GAY SUPERPOWERS
Being part of the alphabet mafia isn’t a superpower. But once a year, we’re allowed to romanticise it a bit.
Because if there’s one thing we’ve learnt after a few decades of Almodóvar films, Lady Gaga bangers and pints in beer gardens, it’s that there might actually be a few queer powers worth celebrating.
THE INTERNAL GPS (OR HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY WITHOUT A MAP)
José Esteban Muñoz described queerness as a promise — a future still on its way. He explained it far better than we ever could, but we’ll stick with the rough version: some people start life with an instruction manual (be born, study, get married, have 2.1 kids, retire), while others end up building the wardrobe without the IKEA guide.
With few role models and not much of a blueprint to follow, you develop a taste for exploring. Or at least a fairly high tolerance for making it up as you go along.
Maybe that’s why chosen families, friendships that feel like siblings, or more relaxed ways of being a man didn’t come out of some think tank. They came from people trying things, getting things wrong, and figuring it out as they went.
Because when you don’t have a map, you end up growing a compass.
THE POWER OF FLIGHT (FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING)
Bell hooks wrote about the margins as a place from which to observe. When you’ve never quite fitted in, you get used to looking at things from the outside.
Like floating a few feet above the ground and seeing the whole forest instead of just the branches.
And from up there, you start wondering whether things are really as inevitable as they seem. Whether many “rules” are just habits with a good PR team. Whether different ways of ageing, loving, working, looking after yourself or defining success might be perfectly possible after all.
After all, “that’s just the way things are” hasn’t aged particularly well.
THE SHAPE-SHIFTING SUPERPOWER
Paul B. Preciado has written extensively about queer lives as spaces of experimentation. Trans, non-binary and gender-nonconforming people remind us that bodies, identities and the ways we present ourselves are far more fluid than we were led to believe.
Without really meaning to, queer people have often acted as culture’s R&D department. Not because we’re more modern (though, fair enough), but because we came out of the box with a knack for transformation.
For challenging ideas of attractiveness. Deciding which inherited bits of ourselves to keep and which to change. Shaping how we want to show up in the world and how we relate to it.
THE MOST IMPORTANT SUPERPOWER OF ALL: BUILDING BEAUTIFUL FUTURES
A lot of things that seem “normal” today started out on the fringes: divorce, the internet, flat-sharing with mates, therapy, fitted clothes, or living together without getting married.
They started as oddities.
Then they became ordinary.
And that may well be the greatest gay superpower of all: creating futures.
Now more than ever.
Because in an age of permanently angry men on Twitter, techno-oligarchs, dystopian headlines and climate doomscrolling, it’s tempting to give up. To think everything’s getting worse. That there’s nothing new left to imagine. That things are simply the way they are.
But queer history, with all its scars and cracks, keeps insisting otherwise.
That there are always creative ways to rebuild. New networks of care. Kinder ways of being a man, a person, a family, a community.
In short: the ability to imagine beautiful futures when things start looking a bit grim.
And on that front, allow us a tiny bit of pride.
Because if there’s one thing gay people know how to do, it’s create something gorgeous — and then convince everyone else they want it too.
Happy Pride.
P.S.: This week’s post is sponsored by one of our earliest creations: Handsomefyer SUN. The all-in-one way to look three notches better while staying protected from the sun. Poolside, at the march, in the beer garden, or just out for a stroll.