Naked Man on the Corner of This Street
There’s a naked man on the corner of this street. He’s wearing absolutely nothing while the wind whips the small piece of fabric covering the last thing I want to see. He’s talking to someone—a not-naked man. I’m far enough that I can only hear them every now and then. His name is Ulrich—the naked man—and the other one (Not naked man), I didn’t catch his name. Ulrich goes on about his life. He’s a family man—not married but spends time with his brother/mother. He likes to go for walks. He likes to walk naked. The other man asked why, but I didn’t get the answer because I felt weird being so close, listening to a conversation that wasn’t my own—an invasion of privacy. Isn’t that weird—privacy.
There are these interweaving notions of what privacy is and what it isn’t (not a federal right ;) ). For instance, take the naked man on the street corner. His entire junk is out. His private parts are out for anyone to see, and he is okay with that. Does that mean privacy is subjective? I don’t think so. Intrinsically, I believe there are several objective notions of privacy that we must respect. I think I am owed a certain amount of privacy in all aspects of my life: from my data, not accepting cookies, but also the privacy to live my life as I want to live it.
With the supreme court’s tirade of getting rid of people’s rights, I’ve been thinking a lot on how these notions of privacy are fickle. They are not impervious to the whims and woes of the Man’s own desire to rid queer people, and other minorities, of their intrinsic natural-born rights.
Did you know there are several supreme court hearings about butt stuff? Specifically butt stuff with men—the obsession these people have with intruding and inserting themselves into other people’s lives is, quite frankly, admirable, because, to me, I really wouldn’t want to know who’s getting down in the bedroom of a stranger. Most of them come from either Georgia, Texas, or Alabama which shouldn’t carry so much weight considering all things {Sweet Home Alabama plays}.
Genuinely, however, queerness and privacy have learned to be rivals against one another. From representation of queerness on the screen—actors forced to come out—from the Lavender Scare and McCarthyism. Anti-sodomy and sexual privacy. GRIDS. The Lavender Scare was a threat to queer people but also to their livelihood—forced to reckon with the chance that if they are outed or if an employer suspected anything queer of them, they would be fired. The privacy of the bedroom was not safe. Your medical history is not safe. Even now, there are millions of people running from their homes and for their lives across the globe because of a single sentence, a word, because their worlds decided they were not worth their patience.
The world, and the internet, is entirely reduced to visibility, not representation. You must be seen and be heard and be known by the world or else, one, you’re not queer, two, we need to know you’re queer, and, three, if you don’t tell us, then that means you are.
I’d be lying if I said I didn't believe queerness was also about fragility and privacy. Some days, I grow tired of resilience. I grow lazy of it because my existence, say it with me, is resistance. And that is exhausting. Some days, most days, all days, I want to curl into myself and just feel the warmth, feel any warmth. But the right I have to my privacy is cold. It is stale. It is fickle.
It’s also sad.
