Museums and Queerness

    Through my Museum Studies class, I have learned that museums are much queerer than I had once thought. Museums are very political; they always have been. At first, only the rich and powerful were able to acquire and admire collections. Now, even though many museums are accessible to everyone, the government still has some power in what is and is not shown. There is also a certain story that museums try to tell with their art, and that is why it is so important to look at things through different lenses. You might initially see one story, but if you dig deeper, you can see another story unfolding. The whole reason I bring this up is because I believe art is a very versatile hobby, and I feel like art is queer. The act of making something no one else is done is usually considered outside the norm, which is literally what “queer” is. Overall, I believe that it is important to continue to support artists, and museums, because they are the ones representing queerness and telling the stories everyone else is too afraid to tell.

Vulgar is My Moms Favorite Word

 She wears rouge lip stain, the kind that comes in a polish container. She paints her nails with it too, she does it with dirty hands. Her house is full of bookshelves. Books about bodies, art, sex, music, rebellion. She owns enough books you could build castles out of them and hide in the shapes of their stories. Her favorite perfume is Chanel number 5. She thinks it smells like an old woman but wears it as a badge of honor cause she bought it with her hard-earned money. There is a scarf draped over every lamp in the house casting the walls in kaleidoscope patterns and colors. Each lamp threatens to start a fire dancing on the dull edge of catastrophe. The floors and corners of the house littered with fur from pets she can’t afford but her heart is just that big she has the room to spare. She owns miscellaneous pairs of tights, each pair is ripped, and she won’t ever throw them away. Her closet is congested with millions of heels, she simply can’t help herself. She journals her fantasies and wears her body proud. She daydreams about museums and the daughter she will name after her father’s mother. Before bed every night she looks in the mirror, paints her lips red and gives herself a kiss goodnight. She is wholly, devoutly, absolutely in love with herself.  

 I bend the word normal

And it creaks

The sound is pleasant

The floorboards of a cabin

Summer retreat

Trees swaying in the breeze

Granddad’s screen door

Just a little more and it grows a little louder

Revealing words and groans

The nicest things said:

Leave

You’re not wanted here

I’ve searched through the language
For a home that doesn’t close itself off

Granddad’s screen door

And so I run

And so it rains

I find shelter in the dark

I remove the word from my pocket

Through the tears I wrench on normal

Break, damnit!

It groans and bends

And bends and groans

And does not break

But doubles back on itself

And I shut my eyes and wait for the crack

Song

Singing

Harmony

Melody

It’s certainly crooked

The timing is off

The words are a little stretched here 

A little short there

But in time 

And out of it as well

I tap my feet 

And it continues to rain

But I just drink the water because

My god, I’m thirsty!

 Everyone wants to know if her curves ever break free

She winds down long forgotten paths 

Between forgotten trees 

Whose skin is all tortured by letters and plus signs hugged by ragged hearts

Some whose leaves have fallen, faded, been stepped on, and blown apart

She swerves through vertical miles of spray painted track 

The names are all now wounds whose consistency just seems to lack

It's okay they've been patted down and searched for threatening items

Even when their teeth are pulled they'll find a different way to bite em 

She skirts around the empires that birthed the kings that swept her off her feet

She gathers up the courage that she abandoned in the dusty alleys and on side streets

It's easy to assemble something similar to a dream 

And attach it to your self worth 

It never goes well though

Or so it seems

Borderline broken

On an independent slope of mass destruction

Rethinking every single word I've ever spoken

Making sure I've never hurt anyone with an exhale or sharp tongue

Searching every high and low for some token of gratitude

That is well deserved of my softly spoken attitude

I haven't written anything in a while

Everything I think of seems to draw out sorrow rather than a smile

I'll sit and stare

And I'll compare

The wants of the many 

With the needs of myself

And pray my dreams don't fall upon a back burner

Or on a long forgotten shelf

So gaze with me in a cautious wondering

At my apparent, constant blundering

While I be torn asunder. Wing

bent and broken from the thunder. Sing

me a river

Cry me a song

Take me as I come 

In the morning

I will be long gone

The Queer Art of Athletic Failure: When Losing Becomes Liberation

Public discourse surrounding queer sport is often limited to debates about inclusion and fairness, narrowly focused on hormone levels and alleged biological advantage. This misses the structural critique that queer athletes inherently embody. International bodies like the NCAA and the IOC use policies regulating hormone levels to enforce “fair competition,” but these regulations function as biopolitical surveillance, reinforcing the assumption that women must be protected because they are physiologically inferior to men.

This binary logic becomes painfully clear in the experience of MMA fighter Fallon Fox, who faced a “damned-if-she-wins, damned-if-she-doesn’t” conundrum. To prove her legitimacy as a woman, meaning she was to prove she was no more biologically advantaged than cisgender women, Fox perversely had to lose. This illustrates how rigid structures of winning/losing and success/failure shape the sporting world, forcing trans athletes into an unwinnable contest for validation. Fox’s loss becomes politically and personally significant. After her professional defeat, she reflected, “I guess this means that people will realize that I'm just a woman after all. I'm female. I'm human.” Her defeat became a moment of undoing and unbecoming, breaking the racialized and gendered scripts that constrained her identity.

In a climate where activists like Riley Gaines reduce complex debates to moralistic calls for exclusion, centering the power and possibility of failure shows the creative and disruptive potential of queer sport. It reminds us that resistance, identity, and liberation are not always about winning. They are often found in the courage to fail on your own terms.

Memories

If I had known that my memories would be

The last relics of a bygone era,

I would have kept better care of them.

Perhaps I would have planted them in a garden.

Blossoms and blooms to feed the bees,

They carry my memories on their fu like

Pollen and take them home to enrich their honey.

Maybe my memories are taken tot he sky

In tehe bellies of birds, and flown south

To warmer climates. Maybe the snakes

Flick the air with their tongues and taste

My memories on the wind. Maybe the sun

Bakes my memories in to the earth, dry

And cracked like the mud of a dried up river wash.

Had I known that my memories would be

The only things left of the flowers the bees the birds the snakes,

Maybe I would have worked harder to keep them

From turning into nothing but memories.