entire semester talking about on the subject.

I always took the opinion that it was to be a class about false (queer) consciousness, but I’m not sure that was everyone’s opinion, nor do I know that that’s accurate. I think roommate H.¹ took the side that the class was more narrowly about the element of the queer community that makes the conservative argument that queer people are just the same as straight people save homosexuality, this argues against diversity, and for greater social strictures, and that was appropriately enough, to our minds “bad.”

Anyway, I bring this up, only because I was writing a paper this weekend about sexuality and aging for my adulthood and aging class that I’m taking now (more on that in another post, possibly) and I found myself putting a small rant about a certain fairly well known “bad queer” (in the second, narrower sense.) And while I’m not sure that it’s completely crucial to my argument, and thus is now a footnote, it sort of felt good.

But I suppose more importantly, it’s a fun exercise, if not entirely productive. Thoughts on bad queers, anyone?