desirability politics on the fringes
Desirability politics. Have you heard about it? For as long as I can remember, desirability politics has been on my mind in one way or another. If you are someone who identifies as a leftist, chances are that you have heard of this.
As a simple explanation, desirability politics is a way to describe discourse which examines the way that hierarchy functions in the context of who and what is regarded as desirable in our society. Most people take for granted that you would choose to associate with people who are regarded as desirable by conventional standards if you had the choice between that and anything else. Those who are white or light-skinned, thin, able-bodied, and neurotypical are favored under this system, as well as conformity to gender norms. Those who deviate from these standards are not favored and the consequences they face are not trivial.
My entry point to caring about desirability politics is via my own disabilities and congenital disfigurement. As soon as I was old enough to be aware that others could perceive me, I knew that the amount of social validation we receive as individuals depends on what we look like, the ways we communicate, and the ways we move through space. In simpler terms, when people negatively judged the things that stood out about me, I noticed. This awareness negatively impacted how I felt about myself and the world around me.
I share this in order to set the context for what first made me give a shit about recognizing this force, these hierarchies of desirability. Since these formative experiences, I have grounded myself deeper in an opposition to these hierarchies through reading theory rooted in feminism, specifically Black feminist theory, and disability justice. Having the opportunity to learn about how others have made sense of the forces I knew to be true through my own experiences was pivotal for a few reasons. For one, it helped me step outside of myself and to gain perspective on the roots of oppression. Everyone suffers when we enforce conformity to a standard that takes certain traits for granted as the norm. Grounding my understanding of desirability politics in theory also led me to forge some feelings of safety in community with other people who deviated from the rewarded norms of desirability. And it is these communities that I want to be the focus of this piece.
More than anything, in the context of the communities forged through struggle, I want to be viewed as legitimate. I spend a lot of time meditating on the idea of how valuable it is to even desire validation from external forces. What does this even mean for me? If other people are unpredictable and outside of our scope of control, then would it not be easier to find a way to feel content with ourselves without others’ approval? Maybe. But we are also humans. We are wired for connection. Being viewed as legitimate by those around us is often a deep comfort greatly contrasting to the familiar feelings of alienation from our families and/or communities of origin who have degraded characteristics that are inherent to who we are. This recognition alone makes me reluctant to examine it further. After all, we all deserve to feel safety and comfort in connection with others. Yet in an effort to interrogate the power of desirability hierarchies, examining what lays beneath my desire for legitimacy feels like a worthy cause.
I want to be viewed as legitimate for many reasons. I want people to listen to my ideas. I do not only want people to listen to them, I want people to engage with them. I want people to criticize me as an act of love, for as bell hooks taught me, love is a verb. I do not want people to leave me over trivial means. I want people to think it is worth it to have conflict with me. I want people to take care of me when I am sad. I want people to share in my joys. I want people to want to kiss me, touch me, fuck me. I want people to be able to give me their yes and their no. I want people to be able to receive my yes and no.
On the surface, all or some of this might seem trivial. But if you take a moment to sit with it you might realize that it is not. All of the reasons I want to be viewed as legitimate have a relational outcome. I want to belong. I believe that a feeling of belonging is more than just a “great comfort” as I stated previously — it is also a necessity. Experiencing belonging creates a foundation that sets the stage for the possibility to thrive at everything else in life. There are certainly people who can manage without this to varying degrees when they have access to more wealth and resources, but for someone such as myself who relies on a fixed income and is coerced into poverty via government systems, experiencing belonging can mean survival.
In recognizing all of these things that I attach to the idea of being seen as legitimate and what is at stake when these conditions are not met under our current systems, I am also forced to reconcile a truth that I have come to realize over time: Our legitimacy is always mediated by how desirable we are. And it matters who we are wanting or needing to be read as legitimate by.
Read that last sentence again, and then I will tell you more about why it matters.
I have not always existed in proximity to a cohesive group that takes pride in being subversive. In my adolescence and early in my adulthood, I spent time with people who wanted to conform to societal norms. I was well aware that this conformity was an impossibility for me and everyone else knew it too even if this awareness was mostly unspoken. Despite the fact that the term “desirability politics” would hold no legibility or significance for these people, if you were to explain it in the right way and say “is this a thing that happens here?” there would be no question about it. You might ask why they spend so much money maintaining their hair or purchasing certain brands or what they think about so much that makes them lose sleep. In all of the answers, you would find desirability politics at play through and through.
But what about in the context of communities or groups which take pride in the things that make them subversive? For what I am attempting to articulate, scope matters. In the last example I offered, the scope was the entirety of dominant culture. For that which is relevant to the focus of this essay, the scope is much smaller. While what I am discussing can extend beyond this, in this essay I want to specifically focus on my experiences which are in the context of majority queer leftist spaces. I am focusing on this context in particular since this is a group that has a potential explicit concern about dismantling the power that makes desirability politics possible in the first place. In contrast to people who enthusiastically operate under the norms of dominant society, I generally expect that most people who belong to queer leftist groups would significantly downplay or outright deny the power that these hierarchies hold in their communities. Even worse, it often feels as though it is never acknowledged at all, which can feel like a bizarre juxtaposition to all the other ongoing power analyses inherent to these spaces.
One reason that I suspect there is this permeating silence around the issue of desirability politics is due to the nature of why these groups exist in the first place. Usually these groups exist because there is a recognition of the oppressive nature of dominant society that is coupled with an aspiration to reject these oppressive forces. At times it often feels that rather than doing the active work of rejecting these forces, it is taken for granted that this work is happening by virtue of our ability to recognize the oppressive forces exist. When you consider this next to the fact that the groups consist of people who express often-but-not-always intentional deviance from dominant societal norms/values, we might absolve ourselves of further interrogation. We might think “well we are not dominant society, we spend most of our time and energy making sure everyone knows that we are not dominant society” and then we let it rest. In a best case scenario, part of the group’s ethos might allow space for listening to when the disabled person expresses grief over not being able to participate in any of the pleasure-oriented events or the Black fat femme person feels alienated from the social benefits of the group while everyone continues to benefit from their ongoing unpaid labor. But this capacity for listening is limited and rarely is it the case that the listening propels fundamental change.
Who gets left out when this dynamic permeates our spaces? Who slips between the cracks? Do we know them? Have we listened to them? What would change if we did?
As I consider the dynamic above, it makes me consider the place of aesthetics in communities characterized by deviance. Can deviance have an aesthetic? And if so, does that by definition alter the nature of what it means to be deviant?
My usage of the term aesthetics here for the purpose of this essay is intended to describe a way to classify and categorize characteristics related to appearance or style more generally. My notion here of the word aesthetic might make it closely related to stereotype, in the sense that a stereotype is often thought of as an over-simplified representation of something in order to categorize it. It is not uncommon for specific haircuts or clothing choices to dominate queer leftist social scenes to the point that they are sometimes used as shorthand to indicate belonging. However, having a specific look (or smell for that matter!) does not necessarily communicate anything substantial about a person’s politics. It takes a lot of time and intentional relationship building for there to be an opportunity to learn this information. Yet we routinely rely on aesthetics to guide our feelings of trust and desires for proximity.
When thinking about the consequences of expressing deviance from dominant society, does it matter that a person can conform to standards of aesthetics which indicate belonging to a subculture? Are there rewards for conforming to these standards? Are these rewards tangible? Worth measuring? Why or why not?
Most importantly I wonder: to what degree are these standards still informed by white supremacy and other oppressive value hierarchies which are often (maybe hopefully) imagined to only exist outside of queer leftist spaces?
I do not know all of the answers to those questions but I do know this: deviance appeals to deviance and not all manifestations of deviance retain the same amount of power or lack thereof.
To consider the ways that some deviance retains elements of power/privilege is not to negate the ways that expressing deviance enables the possibility of experiencing punishment from dominant society. After all, it is not deviance that is cause for reward — except for when that deviance becomes conformity in an entirely new context.
This means that you can be a queer punk but if you are not also white, skinny, able-bodied/minded, you are not going to have the same experience of comfort and care in queer leftist community as your more desirable counterparts. Regardless of the state of your relationship with your family/communities of origin, it will always be true that the way your bodymind occupies physical space impacts how much attention, resources, and care you receive in the context of your chosen community.
I want to think about this because I think that many would want to believe that safety forged in the confines of a subcultural aesthetic, such as that in queer leftist spaces, is equivalent to means for liberation.
My suggestion here is very simply that this is not liberation. Not only are the aesthetics that we forge to create identity and safety in queer leftist spaces not absolved from the effects of dominant desirability politics — the safety we forge in these aesthetics to create belonging is also inherently fragile. It is fragile both because it is not grounded in relationship and also because our ability to adhere to aesthetics can shift as our bodyminds change over time. If we truly want liberation, we must actively investigate where desirability hierarchies are showing up and then create meaningful strategies to eradicate them. Because if desirability hierarchies exist and factor into the distribution of care in the context of our communities, we are not going to achieve liberation.
As long as we fail to interrogate this, there are some people who will consistently be regarded as more credible than others in a way that is disconnected from the legitimacy of their contributions or how much experience or stake they have in the cause. When desirability hierarchies permeate our spaces, it leads to only some radical visions becoming possible.
I want us all to know the radical visions of those with dark-skin. I want us to know the radical visions of Fat people. I want us to hear from people who are Mad, those who are dismissed as outta their damn minds! I want us to live in a world imagined by those most people can barely stand to look at — my fellow Freaks, Cyborgs, and Crips. I want us to take the time to listen to those who do not communicate in ways that are familiar to us. I want us to know what possibilities exist in the heart of those who have never been kissed.
If we knew all of these perspectives and held them up with all of the recognition they deserve, we might have a chance at ousting the unjust hierarchies we claim to be against. Our spaces would be unrecognizable and I believe that we would be better for it.
I started writing this essay with a clear sense of what desirability politics is and what it means for it to be present in the spaces we inhabit. As I take more time to consider the ideas, I feel less certain. Yet I still feel that what I have shared here are ideas are worth sharing as a contribution towards efforts to learn and grow together. This is one iteration of a thought and I am eager for what I will learn tomorrow.
