Queer Heterosexuality?

[human strike]

This is a concept I recently stumbled upon and am finding very intriguing. Does anyone have any thoughts or opinions on it?

For some limited background for those who may not have come across queer heterosexuality before: http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-05-06/columns/the-queer-heterosexual/

[Fourth Internationalist]

The ending to that piece is absolutely amazing!

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I have mostly negative feelings about this, to be honest.
For one, I think the liberal tone of the article (Sex shops! Mainstream acceptance! Hooray!) reflects a fundamentally liberal perspective: That the blurring of lines will eventually make for a happy liberal democratic gender/sex-blind future. The truth of course, is that this is bullshit - heteropatriarchy persists, and "queer" heteros don't experience the very real institutional and systemic violence directed against queers (and especially working class queers, and queer people of colour). The fact that sex/gender in this article seems to exist independent of race and class (as though the three aren't impossibly entangled!) speaks volumes.
Getting to my point: the widening of acceptable heterosexual sex and gender expressions doesn't constitute a "queering" of heterosexuality. Insofar as heterosexuality remains identifiable as such, it will remain not queer. The appropriation of queerness by heterosexuals - let's be honest, straight people - serves to undermine queer as a political position, and a space of conflictuality. This sad, degraded, Lady Gaga queerness isn't queer at all - it's straight rebranded for hip yuppies who want to imagine they live in a world that doesn't exist (finally! guilt-free capitalism!).
Fuck it.

[human strike]

I have mostly negative feelings about this, to be honest.
For one, I think the liberal tone of the article (Sex shops! Mainstream acceptance! Hooray!) reflects a fundamentally liberal perspective: That the blurring of lines will eventually make for a happy liberal democratic gender/sex-blind future. The truth of course, is that this is bullshit - heteropatriarchy persists, and "queer" heteros don't experience the very real institutional and systemic violence directed against queers (and especially working class queers, and queer people of colour). The fact that sex/gender in this article seems to exist independent of race and class (as though the three aren't impossibly entangled!) speaks volumes.
Getting to my point: the widening of acceptable heterosexual sex and gender expressions doesn't constitute a "queering" of heterosexuality. Insofar as heterosexuality remains identifiable as such, it will remain not queer. The appropriation of queerness by heterosexuals - let's be honest, straight people - serves to undermine queer as a political position, and a space of conflictuality. This sad, degraded, Lady Gaga queerness isn't queer at all - it's straight rebranded for hip yuppies who want to imagine they live in a world that doesn't exist (finally! guilt-free capitalism!).
Fuck it.

I see where you're coming from and thought some of the same things about that particular article (I didn't mean for that article to be at the centre of this discussion though), but I think there might be something to this idea even if there are problems with it.

These articles offer different perspectives:
http://www.culturalresearch.org/qhet.html
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/mostly-straight/

I would be interested if you could define queer in such a way that would actually exclude people like this (whether they identify as queer or not).

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Neither of those articles really won me over on the idea of "queer heterosexuality" either - though I preferred the latter as it didn't attempt to bring queerness or a queer project into the discussion at all. In fact, I think it's an important alternative: the idea that a cisgendered heterosexual man can have a complicated and "not narrow" sexuality without pretensions to queerness. Not that the men interviewed for the article couldn't be queer, but rather that it's better to be honest. Maybe my take on the first article will clarify:
I thought it was kind of trash. Some grad student cis-striaght boy being like, "I've spent sooooo much time with the gays, so, you know, I'm one of them despite constantly reasserting my heterosexuality." This bizarre maneuver, again, represents a broadening horizon for acceptable straight sexuality, rather than a queer project that attacks and undermines the coherency of heterosexuality and straightness. It's a question of discourse/practice as much as of sexuality/gender: it's not necessarily that Clyde Smith isn't queer because he doesn't do queer sex (which is necessarily impossible to define), but that by calling himself heterosexual he reifies a sexuality that is premised on its not-queerness, positing a definite heterosexual orientation, rather than attacking heterosexuality as a relationship to patriarchy. It fails to grapple with the relationship between gender and "sexed" bodies as beginning with social relationships, and instead approaches sex as preceding gender, normalizing Eurocentric narratives of sex rooted in mythologies of prehistoric manhood.
My point being, heterosexuality isn't concerned so much with the intercourse of particular types of genitals (though its embodiment has particular consequences) nearly as much as with the legibility of that intercourse (legally, systematically, systemically, culturally, etc.). Queerness might involve a dick going into a vag (even if it usually doesn't), but it is queer because it is not comprehensible along lines of hetero/homosexuality. Ergo, the implicit contradiction in queer heterosexuality.

[Il Medico]

Before I get into the articles you posted, I'd like to point out that there are plenty of heterosexual queers. Queer is about the broadest of board terms you can use because it can apply to pretty much everyone out side of heteronormative sexuality and/or gender identity. The fact that there are heterosexual queers should be no more shocking than the fact there are cis-gendered queers. That said, none of these articles are about this and instead seems to focus this weird idea of the 'queerifaction of heterosexuality'.

The first article seems to inflate queerness with certain sex acts. Hinging on the position that the growing acceptance of sexual activities like pegging or other anal pleasure for males among heterosexuals shows that they have been 'queerified'. This whole idea is of course based around socially constructed ideas about sex. Enjoying and engaging more openly in sex acts that have been stigmatized due to their association with queer sexuality within a heterosexual context doesn't make one queer. No more than a man engaging in and enjoying traditionally 'feminine' activities (cooking, cleaning, child rearing, etc) makes him woman.

The second article dances around a lot on exactly what he is trying to get at. I might be reading a bit into it since he never specifically states it, but he seemed to be trying to describe his discovery of his non heteronormative gender identity in a incredibly tortured and vague way. If this is indeed the case he very much falls into the queer umbrella as a heterosexual queer. However, this is only possible subtext and the main focus of the article seems to be his involvement in the queer community and how this has made him 'queer'.
Now I'm not going to say he isn't or couldn't be because it's not anyone's business to define another person's identity. The way the article reads, however, very much seems to me that this person has fallen into a line of thinking that I've seen with hetero allies irl. Some allies, especially ones heavily involved in the community and activism, start to view themselves as more than just supporters of queers but as queers themselves in a round about way. This is not to say they start to question or reject their heterosexuality (though some may), but rather they see their position within the community as 'putting them in the same boat'. The problem with this is, of course, the fact that we're not in the same boat. Even the best and most supportive allies benefit from hetero privilege.

The third article quite happily jumps up and down at the emergence of a new box/label 'Mostly Straight' for which to describe guys who are "totally into girls, but also do some 'gay' stuff". Ignoring the fact that they seem to think bisexuality can only apply to people who are interested in both sexes equally and that there have been plenty of other labels dreamed up that could easily apply here (eg. Bi-Curious), the article's fundamental premise is flawed. The article views sexuality as a series of boxes with labels on them and delights in the fact they've found a new one. Sexuality, however, is not a bunch of boxes, but a spectrum with each person experiencing it uniquely. The article actually unwittingly highlights this by the fact that all of the boys they interviewed had completely different experiences of their 'mostly straight' sexuality.

In the end, this idea of 'queer heterosexuality' as posed by these articles requires either tortured/misguided logic or a fundamental misunderstanding of sexuality in general to work and is honestly kind of daft.

[Skyhilist]

At the very least I can understand why people would want to use the word "queer heterosexual" to describe themselves. Being the "white cis well-off heterosexual male" can be pretty awful considering what so many others who fit in that category have done to others who don't fit in that category...

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

At the very least I can understand why people would want to use the word "queer heterosexual" to describe themselves. Being the "white cis well-off heterosexual male" can be pretty awful considering what so many others who fit in that category have done to others who don't fit in that category...

Yeah sure, just like I can understand some white dude whose 1/32nd cherokee playing that up to claim that he's part of the subaltern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaltern_%28postcolonialism%29). White guilt is a kind of rightwing ideology that perverted and turned against itself. The point is that white/straight/male people are not all morally responsible for their privilege any more than people of color/queer/female are responsible for their oppression, and turning towards or away from a particular identity is not the way to solve the structural issues at hand.

[Devrim]

At the very least I can understand why people would want to use the word "queer heterosexual" to describe themselves.

Wow! I have no understanding whatsoever of why they would want to. I am completely mystified

Devrim

[Sasha]

I think il medico already covered most of my thoughts, I would only like to add an personal note, I myself mostly identify as queer, while I always have been almost exclusively in sexual longtime relations with opposite sex partners there are many aspects that make me certainly not straight yet bi is also not enough to cover it. Im into bdsm, I'm principally against strict monogamy, I occasionally sleep with guys (with and without females involved), while mostly attracted to females my prefered type is mostly tomboys/more "masculine" girls, I abhor sex negativity, I mostly hang out in the queer scene and feel really at home there, etc etc.
So when asked I mostly identify myself as "bent" as sexual orientation and "queer" as sexual identity. I can therefore certainly relate to people who want to identify as "queer hetrosexual".
I'm not gay, I'm not straight, I'm certainly not Bi as my sexual relations with guys differ greatly from those with women (and gender isn't the important factor period in my sexuality), so yeah, queer is just the most comfortable label.

[Consistent.Surprise]

@Whatever Singularity: I think the examples in your reply point more towards those who I consider heteroflexible but the umbrella for queer heterosexuality is so broad it might really include that.

As someone who owns toys, has delved into the FemDom side, & has fantasized about pegging, I fall under the Queer Hetero umbrella but just because I have done, or thought of, those things, does that qualify me as queer? I'm really not so sure.

FemDom isn't a really a queer thing to me nor are toys but BDSM is considered to be queer because it's outside of the normal constraints of heterosexual relations. Which makes no logical sense to me but the definition places me there.

I just think that all this labeling (no matter how old it is, since a lot of it dates back decades or further) is pointless; we pair off into coupling as we choose to &, with communication & consent, get what each person desires, no matter the type of make up of the relationship. Why keep pigeonholing ourselves to meet the labels society wants to place on us? I say fuck the labels. Do what you enjoy with someone who enjoys the same things.

[Il Medico]

I think il medico already covered most of my thoughts, I would only like to add an personal note, I myself mostly identify as queer, while I always have been almost exclusively in sexual longtime relations with opposite sex partners there are many aspects that make me certainly not straight yet bi is also not enough to cover it. Im into bdsm, I'm principally against strict monogamy, I occasionally sleep with guys (with and without females involved), while mostly attracted to females my prefered type is mostly tomboys/more "masculine" girls, I abhor sex negativity, I mostly hang out in the queer scene and feel really at home there, etc etc.
So when asked I mostly identify myself as "bent" as sexual orientation and "queer" as sexual identity. I can therefore certainly relate to people who want to identify as "queer hetrosexual".
I'm not gay, I'm not straight, I'm certainly not Bi as my sexual relations with guys differ greatly from those with women (and gender isn't the important factor period in my sexuality), so yeah, queer is just the most comfortable label.
Not that this has anything to do with anything, but as I was reading your post I couldn't help but laugh because I just kept picturing the former GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) head at my old college sitting you down and straightsplaining (can this be a thing? or is it? like mansplaing for queers) how, in actuality, you're pansexual because 'you just love people and blah blah blah'. Maybe she wouldn't though, it really only seemed to be the bisexual label that rustled her jimmies.

Anyways, personal anecdotes aside, I totally feel you on 'queer' being the most comfortable label. It's really the only one that actually feels accurate just because how board it is, "Not straight and/or cis-gendered? That's me!". But people usually aren't happy with that and want specifics. Trying to explain that you can't really explain just baffles most people. When I'm asked I tend to answer bisexual and androgynous because taking their broadest definitions (Everything between completely heterosexual/homosexual and completely male/female respectively) I do fall in there somewhere. More accurately it would be like 'varying and sometimes contradictory degrees of physical and emotional attraction to all sexes and genders that lands me somewhere around middle of the spectrum and Fuck if I know/sometimes mostly kinda female'. That of course is the problem with specific labels, they never entirely fit and often change from person to person (like if you hadn't said you identify as 'bent' I would of assumed you'd identify as bisexual based on your description, because it falls within the board scope of how I view bisexuality). Of course, even the label of 'queer', even in it's broadest sense, some aren't comfortable with. I was reading through some of the old threads linked at the bottom of this one and was kinda surprised to see 2007 TAT and TC railing against the term 'queer' and posting articles like "Gay but not Queer."

However, due to the way our society thinks about identity it's sort of demanded we be able to explain it in relatively simple terms. So we're pressured to pick a box we're sorta comfortable with and pigeonhole ourselves in it, which is dumb and totally sucks.

[human strike]

At the very least I can understand why people would want to use the word "queer heterosexual" to describe themselves. Being the "white cis well-off heterosexual male" can be pretty awful considering what so many others who fit in that category have done to others who don't fit in that category...

I've wondered if attitudes like this are partly explained by the argument made in this: http://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2013/09/17/the-problem-with-privilege/

[Sea]

Wow! I have no understanding whatsoever of why they would want to. I am completely mystified

DevrimI think it means that I'm free to hit on my straight friends......

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Full sexual and gender liberation for all people can only happen if existing social institutions are abolished and the archaic values they represent are swept aside with them.

Having said that, there's nothing queer about being heterosexual in this society.