According to the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang, the word ‘queer’ previously denoted counterfeit money.
I discovered this in passing a few weeks ago and started reflecting (obsessing) on all the ways in which cultural identity politics were tied up in class and society - much like a young Karl Marx, I’m sure. I found particular links to my queerness and the ways in which economic behaviours helped to construct, define, and affirm my gender identity and sexuality.
As Steven Kates asserts for the Journal of Consumer Research, ‘negotiating appearance’ is a ‘target for social control’ by the state. If the labour force felt completely satisfied and at peace with themselves, there would be great difficulty in motivating them to produce more efficient, innovative goods and services without the implied threat of either worsening or improving quality of life.
I feel that.
Indeed, if queer identities are presented as being unstable or fluid within a capitalist network, the means of aspiring to new gender presentations or being more visibly queer are often ‘resolved’ through economic consumption. I have found the purchase of certain goods and services to be the easiest way to perform a model of gender and sexuality that I am comfortable with. As a result, gender in a capitalist world is something that I consume under the guise of sexual liberation and self-knowledge. The value associated with goods and services relies on the notion that self-transformation and validation is possible through this act of consumption.
However, to return to the concept of identity as social currency, the fact that queer denotes ‘counterfeit’ could also be read through a lens of trans theory. Firstly, conforming and ‘passing’ is the clear goal. The counterfeited coins enter the social circulation and threaten to derail or devalue the national currency by association. In a queer reading, the transphobic charge of trans women being ‘fake’ women, or performing the ‘currency’ of a certain gender can be seen here. At the same time that these heterogeneous systems of capitalism reject trans identities through a series of othering, these same systems of purchase and performance are the modes through which gender affirmation surgeries, hormone supplements/replacements, and therapies are purchasable as a means to ‘achieve’ and express one’s sexuality. Identity can be bought; this is something that capitalism absolutely insists upon. And it is not cheap.
Homosexuality has a long historical association with inefficiency or waste, as well as flamboyant expressions of queerness being seen as superfluous or luxurious extras that do not otherwise contribute to economic and biological chains of reproduction. In short, homosexual activities are masturbatory or for pleasure rather than in the pursuit of reproducing a larger labourforce.
Exploring this point further, Will Fisher asserts that the ‘languages of sexuality and economics are interchangeable’, involving ‘comparable types of commerce’ with a ‘particular kind of expenditure’ that ‘does not produce any return’. Sexuality here is paired incipiently with biological reproduction within the family unit and the production of more money – both clear capitalist end-goals to maximise labour power. Same sex couples are figured both as an interruption to this national flow of wealth, but also a corruption to it. Queer people, in this metaphor, are counterfeit entities that are perceived to coexist along the ‘real’ coins, eventually to be identified, standardised, and removed.
Condoms exemplify the shift of sexual politics being something suppressed entirely, to becoming a commodity in itself. This ranges from the handkerchief in the back pocket of a gay man, to ordering an iced oat milk latte in an independent coffee shop, with alternative milks a popular anecdotal feature of queer identities. Here, publicly consuming goods and services associated with queer culture becomes a short hand signal feeding into the philosophy that material possessions can make real something within you. Ironically, this is an assertion of your individuality and uniqueness and creativity through capitalist submission.
In the capitalistic-queer mindset, a constantly deferred but visible queer self exists and can be constructed with just the right assemblage of vintage clothes, Doc Martins, and eye liner. These goods and services are already coded with cultural lifestyle choices that compact the person’s desired self-image. Each decision to consume a good or service therefore, gets you closer to the aspirational deferred version of yourself. This consumption encourages the production of simultaneous versions of ourselves as a way of opposing dominant mainstream culture or reclaiming the experimentation otherwise denied us. It is implied that this comes with it a false realisation that permanent identity can be constructed by anyone as long as they have the means to purchase and maintain it.
Speaking from my own experiences as a queer woman, I find that my relationship with shopping has evolved over time.
For the first 20 or so years of my life, I felt little connection with clothes and accessories, trailing after my mum in an afternoon after school. I presumed that I just didn’t really care about clothes and wasn’t particularly happy with how they looked on me so I paid them little attention. However, after I came out and started to actively consume queer media, I could aspire to the model of visible queer representation on show.
Furthermore, although the concept of the latest fashion is rooted out of a history of many profit-maximising tactics by companies, it also raises the possibility of experimentation through the controversial ecological landmine of fast fashion. You can try out earthy colours, looser fits, and new aesthetics that you didn’t even know existed. It does, however, mean that you throw away clothes and possessions very quickly to replace the clothes that trigger body dysmorphia to symbolically externalise complex feelings.
This isn’t necessarily a tirade against capitalism, because it provides a necessary framework of self-exploration. It is, however, holding a light to the fact that it simultaneously facilitates but also gatekeeps queer experimentation behind a paywall.
Edited by Charlotte Lewis (Editor in Chief)
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