Thinking more about queer yous again.

One of the responses I received to this post was from LeeAnn Roripaugh. LeeAnn says that one of the functions of the you in queer love poetry is to create a safe, ungendered space for the beloved. She continues, saying the reader, then, is offered an opportunity to both eavesdrop on the love poem and also identify with the beloved/as the beloved, and that by the time a gendered pronoun appears, it would be too late for the reader to confront their gender/sexuality assumptions in the poem—or, at least, too late for them to do much about it.

First, I really appreciated this comment because I hadn’t given much specific consideration to the love poem, and I think the notion of a “safe space” is critical to understanding what queer writers need to consider when inviting the beloved into a poem, both for the beloved’s safety and their own.

The “safe space” of the poem, then, reconsiders the “unsafe space” of the actual world, in which the act of loving is not precious but dangerous. This is a specific consideration that I think most non-queer writers can avoid. This also assumes, though, that there is one kind of safe space but many unsafe spaces. For queer writers, the safe space is by necessity a non-gendered space because Americans inextricably link gender and sexual behavior.

But the “safe space” of these poems is complex. By supplying the beloved with a space which requires anonymity, the identity of the beloved is sacrificed—destroyed. The identity of the speaker remains intact by virtue of maintaining a voice: the poem itself.

One of the primary examples of power is the power to name. Adam receives it in the Bible and it is emblematic of his dominion over the creatures of the earth, and of Eve. In language, the power to name is the power to oppress: linguistic domination of people is the preface to their dehumanization. It is through language that queer people have sacrified their identities to a reduction based on their behaviors (buttfucker, cocksucker, pillow-biter, muffdiver, carpet muncher, et al.) or their purpose (faggot’s origin apparently refers to the practice of having homosexuals gather their own pyre before being burned at the stake–a faggot is “a bundle of sticks, fuel.”).

Is it survival or oppression that guides queer writers toward you? Without you there’d be less queer love poetry, absolutely. Seriously.