Heads up! It’s time – long past time, actually – to learn about queer river justice.
Sure sure sure, you can totally see it. Rivers are queer as fuck. They’re long, they can wind, they flow, they’re deep (except when they’re not), they have indigenous names, they’re special, they have souls – the list is endless.
Rivers matter for queer trans lives. Rivers have long been places of encounter for those outside of straight settler propriety; they are brown in the way that José Esteban Muñoz describes, “the way in which they suffer and strive together, but also the commonality of their ability to flourish under duress and pressure…they smoulder with life and persistence.”
That’s so beautiful, and so profound. Look at the Thames now – so far outside straight settler propriety.
Wait what is straight settler propriety exactly? Not humping the cattle on Sundays?
If they’re smoldering they’re probably in Akron or Pittsburgh or Flint, because normally rivers are too wet to smolder. Sounds nice and Heathcliffish though, doesn’t it.
Queer-trans people make joyous moves of solidarity when we swim in rivers and splash along other shorelines – to wear what we like to the beach, to see and support one another, to be admired in our bodies without apology. Such everyday acts of life, love, and dreaming big transgress settlers norms of sexuality and family and require uprising and political transformation.
Yep. That hot new bikini totally trangresses those settler norms. Uprise in your bikini and claim all the rivers for TransForMation!
Comments
10 responses to “Queering the rivers”
Might be a problem for the ones taking the laydee hormones – or if the water temperature is low.
“admired in our bodies without apology”… I refuse to believe this is something that is actually happening.
I live on the Murray River, part of a system that drains a third of Australia’s land. The only “queer” thing about this River system is how the upstream irrigators think all the water that flows past them is “wasted” an must be harvested. They have no thought for either the lower River users or the systems ecology. Only $$$.
Water is bought and sold by speculators who never use it. Unsuitable crops like cotton and almonds require more water than a healthy river system can provide.
And that they think this can go on forever certainly fits my definition of Queen.
I’m British. Our rivers are brown in the way that the water companies keep dumping shit into them and the Tories let them get away with it.
LOL and brava! I will be laughing for days
Sort of gives the game away, doesn’t it? Overt narcissism.
As for rivers being brown, I’ve worked in brown rivers. They have not been healthy. And definitely not smoldering; that was one of the things that helped jumpstart the environmental movement, when the Cuyahoga River caught fire. Guess it wasn’t smoldering, though. Out and out flames.
Our local river is the mighty Huveaune, which flows about 1 km from where I live. It “flows” in a manner of speaking, however: I’ve never seen any water in it, even after heavy rain. I suppose the water gets stolen further up-river.
OR, you’ve discovered a trans/queer river! Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there! Do you go around demanding to see every river’s water level? Your trivial, fetishistic focus on this supposed lack of “water” is denying its existence! Just because its fluvial non-conformity fails to pass your bigoted, performative, gate-keeping riparianism doesn’t mean it’s not a river! TRAR!
lol
Lol indeed. I hadn’t noticed the point that Your Name’s not Bruce? made until he made it. But he’s absolutely right: demanding that to be identified as a river it needs to have water flowing along it is a very close parallel with the nonsense that we hear all the time about transphobia.