Queer Culture Is
queer culture is running out of people to swipe on tinder in fewer than 24 hours and queer culture is being depressed for no reason and showing up to class late and tired and queer culture is not knowing how relationships work because you didn’t get to go through the high school romance phase and queer culture is drinking Four Loko on someone’s roof, painting your nails and listening to Blonde on a phone in a cup so it’s just a little bit louder and queer culture is being afraid of having a roommate your first year at college and queer culture is introducing your partner as your “friend” and queer culture is getting emails from your TA asking if you’re ok because “you seemed down today” and queer culture is making memes all damn day and queer culture is always lowering your expectations and queer culture is knowing exactly why the cops haven’t found Sage Smith and queer culture is subtweeting about that football player in your discussion section who doesn’t know how pronouns work and doesn’t care enough to learn and queer culture is eating ice cream at 2:00 a.m. on a tuesday with the family you’ve created and queer culture is learning to know your beauty and queer culture is being scared to flirt because what if you misjudged them and you end up in the hospital or dead out back and queer culture is having your therapist as a favorite in your contacts and queer culture is wishing you could afford a therapist and queer culture is always feeling like you’re 16 and queer culture is watching straight couples make out at pride and queer culture is crying in the shower and not knowing why and queer culture is a revolution of which we didn’t ask to be part but that we have to believe we can win
IAN WARE
he, him, his
College of Arts & Sciences
Class of 2019, American Studies & Politics
It’s been a Twitter meme for a while to tweet pictures with the caption “this is queer culture,” or to tweet about common queer experiences starting with “queer culture is.” I love that the queer identity is so multifaceted but has such a common core that it’s easy to identify with almost all of the tweets and memes that people create around it. So I really just felt like writing an extended version of that to sum up experiences that I’ve had or that my queer family has had, and it just ended up being a series of unsent tweets in that form. When making my own art, I take a lot of cues from incredible queer artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Robert Rauschenberg.
