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pok wei heng's avatar

How beautifully rendered Alexander! A blessing to have found this, and written so beautifully.

I've made peace, and found my POC experience of being gay so beautiful and powerful - I found myself not straight (or 'manly') enough to exist in Singapore (where I'm from), and also not fitting in gay subculture in New Zealand. A 'third space', an in-between swallowed me up and protected me instead. It gives me the lens to now practice compassion, to see things from the lens of the 'in-between'. Perhaps similarly, this 'in-between' is a way to interact and play with masculinity - in what ways do we embolden and weaken 'toxic masculinity' everyday?

My most recent interpretation of Queer is that it is an energy, and not who we bed with. It's an incredible energy to interrogate if what we do is in service of life. Because what is queer, if not to wild? And what is wild, if not the very essence of living? I have seen gay couples integrate so seamlessly into patriarchy; I have also seen cis, straight white men so clearly and beautifully live outside of binaries with such conviction - perhaps the latter experiments with Queer more potently.

So if we want to tap into the potentiality of masculinity (that might not be toxic), perhaps it's reflecting on a few factors: the intertwining of our cultural heritage (and indoctrination?), our personal environmental entanglement with masculinity, but also our aspirations towards living as queer beings. None of this is easy but all very exciting! The natural environment also hints at the symbiotic relationship of the masculine, feminine and beyond.

Would love to chat beyond and share space! I've started drafting up various scribbles in a series called "The Queer Manifesto" on my substack - just wrote a little intro if of interest :)

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Kirk Gordon's avatar

Thanks for this piece, Alexander! I really enjoyed it, and especially connected to the point about not fully expressing our pain or emotional needs for fear of not being fully understood, of not getting our needs met. While I do have gay male friends I have crossed this barrier with, the loneliness and forced emotional self-sufficiency that many of us experience as kids is a tough habit to break. A lot of practiced self-soothing. I’ve been toying with my own feelings around gay “community” and the ways it feels both safe and inadequate — this piece gave me some more insight into that feeling, so thank you.

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