an exegesis on rage

whatever. i can have a Queer Theory moment i guess

The closest thing that I have ever received to a love letter was a photograph of a dissected cow’s heart. He had salvaged it from a biology practical and, in a flourish of inspiration, smeared it through the insides of a school-bag, before nestling it atop a collection of textbooks that were now soaking through with blood. He didn’t provide any context beyond a smiley face and a heart emoji, I suppose because the picture itself spoke a thousand words. It was a grim visual – and, admittedly, rather gothic chic. But I was a teenager, and I had succumbed to that particular nausea teenagers experience when presented with something weird and embarrassing and overtly emotional, and I was more repulsed than anything. 

In many ways, it felt like a microcosm of all the things that scared me about him– it felt too honest. He simply wasn’t like the other boys I knew. There was no armour of irony and self-deprecation, no protective moat he built to island himself from cruelty. He was offended by the offensive, unashamed of his pride, and he dared to take up space without apology. It was as if he was committing the cardinal sin every queer teenager fears most, which was to expose himself as human, and possessing of all the same dignities and failings. He was a sensitive gay boy, plainly and honestly, and he did not care to pretend otherwise. I thought he was incredibly strange. 

To lay bare one’s vulnerability and to demand respect, particularly as a queer person in this world, is often like advertising a fresh wound to sharks. I was like any other teenager who had come out during their formative youth, in that I was fully cognisant that I was on borrowed time, and did anything I could to keep my tenuous grasp on it. We were tolerated because we dared not step out of line. We were meant to be seen, not heard; to play diversity tokens and campy jesters in a public spectacle of Otherness, but never to demand the dignity of fully-realised, emotional beings. 

I sometimes think of queerness as a sort of mitosis: there is a pivotal point, typically during adolescence, where we learn to split ourselves into separate entities. One of these is realer, softer, feels deeply and craves a life of unabashed joy, and it flourishes in the comfort of a bedroom or the company of those we trust most. But the other is palatable and hardened, perhaps manifesting in a deeper voice or a straighter walk, and it is the avatar we slip into before facing an unforgiving wilderness. We are acutely aware that there is violence lying in wait around every corner, intent on punishing us for the sin of self-expression. It haunts us in that careful glance over our shoulder on every quiet street, the steeling of our spines in every unfriendly crowd. Even these small reflexes are part of our armours, seeking to encase our softest insides in an infallible shell. The queer spirit becomes the battleground of our two halves, a ceaseless balancing and grappling between a need for survival and a desire for joy, and it is this endless turmoil within us that gives way to what we call ‘rage’. 

Rage, the quiet mourning that we carry within us always, constantly grieving the things inside us we must silence and extinguish, yearning to be screamed and released from the rooftops, to proclaim: ‘I am here against all odds.’ But of course, survival requires such rage to be measured and placated. So instead, it blindly gnaws and feeds on itself, banished to a solitude that aches and numbs from within.

It is a curious thing to live with this fury inside of you, aggrieved by your position in the world, and the countless people before you who have been tormented and murdered by the same hatred you feel so palpably, and to have no way to release it. Freud talks about suppression as a defence mechanism which preserves us from the instinctive thoughts of the id - things which cause us internal conflict because we understand them to be socially unacceptable. As queer people, we become masters in this art of suppression, but the instinct we suppress is more than thought or action. It is often our whole identities that we are severing, and a rage that comes from our desire to live freely that we are suppressing. 

And that was what made that love letter so astonishing, because it came from a boy who didn’t subscribe to these rules I had simply internalised as fact. I later learned that his little photography exhibition wasn’t some uninspired creepshow, but rather a fully-conceptualised piece on revenge. The school-bag in the foreground had been his bully’s, and the heart had been his tool of retaliation, blood-staining a warning that he would not be held down. It really was an incredibly strange thing to do. But it was also courageous, and beautiful. In all of his teenage innocence, he had channelled his anger into an ode to his own heartbreak, trading suppression for this gory confession of honesty. It was, in hindsight, delightfully and unapologetically queer. He had unwittingly become my first experience of the creative and political potential of rage. 

We talk of rage as something deeply hideous. It is uncouth to be seen as ‘angry’ among polite society, to admit that we are sensitive enough to be perturbed by the world we live in. Rage propagates abuse and violence, after all, and it is the unfettered rage of conquerors and political leaders that leads to war and destruction, or that of our oppressors that leads to inequity. Many of our early exposures to the public spectacle of rage have primed us to reject it, because we have come to understand it as victims - the man who just called you a faggot outside of his car window, the pastor who preaches about fire and brimstone for the depraved, they all have exemplified anger as something to fear. 

But it is important to understand rage as not the gun or the fist, but as a feeling first and foremost. Therapists often talk about anger as a secondary emotion. It does not arrive to us in a vacuum, but as the salient response of our more vulnerable selves. It is far harder to admit that we are afraid or hurt than it is to be angry, because anger allows us a form of control and safety. We can direct it as a weapon to keep others at bay, and it keeps us from having to deal with the source of our own pain. But equally, when we are able to express anger safely and with understanding of our hurt, our rage can become a tool of transformative change. 

This ethos of rage is an essential part of our queer political fabric. The Stonewall riots were not the product of queers hanging their hat up to a lifetime of suppression and pacifism - they were a rebellion, composed of queers who were tired, mad, fed up, indignant and demanding of space. Rather than soothe their rage, they utilised it as a source of inspiration and a catalyst for something bigger than themselves. This inherent queer rage exists within all of us, and it allows us to commit our own little revolutions each day - every question of ‘why are we treated like this?’ turns into a promise of ‘I want to change this world,’ and each individual triumph of standing up to our persecutors connects to riots, rebellions, into networks of life-giving. Our indignation unites us in community, fighting for our collective joy. 

Just as mitosis is an unavoidable hallmark of the queer experience, I think so is our desire for synthesis. As I grow into this world, I seek more and more to become a congruent being and embrace all parts of myself honestly. At some point, the queer propensity for joy must stamp out the spectre of self-doubt. Ocean Vuong once professed in an interview that he saw queerness as a gift, because it demanded an alternative innovation in him. When all of our roads into the paradise of traditional society are cut off from us, we are compelled to construct new pathways and redefine what a fulfilling life really means. We learn to become the architects of our own joy: we create our own communities and families, and rather than demand a seat at the table, we build our own dining room.

 In understanding this about ourselves, we must recognise our rage as the spark that lights the match. There is an inner beast that rages against injustice, and try as we might to ignore it, it is a force of good that can be directed into action. Every day that we say ‘fuck it’ and wear the hideous outfit or flip off that off-putting dude at the party, I think we write our own love letter to queerness. Queerness is an innovation of spirit; it is the gall to throw out the playbook and write one’s own manual. The beauty this cultivates cannot be separated from the indignation we carry, either. We aspire to queer joy because there is a righteous anger propelling us in our search. It is through these vast emotions that we create the most wonderful things - just as there is something beautiful to be found in smearing guts and blood through some asshole’s bag. Maybe that art lives in everything. 

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for made with rage

17-22/02/23