Queer and queer activism

They want you dead
In their shitty world
Where it only matters to produce and consume
Where your emotions and illusions they have no space for
They want you dead

They want you dead
Because you don't produce, because you don't consume
Because you do care about your emotions
Because you want to tend to your trauma, to the wounds you carry from their shit
They want you dead

A week ago I took part in a civil disobedience action for climate justice in Lisbon. It was not my first civil disobedience action, nor will it be my last. However, in this action I realised that for me it is no longer the same.

I have been arrested several times in various countries during my activist life. My first arrest was in 1986 in Germany, in an action against a nuclear waste processing factory. The last one was probably a few years ago in England or Belgium. So, I know more or less well the process of an arrest in various countries. Although it is true that it is not pleasant, I have learned to manage the fear that always accompanies these situations. Or, so I thought, until last Saturday.

It is always good to put words to things. What can't be named, doesn't exist. And I have had a hard time positioning myself on the arromantic spectrum, between demiromantic and arromantic. This means that I rarely feel a romantic attraction to another person - no matter their gender, nor do I have any desire to establish a relationship. And I don't lack anything.

In the debate triggered by the PSOE's trans- and queerphobic discussion document, queer people are being made invisible, and part of the trans movement and the PSOE are joining in queerphobia.

While I'm slowly reading Pete Walker's book, Complex PTSD: From Surving to Thriving: A Guide and Map to Recovery from Childhood Trauma, I have another book to "relax", as Pete Walker's book moves me a lot sometimes, and I have to stop.

In July 2014, Andalusia recognized the right to the self-determination of gender identity. After a four-year struggle this right was finally recognized for the first time in the case of a non-binary person, thus opening cracks in the binary gender system.

For some years now I have defined myself as a genderqueer, a non-binary gender identity: neither man, nor woman, nor - in my case - at any point between the two extremes. I have come to define myself this way after a process of many years. I was assigned male at birth; I was raised and educated as a boy. In this process I have benefited from the privileges that patriarchy assigns to boys, but I have also suffered a lot and continue to live with my wounds and scars. I had a rather conflictive relationship with (my) masculinity, having tried to fit into various masculinities (hetero, gay...), with less and less success. I got to a point where I said "enough is enough", I was tired of being defined as a man, and of the pressure of fulfilling (or resisting) what it means to be a man in our society.

On June 29, 2019, as Bloque Critico - Disidencias del Sur, we participated in the "official" Seville Pride 2019, that is, the capitalist pride, depoliticized, mercantilized, homonormalized. But we are not silent! We reclaim our pride, a political pride, a pride of dissidence, a pride as revolt.