Ethan Freedman
Queering Relationships
September 14, 2023
Prof. Adam Thomas
Dissonance in music is a lack of harmony that leads astray and entire band, orchestra, or acapella singing to the tune of David Guetta’s Titanium like they forgot Pitch Perfect did it in 2012. Either that or they know Pitch Perfect did it – and do it anyway. Dissonance is typically framed in a negative light for lack of harmony brings disruption and disruption quite literally does not produce the same sound as harmony. Perhaps that sound is not pleasant to the ear – but disruption led to Becca’s “Cup Song” and we all know the fad that turned into. I wonder why dissonance in music is not utilized as a framework for thinking about and adding another possible sound – but I am no music theorist and I refuse to let google tell me if it has been conceived. I say fuck if it sounds good – we gotta hear it to know in the first place. This long winded intro is to express frustration with the way academia calls for harmony when dissonance and disruption provides an incredible foundation for knowledge acquisition and presentation in alternative ways.
In Queering Relationships (2023) taught by Prof. Adam Thomas, disruption is not the norm but a way of life brought on by systems of power acting on the bodies and minds of agents that fall under the Queer Umbrella. The Alphabet Mafia are something like skilled craftsmen at constructing lives that move through systems seemingly harmonizing with one another only to view LGBTQ+ people as mobsters bringing dissonance to the system. This system sees the solution as policing.
Queer Theory has stemmed from questions and assumptions about sex, gender, identity, and everything and anything as a means and method of breaking down norms. Born out of feminist studies and gender studies, and in the broadest sense – queer theory adopts academia to explain how disruption is present and can be presented.
Queer Studies is one of the realms within which queer theory can operate, but academia that fills this space can look like positively structured questioning and presenting of information. This kind of research serves a function for Ogalsky (2017) showed that relationship maintenance research is a field in need of furthering as relationship structures are ever changing. With this information, they were able to question personal well-being of LGBTQ+ individuals across the transition to marriage equality in tandem with relationship maintenance strategies (2019).
As an academic – I cannot get enough of this shit! I live and breathe for understanding information, especially when it has to do with subjects that I love. I love queer studies for it profusely generates a need and desire for me to question everything. But what if this information could look different and still bring the same amount of joy in consumption. However, I also have the same amount of frustration for these readings as they are inaccessible sometimes. Disability studies falls under queer studies and touches on the need for accessibility, but I am gonna do it fast and simple. The language academics can be selfish because sometimes we spew too good, get on a roll with words, and settle on writer's choice rather than questioning if the point needs to be more accessible to the reader. It’s where joy is found in the process of presenting when we are asked to produce higher quantities of research.
Yet, somewhere long ago the zine was created. While the zine is worth an entire thesis on its own, the zine has provided Queer Studies with a wonderful alternative to presenting information in accessible ways. In the zine “What Does A Queer Relationship Look Like, it takes twenty pages to tackle different meanings of queer, the timeline of the word, challenging relationship binaries, and expanding our idea of relationships. Ogalsky (2017) (2019) did this in harmony with how academia had been represented historically, but Queer Square Zines is queering the way information is presented. Here queer is a verb to represent “something you do, not something you are or are not” (Barker and Scheele, 2016).
There are many ways to wrap our heads around presenting information. Some of them scare us because we are not good at public speaking or writing – but zines are a wonderful reminder that it can be however we like. Growing up, we take months to practice writing a paragraph with an argument. We take many years nailing into our thick skulls the structure of thesis statements, the art of conclusions, and the condiments on our essay that has been broken down into an argument burger or something like that. Zines are just another vessel for information like breakfast burritos and tacos are different vessels for food. Zines can present positive, qualitative, or quantitative research – and does not bind you in how you do it. The only thing that is binded in a zine is its binding in physical form – or in Queer Studies it could be anything from a page on binding for trans individuals to binding in the BDSM community. To create a zine and make it a real option of an outlet to express your research, experience, art, or anything else you desire might require teaching children how to turn their hamburger argument into pictures before they get lost in the harmony of academia and the fixed system of essay writing.