Queerness is an unrelenting work ethic towards joy
June, 2025
Earlier this week a friend of mine asked me what my queerness has meant to my organizing work and political journey. At first I thought of my own experiences with discrimination, harassment, and violence at the hands of the state and individuals because of who I am and who I love. I thought of my early organizing work in high school and college; some of my first lobby visits in Albany were for equal marriage and for the rights of trans and gender non-conforming (GNC) people to be protected from discrimination in New York State. I thought about my experiences with coming out to my family and friends, how that experience of othering in a community where I had before felt safe and seen was rocked when I decided to share the truth of who I am. My queerness has always shaped my work, but there was something deeper there.
I began to reflect on the ways in which queerness, not just my experience of how I have been harmed, has shaped what I believe to be true and right in this world.
Queerness is many things, one of those being a path outside of what a heterocentric, patriarchal, white supremacist society has told us must and only can be. To build family outside of blood, to ask “why not?” to some of the most fundamental “truths” we have been shaped to believe. Why not follow your heart towards love? Why not express and proclaim your gender? Why not work towards breaking, fixing, rebuilding the rules that hold us back from dignity, joy and connection? Why not choose justice when the alternative holds so much suffering for this one, precious life of ours?
When my mom died in 2018 at the age of 54, I saw all of the ways that her body was subjected to inhumanity, to a lack of care and concern, to a denial of dignity in her illness and death. Doctors and nurses made choices that upheld the rules of their institutions, made assumptions about her worth in the world, of her deservedness, and she was made to suffer for their choices. They were good people, but they didn’t ask “why not?” when presented with a path that only led towards order for someone else’s ease. I couldn’t stop wondering “why can’t she have this” or “why not do that?”; not in terms of medical decisions per say, but in how she could have been held with more care in the last months and weeks of her life.
As she passed and after her death, I made a commitment to forever be of service to the dignity, care and respect of all living creatures. It was so clear to me then, and even more so now, that my work in this life is to create more portals and possibilities that lead to those core three principles; dignity, care and respect. To ask “why not?” when the alternative is so damning. To ask “why not” make these days full? Why not change the rules if they’re not working for everyone? Why not, why not, why not?
To “queer” something means to reject the traditional, the status quo, in order to reinterpret and forge forwards in ways that create more possibility. We queer our expectations around family, love, relationships; we queer our assumptions about gender, sex and belonging. But, as anti-racist organizers, we also queer our society’s dictations around race, rights and safety. We do the work to rewrite draconian, unjust, oppressive rules and systems to make way for more possibility, to make way for the dignity of all people. Our work for justice is an active walking of the question “why not?”. The work is queer work.
Our work for migrant justice, for racial and economic justice, is also the work of “why not?”. Why not provide shelter and welcome to people fleeing violence? Why not offer resources to folks to build dignified lives? Why do we detain people in inhumane conditions when we could simply…not? Why not keep families together? Why not reject the border? Why not do away with a violent caste system based on where you’re from, who you are and what those in power have said you deserve? Why not?
Well, we know why not. We know why the American criminal legal system and ICE choose to not uphold people’s dignity, rights and joy. We know, and yet we reject their reasoning.
As I continue to reflect on that initial question from my friend, I lean towards a deeper understanding of how my queerness shapes my organizing work. For me, for many of us, queerness is a work ethic towards joy, dignity, care and respect for all. If queerness is to question and rebuild, then our work to break systems and build a new world is queer work. To redefine love and family, community and care, expression and safety, borders and jail cells is a vocation towards joy at the flip side of “why not”. It is an active rejection and a welcoming call; come, all ye of good faith, and answer the question “why not?”. Bring your clipboards, your glitter, your music, your tamales and song and follow along those other paths we walk together.
Those who work for justice work for belonging. Those who work for justice work for dignity. Those who work for justice work for joy.
Happy pride,
JFMF
Written by Emily Terrana