SUPERPODERES MARICAS

GAY SUPERPOWERS

Being part of the initials isn't a superpower. But for once a year, we're going to romanticize it.

Because, if there's one thing we've learned after a few decades of Almodóvar films, Lady Gaga songs, and terrace conversations, it's that perhaps there are a number of queer powers worth reclaiming.

1. THE POWER OF THE INTERNAL GPS (OR HOW TO FIND PATHS WITHOUT A MAP)

José Esteban Muñoz spoke of queerness as a promise, as a future yet to come. And, although he explained it infinitely better, we're left with a very broad-brush idea: some people start their lives with an IKEA plan (you're born, you study, you get married, you have 2.1 children, and you retire) and others assemble their own furniture and wardrobes without instructions.

Without many role models or examples to draw inspiration from… developing a certain taste for exploration. Or a fairly high tolerance for improvising on the fly.

Perhaps that's why chosen families, friendships that are almost like brothers, or more relaxed ways of understanding masculinity didn't emerge from a committee of experts or an academy, but from people experimenting, making mistakes, and finding their place. Because when you don't have a map, you end up developing a compass.

2. THE POWER TO FLY (FIGUREDLY, OF COURSE)

Bell hooks spoke of the margins as a place from which to observe. When you've never quite fit in, you develop a certain habit of looking at things from the outside. As if you could rise a few feet and see the whole forest beyond the branches.

And from up there you begin to suspect that perhaps things are not so inevitable; that many “rules” are simply customs with mass marketing and that different ways of aging, of being a couple, of working, of taking care of oneself or of being successful are perfectly possible.

After all, "things have always been this way" is a phrase that has aged poorly.

3. THE SUPERPOWER OF SHAPE CHANGE

Paul B. Preciado has written extensively about how queer lives function as laboratories for experimentation. Trans, non-binary, or simply non-normative people demonstrate that bodies, identities, and ways of presenting ourselves to the world are far more fluid and malleable than we imagined.

Without intending to, queer people have sometimes been a kind of R&D department for culture. Not because we're more modern (which we are), but because we were born with a certain facility for metamorphosis and change.

To challenge what it means to be attractive, to choose which inherited parts of ourselves we want to keep and which to modify, to shape how we want to present ourselves to the world and relate to it, … .

4. THE MOST IMPORTANT POWER OF ALL: CREATING BEAUTIFUL FUTURES

Many things that seem "normal" today started out as marginal: divorce, the internet, sharing a flat with friends, going to therapy, tight clothes, or living together without getting married.

They started as oddities… and ended up being the norm. And that's why this might be the best gay superpower: creating futures.

Now more than ever.

Because in times of angry people on Twitter, techno-oligarchs, dystopian threats, and environmental catastrophes, the temptation is to give up. To think that everything is getting worse. That everything has already been invented. That things are just the way they are.

But queer history, with all its wounds and fissures, seems determined to prove the opposite: that there are always creative ways to rebuild. New networks of care; kinder ways of being a man, a person, a family, and a community.

In short: the ability to imagine beautiful futures when things get a little rough.

And in that respect, allow us to puff out our chests a little. Because if there's one thing we queers know how to do, it's create beautiful things and then convince the rest of the world to want them for themselves too.

HAPPY PRIDE

P.D. : This week's post is sponsored by one of our first creations: Handsomefyer SUN. The all-in-one solution to look three levels more stylish and protected from the sun. Perfect for the pool, demonstrations, terrace, or stroll.