“Crafting a life is political work.” –Sara Ahmed

Home is a complicated geography for many queers. On the one hand, queers have been “outlawed” from the home; it is, historically speaking, the domain of the cisgender, heterosexual housewife. On the other hand, queers have rejected the traditional home—and those who embrace it—because of its homonormative, apolitical connotations. 

These two claims, however, fail to capture the nuances of home. The queer home is not a reaction against conservative values nor an embrace of them—rather, the queer home is what you—and I, and we—make it. 

This syllabus considers the radical potentialities of the queer home and, relatedly, wonders what liberation queers might seek in the realm of the domestic. I’ll venture into the home via three pathways: textiles, food, and healthcare. Far from being an exhaustive list or a comprehensive lesson, these tidbits are the tip of the iceberg. Use them to find a way in. 

1. Textiles; how might one queer “women’s work”?

Domestic craft, especially that of the textile variety, has long been associated with the labor of women and has therefore been undervalued, underpaid, and patronizingly categorized as “women’s work.” Relatedly, the hierarchical notion that craft is somehow inferior to fine art persists. 

While feminist craft scholarship has successfully challenged that false binary of craft-versus-art with landmark books like The Subversive Stitch, the stereotype of the maker—most often portrayed as a cisgender, heterosexual woman—has largely remained intact. In rejecting the gender binary, however, domestic queers are well positioned to imbue craft with new meaning. 

Many historical and contemporary projects of queer quilting, sewing, cross-stitching, knitting, and mending offer lively examples of how to go about reclaiming “women’s work.” To begin with, let’s briefly consider two quilts:

A. The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt — Purportedly the largest community art project in the world and certainly the most famous historical example of queer craft, the AIDS Quilt solicited its first quilt squares in 1987; today, it weighs 54 tons and comprises almost 50,000 panels, honoring more than 110,000 victims of the AIDS epidemic.

B. The Norfolk Trans Joy Community Quilt — Employing a similar methodology to the AIDS Quilt, this contemporary project solicited quilt squares from trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming folks and their allies. Along with an accompanying zine, the Norwich Trans Joy Community Quilt stands as a defiant act of joy in the face of anti-trans legislation and hate crimes.

Quilts are soft, utilitarian objects but, as these examples illustrate, they can just as easily be made tools of political protest, queer mourning, and trans joy. Thus the expansive potential of do-it-yourself domestic craft is realized with each careful stitch.  

2. Cooking; home is where we are fed. 

It’s often said that the kitchen is the heart of a home. But food is not just about nourishment; it is also about politics. Consider the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program, the lesbian potlucks of the Michigan Womyn’s Festival, or the cookbooks aimed at caring for HIV/AIDS patients in the 1980s and ‘90s. Below, I offer two examples to help illustrate the political power of food:

A. Potlucks — Hosting a potluck is one way to feed your community on a budget. For queers living on the margins, Michelle Hyun Kim writes, the meal became a tool for both literal and symbolic nourishment. When these meals happen at home—like, say, at one of Alex Koones’s Babetown events—the home is subsequently transformed—from a place of rest to a place of resistance.

B. Cookbooks — In the last few decades of the 20th century, queer cookbooks became tools for both cooking and organizing, instructing amaetur chefs on how to nourish AIDS patients and fundraise for various causes. Whoever Said Dykes Can’t Cook?, Political Palate, The Lesbian Erotic Cookbook, and The Gay of Cooking all staked a claim to the kitchen with their recipes, anecdotes, and tongue-in-cheek titles like “Fairy Cakes” and “Arousal Apple Sauce”.

When we think about where our food comes from, queer people are right there, too. Queer farmers challenge stereotypical notions of what a farmer is “supposed” to look like; likewise, queers in the kitchen tear down traditional notions of the housewife. 

3. Care work; you are not alone.

This last section is a little slippery, because everything we’ve already covered in this syllabus could be considered care work. Sewing a quilt for a friend is an act of care; so, too, is cooking them dinner. But let’s take a moment here to consider physical care, namely healthcare. 

Throughout history, people on the margins have fought against government neglect and, concurrently, formed alternative networks of care. Of course, much of this care work happens at home. Let’s look at one contemporary example and one from the not-so-distant past. 

A. Post-surgery care — If you pay a visit to the website GoFundMe and search for “top surgery”, hundreds upon hundreds of results will appear. These fundraisers—set up by individuals and/or friends—fill in the gaps left by the American healthcare system. Surgery is prohibitively expensive; collecting money from friends makes it possible (as does relying on them for things like aftercare, meal prep, car rides, and pet sitting). Likewise, organizations like QueerCare provide post-surgery care to folks in NYC and SF. These DIY efforts are merely the latest manifestation of a decades-long tradition of making do on the margins.

B. ACT UP — Formed in 1987 in the midst of the AIDS epidemic, ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) used direct action to demand medical treatment, research, legislation, and care for HIV/AIDS patients. ACT UP organized dozens of now-legendary protests, including the shutdown of the FDA on October 11, 1988, the political funerals of activists like David Wojnarowicz (his, on the lawn of the White House on July 29, 1992), and the Stop the Church demonstration at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on December 10, 1989. These protests, of course, didn’t happen at home, but they were in service of those suffering at home—a demand that mainstream America abandon its apathy and face what it would rather ignore.

I realized while compiling this project that writing a syllabus about home is synonymous with writing a syllabus about care. The two are inextricably intertwined. It feels fitting to end on this section, then, and leave you with a short list of recommendations for further exploration of the queer home:

Home-work

Read: Crafted With Pride, edited by Daniel Fountain; The Queerness of Home by Stephen Vider
Subscribe: Dyke Domesticity by Julia Golda Harris; Studio Memoir by Grace Rother
Watch: Common Threads: Stories From The Quilt
Listen: Country Queers, a podcast by Rae Garringer