Straight people identifying as queer runs from ugly appropriation to beautiful idealism

Jenna Wortham wrote a fascinating article about the pros and cons of straight people identifying as queer. In the wild, this is often nothing more than an ugly appropriation. Ah, but the possibilities…

"Someday, maybe we'll recognize that queer is actually the norm, and the notion of static sexual identities will be seen as austere and reductive. … To the queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz, queerness was not a label people could claim but a complete reimagining of how people could be. "We may never touch queerness," he wrote, in his 2009 book, "Cruising Utopia." "But we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality." The widespread acceptance and even appropriation of the word "queer" seem to move us both closer to and further from such a future. But the horizon is out there, and you can see it if you squint."