Rowan Blanchard Discusses Why She Identifies as Queer and What It Means to Her

Rowan Blanchard just took to Instagram to share her perspectives about labeling in regard to LGBTQ people and why she identifies as “queer,” and what she had to say was absolutely brilliant. The seventeen-year-old actress has discussed some of her reasons for calling herself “queer,” in the past and this time she went more in-depth. Rowan posted a page from the book “Cruising Utopia,” by José Esteban Muñoz and explained her interpretations of what it means to identify as a specific label, as well as her mixed feelings about “capitalist pride.” She is incredibly philosophical and insightful at the mere age of seventeen, and her post is worth a read.

 

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I wasn’t sure if I was going to post anything this month that could be interpreted as capitalist pride or worse, as activism because as you can probably tell from the minimal posts on this page: I have mixed feelings about my previous time performing social justice online and the fact it allowed me and many to address themselves as activists when maybe that word has lost its meaning, and isn’t something I choose to identify as now or am willing to readopt. I am also hesitant because I’m aware of the inferred empowerment that is encapsulated in the word pride, which isn’t something many queers can access, or even something we should necessarily want in the same way under the terms of the white supremacist, queer and transphobic cop state and society we live in daily. Pride on this app feels dizzying and covered in campaigns and rainbow objects we can buy, pride in 2019 feels like it doesn’t really belong to queers anymore but to the state, so before I go too deep down this rabbit hole: I wanted to share the opening paragraph from a book @hi_its_bobbi recommended to me when I was first coming to terms with the layers of my own identity: Cruising Utopia by José Esteban Muñoz. With the majority of visible queerness/ pride this month being of the kind that some straight cis corporation is profiting from I wanted to share something that suggests queerness is the unseen, the invisible, the utopian, the future and that there is an uncolonized world of it that we haven’t touched yet, that belongs not to cops or corporations or tee shirts or to America but to us. I’m grateful for every way queerness has shaped my lens on the world, and for every trans, queer, and non binary person who can’t interact with visibility or outness in the same way that is reflected to us on this app. We see you 👀 🖤 If you are buying something rainbow themed this year, instead give ur money directly to the go fund mes or Venmos belonging to trans women of color and non binary pocs, whose historical fight is responsible for the state/cop rebellion called pride in the first place. Love u 😘

A post shared by Rowan Blanchard (◕‿◕)🌹 (@rowanblanchard) on Jun 7, 2019 at 5:43pm PDT

“I wanted to share something that suggests queerness is the unseen, the invisible, the utopian, the future and that there is an uncolonized world of it that we haven’t touched yet, that belongs not to cops or corporations or tee shirts or to America but to us. I’m grateful for every way queerness has shaped my lens on the world, and for every trans, queer, and non-binary person who can’t interact with visibility or outness in the same way that is reflected to us on this app. We see you.”—Rowan Blanchard

Rowan went on to recommend that if anyone was thinking about buying rainbow themed merchandise, that they consider donating to trans women of color and non-binary people of color, stating that their historical battles are one of the main reasons for why we now have such a label as “pride.”