Queer Gnosis

by Troy Williams

Queer teens are everywhere. They have arrived in a diverse array of
gendered bodies, pop politics and androgyny chic. Queer youth comprise
the new-edge of our cultural zeitgeist. The ultimate Queertopia
inhabited by a New Gender Nation. 

Over the past three
decades Queer Consciousness has rapidly accelerated throughout our
culture.  Kids are coming out at 15, 14 and younger – and many are
rejecting familiar labels like “gay” and “lesbian” for inclusive terms
like “genderqueer”.  For many teens sexuality has become peripheral to
identity.  Sexual orientation is no longer the totality of queer
ontology. In addition, straight teens are also demonstrating
unparalleled acceptance of their gay peers.   Today there are now over
3000 Gay-Straight Alliances in American high schools.

The  “New Gender Nation” was coined by Amy Ray in her song, Put It Out for Good.
She describes this generation as “the ones to articulate it the most.
It’s that idea that we’re not contained into one gender any more. We
understand gender fluidity. We’re looking at it in a new way and we’re
going to challenge you at every turn.”[1]

The
60’s Sexual Revolution and the LGBT political movement certainly set
the context, but what explains this punctuated shift?  Well, I’ve got a
couple wiki-style theories (that I’m open to editing).  I believe the
rapid rise of the New Gender Nation can be attributed to three
mega-memes: the Internet, 90’s Rave Culture and of course, Madonna.

First,
a word about memes.  Coined by Richard Dawkins, “memes” are
mind-viruses that spread cultural information.  Memetic catch-phrases
like “that’s so gay” or a sudden mass awareness of say, Global Warming,
are all “thought contagions” that we share cross-culturally.[2]

The
maven of all queer mega-memes was of course, Madonna. This post-modern
diva commanded our collective fascination in the 80’s.  She modeled
gendered power with unapologetic sexual expression. Madonna caressed
underground gay culture, appropriated “vogue” attitude and sold it back
to the masses. Her love of genderplay was so infectiously absorbed by
the mainstream, that we all began to loosen up.  Fluid gender memes got
into the groove, quicker than a ray of light.   

Queer
consciousness continued to expand from the 90’s rave culture in the
UK.  Acid House music opened up new psychic possibilities for mutineer
punks and misfits. The raver subculture was an exquisitely queer,
underground fringe rejection of the mainstream. All night parties were
hosted in industrial warehouses and secret rural locations far from the
gaze of panoptican eyes.

The spirit-goddess Ecstasy tempted
partygoers to “stop, drop and roll”.  Her empathic pills came disguised
in varied colors with deviant corporate icons:  “Blue X-Boxes”, “Yellow
Supermans”, “Green Volkswagons”.  Her outlaw chemicals released a rush
of serotonin through the eager body. Ecstasy amped our natural senses
and triggered an all-consuming love for everything.  That was her
gift.  Even straight homophobic jocks while “rolling” under her
influence, would hug and massage each other’s naked chests and confess
their profound mutual love.  “E” annihilated our cultural Fear of the Other, the Strange and the Queer.

Later,
in the post Y2K genderverse, America’s millennial children gained
unprecedented access to the Internet. Young people today are born with
wireless modems in their Crown Chakra. They stream high-speed
connections to their Ecstatic Virtual Tribe. This vast neural network
of our global mind has forever altered how we construct identity. Peer
2 Peer networks formed overnight, instantly connecting “Net-Geners” to
open-source systems like Myspace, Flickr and Youtube.  A rural
trannydyke in Kanab, Utah could now access other omni-gender youth
anywhere on the planet. No longer isolated or alone, these on-line
cross-dressing kandy-ravers came into their own.  Viral queer
mega-memes were now global.

But sometimes we adults still
project our yester-memes onto young people.  And we have often
perpetuated the stereotype that queer youth are overly depressed and
suicidal. Don’t believe it. Psychologist Ritch Savin-Williams recent
book, The New Gay Teenager [3],  challenges this idea.  While being  interviewed on KRCL’s RadioActive, he  argued:

“Traditionally
the early research on gay youth has been done by clinical psychologists
who for very good motives, studied youth to point out the harassment
and the victimization, suicidality, depression, prostitution, HIV
status — all of these rather negative things.  The purpose was good,
to get support services for gay youth and a lot of those where
successful.  The problem is that a lot of the kids who first
participated in research were those who were the most out, most
visible, and quite frankly, not exactly representative in terms of
their mental health.”

Savin-Williams argues that the earliest
study of queer youth involved “at risk” teens comprised of runaways,
drug-abusers and hustlers.  From this narrow sample, a pathologized
meta-meme was formed about queer kids.  This is now shifting.  He
continues:

“Later studies have shown if you get a much
wider breadth of youth with same-sex attractions, what you begin to
find is less of this pathology.  You have a study where you show that
15% of gay youth have attempted suicide and that rate is 3 times larger
than straight kids.  But what is interesting to me is that 85% of the
youth did not attempt suicide.  We never talk about the
resiliency and strength and the power of youth with same-sex
attraction.  We have been so focused on the kids who are having
problems that we have neglected the kids who are actually doing quite
well.  We have overemphasized the negativity.”[4]

Wow.  Could the tragic memes we’ve been spreading  about queer kids really be our
generation’s story? Have we become too persistently nostalgic for our
own Apocalypse? What would happen if we saturated the world with the
phenomenal stories of queer youth? What if we unleashed a global
onslaught of positive über-memes to infect the entire planet? If we
did, I bet those kids struggling with suicide would discover more truly
fantastic reasons to live.

It’s happening.  Today’s youth
are post-gay neo-queers. Their identity exists beyond sexual
orientation and biological constructs of gender.  They are re-creating
how to be and exist in the world. We are on the verge of a social
Queertopia – encompassing a radical shift in gendered consciousness.

The  youth are already here, waiting for us to arrive.

Qcast "New Gender Nation" including an interview with psychologist Ritch Savin-Williams here:
New Gender Nation (10:27 min.)