Tragic Queer at the Urinal Stall, Who, Now, Is the Queerest One of All?

Queer Theory |
Autoethnography | Doing Queer Autoethnography
Author(s): Tony E. Adams and Derek M. Bolen
Source: QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking , Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring 2017), pp. 100-113
Published by: Michigan State University Press
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((( F ORU M

)))
Tragic Queer at the Urinal Stall,
Who, Now, Is the Queerest One of All?
Queer Theory | Autoethnography |
Doing Queer Autoethnography
Tony E. Adams and Derek M. Bolen

) ) ) Coming | Queer | Autoethnography | Tony

I first came to queer when I began to embrace my same-­sex attraction (2001). I
learned “queer” was a term that, along with “gay,” could be used to describe my
attraction—­an attraction that I, and some others, reacted to as weird, deviant,
shameful. I/they had cisgender, heterosexual expectations of my life and now,
as gay, I began to feel disoriented from/among heterosexual friends and family
members, oriented toward gay and queer others.1
I soon realized that I did not appreciate the abundance of often-uncomplicated
male, cisgender, White, able-bodied, middle/upper-­class research on gay identity,
e.g., pro-­coming out research; research that promoted (heterosexual) norms such
as the importance of assimilation, monogamy, and same-­sex marriage. Further,
I had other sexual desires—­e.g., barebacking, cigarette smoke, eating and gain-
ing weight—­by which I encountered frequent judgment within, and outside of,
the (male, cisgender, White, able-­bodied, middle/upper-­class) gay community.
“Gay” began to feel less familiar, safe, appropriate; “queer” felt increasingly apt.
I also had frequent spells of melancholy, shame, anger, and anxiety that, I felt,
stemmed from losses tied to my sexuality: the continued fracturing of friend
and family ties; the death of an ex-­boyfriend; the rampant, random, drunken,

Copyright © 2017 Michigan State University. Tony E. Adams and Derek M. Bolen, “Tragic Queer at the
Urinal Stall, Who, Now, Is the Queerest One of All? Queer Theory | Autoethnography | Doing Queer
Autoethnography,” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 4.1 (2017): 100–113. ISSN 2327-1574. All
rights reserved.

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 Tragic Queer at the Urinal Stall, Who, Now, Is the Queerest One of All? ) 101

euphoric, and fleeting sexcapades; and, more broadly, the abundant assaults
on gender and sexual “nonconforming” bodies. These emotions felt weird,
deviant, and needed to be willed away; being unable to, or desiring not to do
so, only seemed to exacerbate the melancholy, shame, anger, and anxiety. Yet
I came to queer again, understanding it as a sensibility that recognizes—­and
celebrates—­tempered hope, sluggish optimism, dissonance, and sometimes only
a will to make do.
Along with queer, I came to autoethnography. In 2001, I graduated with an
undergraduate degree in radio-­television. During my final semester, I took a
news-­writing course that changed my desire for a career in media. News writing
required me to work as a reporter for a local radio station. My tasks included
attending community events (e.g., city council meetings, festivals), interviewing
strangers about their thoughts about these events, recording their comments
using an audio tape recorder, returning to the radio station to edit their com-
ments into some kind of story, airing the story, and then, I hoped, receiving
praise for my work, either in the form of a satisfactory course grade or praise for
being a skillful reporter.
At the beginning of the course, reporting felt mundane. I might ask people
about a renovation of an area school, a recent tax cut/increase, or a new busi-
ness. But later I would have to cover more serious events such as fatal car acci-
dents, crimes, or job losses. I was not uncomfortable talking with others about
these events, but rather when I thought about recording, editing, and airing
their tragedies for my benefit. I also worried about my stories being used against
interviewees; I did not want to disrupt a victim’s family’s mourning, misreport
a severe crime, or have future employers use an unemployed person’s words
against them.
I then began graduate school and learned about the practices of research on/
with people—­some of which resembled the practices of reporting. However,
post-­reporting, I wanted to be increasingly careful, sensitive, and ethical when
working with others, with editing and telling their stories, doing my best to
make sure their words couldn’t be used against them. I wanted to be less invasive
and more collaborative, less opportunistic and more respectful, as well as have
a personal tie to my projects, believing that anything I said about others would
implicate myself. I also wanted to do critical research, to identify social injustices
and harmful cultural norms, and show how research has been used to create and
maintain these injustices and norms. I soon found autoethnography, a method-
ology that addressed many of these wants.

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102 ( Tony E. Adams and Derek M. Bolen

) ) ) A Proclivity for the Complicated | Derek

Not so long ago, I cruised theories hardcore.2 I was always looking to score post-­
positive theories when I played for the other team (there are only two, right?).
An itch drove me to devour theories, prowling until I could explain my results. I
carved a notch in the bedpost of my CV for every theory that scratched my itch.
First, Erving Goffman’s frame analysis.3 Next, a tumble with Ludwig von Berta-
lanffy’s systems theory.4 Then I rolled back over to Erving Goffman’s face.5 Over
the course of 11 years, I came to theory “jonesing.” I used them as intended.
Queer theory cruised me—­wantonly craving my abject body while teasing
and provoking abject desires. Years ago, queer theory would sit across from me at
the bar—­offer to buy me a drink, cut me a line, and take me to the back room.
I ran out of reasons to say no.
My graduate communication theory seminar professor assigned us theories
and readings based on our “interests.” My readings came from a special issue of
the Journal of Homosexuality: “Queer Theory and Communication: From Dis-
ciplining Queers to Queering the Discipline(s).”6 I read the articles. I didn’t
understand the articles. This wasn’t a theory, but I wrote my summary paper.
Moments before presenting queer theory to the class, it clicked. I understood it.
One week later, the professor’s feedback went something like this: “Your presen-
tation was excellent, but it didn’t seem like you understood the theory in your
summary. What happened?” What happened? Queer theory is complicated. But
complicated things hook me.
I desperately wrote my way to autoethnography. After I turned my back
on what, in hindsight, could have been a lucrative career in technical writing
(my major), I graduated from my smaller university and began graduate stud-
ies in communication at a university with three times the student body (read:
three times the student gay bodies). My transition from impersonal technical
writing to impersonal social scientific writing was as easy as fucking the under-
graduate guys while maintaining my failing relationship of almost three years
(i.e., effortless).
By day I kept busy doing coursework and extracurricular research projects
such as a fundamentally flawed cultivation analysis of gay characters on tele-
vision. By night I kept busy getting busy—­straddling the laps of hot guys at
their boyfriends’ house parties while grinding to Beyoncé or, by my second year,
leaving the boyfriend I’d been cuckolding to begin, for the second time in my
life, overinvesting in an intimate, romantic relationship with a sexually unavail-
able straight guy.

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 Tragic Queer at the Urinal Stall, Who, Now, Is the Queerest One of All? ) 103

I conducted a follow-­up cultivation analysis on Will & Grace with the straight
guy. The second study was also fundamentally flawed—­just like our relation-
ship. Something was missing from my bed and my methodological sensibili-
ties. Proposing an explanation for a phenomenon I was fairly sure I was “right”
about along with asking questions I was sure I already knew “the answers” to
wasn’t turning me on anymore. My tolerance for going through the motions of
compulsory post-­positivism waned. I was secretly aroused by taboo fantasies
about how I could help foster new understandings, especially where there was a
paucity (or absence) of research.7 My interest turned to asking questions with no
“right” answers and, even more so, asking questions that raised more questions.
I wanted to write stories. With “universal knowledge” being sold like snake
oil, I wanted to focus on subjugated knowledges.8 Life experiments and experi-
ences with my masculinity, sexuality, and relationships—­particularly in relation
to these continually reemerging symbolically annihilated straight guys—­led
me to personal narrative, which led me back to queer theory. I read and wrote
until autoethnography found me. Reading and writing about queer theory and
autoethnography still turns me on—­it’s the contours of their complexities, the
friction they cause when my body rubs against them.
My hand drops along his side. I graze my thumb along the length of my fore-
finger until it comes to rest on the tip. For a moment, they cling to each other.
Gently opening my hand would end their bond, but this silicone and semen
link lingers—­delicately holding my flesh together. It’s easy to not stop it all, but
it’s complicated to understand why. And it’s sticky. So very sticky. Yet, I am not
ready to wash my hands.

) ) ) Pulling Together by Taking Apart |

Queer | Autoethnography

In “When Everyone can be ‘Queer,’ is Anyone?” Jenna Wortham wonders

whether “queer” continues to be any use. Wortham writes, “the power of ‘queer’
always came from its inclusivity,” yet such inclusivity “offers a false promise
of equality that does not translate to the lived reality of most queer people.”
Wortham also notes that queer strives for “acceptance and visibility” and such a
“sunny” queer perspective is “counterproductive.”9
Although queer and, conversely, queer theory often fail to recognize the lived
realities of “queer people,” Wortham only uses “queer” in relation to same-­sex/
gender attraction and sexual identity. Queerness also tends to refuse acceptance
or visibility, and rarely do queer theorists advocate sunny, positive perspectives.

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104 ( Tony E. Adams and Derek M. Bolen

“Queer” is a word with many definitions. Queer can still be used to describe
same-­sex/gender attraction, gender nonconformity, or as tied to/synonymous
with identities such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.10 “Queer” could
describe the practice of calling attention to, and disrupting, harmful, taken-­for-­
granted norms tied to desire, especially heteronormative expectations about
intimate relationships such as marriage, monogamy, biological reproduction,
and/or the need for, and assumptions about, familial lineage and kinship.11 And
there are more contemporary uses of “queer” that celebrate emotions, affects,
and “bad sentiments” others might classify as uncomfortable, inappropriate, and
maybe even disgusting—­emotions such as anger, angst, and despair; affects such
as failure, undecidability, and melancholy.12 “Queer theory” is the broad area of
study devoted to these ideas, desires, practices, emotions, and affects.
As an orientation to doing and understanding social research, autoethnogra-
phy combines the purposes and practices of ethnography and autobiography.
Ethnography is a research method used to understand, represent, and sometimes
critique cultural experience. Typically, a researcher—­the ethnographer—­engages
in fieldwork, participant observation, and deep hanging out—­techniques that
require the ethnographer to become an active and attentive member of cultural
life, as well as allow the ethnographer to observe cultural norms, values, and
practices as they happen within “natural settings,” contexts in which cultural
life would happen regardless of the ethnographer’s presence.13 Autobiography is
a genre of life writing that engages personal experience, reflexivity, memory, and
storytelling devices (e.g., dialogue, narrative voice, plot) to identify and reflect
upon formative past events, admirable and shameful acts, scarring interactions,
and future hopes and desires, often with an intent to describe the meaning and
significance of these phenomena.14 Autoethnographies apply both ethnographic
and autobiographic techniques—­the fieldwork, storytelling devices, reflexivity,
and memory—­ to create accessible, vivid, and vulnerable representations—­
“thick descriptions”—­of the ways in which personal experience intersects
and/or is informed by cultural norms, values, and practices.15
Queer autoethnographies bring together the ideas, intentions, practices, and
affects of queer theory with the purposes and practices of autoethnography;
to borrow Steven Seidman’s words, they provide “critical analyses that address
specific conflicts” and show the ways in which the personal is embedded in
the cultural.16 Queer autoethnographies offer personal stories ripe with sexual
desire, infused with issues of reproduction, kinship, and family lineage, tan-
gled by harmful, taken-­for-­granted norms tied to intimacy, and/or that celebrate
uncomfortable, inappropriate, and disgusting experiences, practices, emotions,
and affects. Queer autoethnographies might also use unorthodox representa-
tional forms such as performative writing, poetry, fiction, and collage to provide

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 Tragic Queer at the Urinal Stall, Who, Now, Is the Queerest One of All? ) 105

evocative accounts of personal/cultural experiences. For some researchers, the

very use of personal experience throughout the research process could be con-
sidered a queer act.17
Further, given the vulnerable, intimate, and taboo topics associated with
queer theory, it can be difficult to do fieldwork, participant observation, and
deep hanging out in natural settings related to these topics. For example, where
do we go to participate in same-­sex attraction, gender nonconformity, or het-
eronormativity? Where can we hang out to observe monogamy, barebacking,
melancholy, or failure? Working with personal experience in autoethnography
offers important access to these topics, as everyday life becomes an important
site for data.

) ) ) Missing | Connection | Tony

Missing connection: longing for another, regretting absence, feeling lost and
loss.
Missing connection: failing to meet, making distance, passing by, obstructing
talk.18
Missings that motivate queer affects: perpetual gloom, lonely rumblings, lust-
ful longings, regretful hauntings, despair that hovers.
Missings activated by the slightest memory or remark, unpredictable encoun-
ter, unexpected touch; missings sometimes tied to sexual desire, sometimes not.
)))
The mid-­forties man at The George (Dublin, Ireland), who, within a few min-
utes of meeting, tells you about his partner of eight years, whom he loves very
much, yet wants to move, without the partner, to the United States. You ask if
he will miss the partner. “No,” he says, without pause. “It’ll be good for us to get
away from each other.”
You ask questions and try to clarify his comments about the distance; he tells
you that he’s tired of his partner’s drinking; that very morning, he had to retrieve
his partner from the emergency center at the hospital because of drinking
too much.
“How often does he drink too much?” you ask.
“I don’t know you well enough to answer,” he replies.
You tell him that you and your partner are not monogamous. He says that he
only practices monogamy; he tends to be jealous. He then buys you a beer and
asks, “Could I take you home to fuck me? My partner would love to watch.”

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106 ( Tony E. Adams and Derek M. Bolen

)))
And there is the sex with self-­identified heterosexual men—­men who, behind
closed doors, kiss you, seek oral sex and sometimes even a fuck, but then refuse
to talk about the encounters outside of these doors. Yet the fun that comes with
these men, these “heteroflexible” men,19 also comes with lustful longing: You
often want the intimacy to continue; you miss them when they leave; you con-
sider yourself a fool by letting them have their way.
)))
The barista you meet on vacation. You visit him for five days; he makes the best
espresso. You greet him, every morning, yet never get his name. He also never
asks for yours. You enjoy the hospitality, his smile, the way his underwear and
belly appear when he reaches for a mug. You return from vacation and find your-
self missing him, wishing you could greet him one more time, taste his espresso.
You begin planning another trip there, in a few years, and hope that he doesn’t
go out of business, hope that he doesn’t forget you.
)))
Even though you have self-­identified as queer for more than fifteen years, family
members still refuse to recognize your sexuality. Sometimes, they say, your life
would be better if you would marry a (cisgender) woman; heterosexuality is
missing from your life. Sometimes, they refer to your partner as a “roommate”
and your queerness as a “lifestyle.” For more than fifteen years, the missing of
family has flourished—­the unattended weddings, birthdays, graduations, and
funerals, some of which you never received an invite; the accumulation of dis-
missive and disparaging comments; the haunting, and deterioration, of biolog-
ical lineage.
)))
You think about the friend, the ex-­boyfriend, who died, suddenly, ten years ago,
and how others, then and now, treat the death as insignificant. “I’m sorry your
friend died,” they say.
The silence around being unable to talk about the significance of the
relationship—­that’s queer. And there is still the queerness, for some, of being
two cisgender men, together, loving each other. You think of Tracy Chapman’s
song, “Fast Car”—­one of your/his favorites. “You’ve got a fast car,” Chapman
sings. “I want a ticket to anywhere.” You too, often, want a ticket to anywhere,
especially when, nearly every day, you find yourself, missing him; especially
when you wonder, post-death, if you will ever be okay.

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 Tragic Queer at the Urinal Stall, Who, Now, Is the Queerest One of All? ) 107

) ) ) Queer Autoethnography | Possibilities

Queer autoethnographies offer representations of personal/cultural experience
that identify and celebrate queer values; complicate taken-­for-­granted cultural
norms and expectations tied to relationships and desires; offer strategies for reap-
propriating bad sentiments; and provide ways of using personal experience at
the service of social justice.20 With its use of personal experience and storytelling
techniques, as well as various representational forms, queer autoethnographies
also strive to be more accessible and relevant to nonacademic audiences.
Queer autoethnographies can also temper critiques directed at both queer
theory and autoethnography. For example, autoethnography has been critiqued
for being too partial, narcissistic, and atheoretical; queer theory has been cri-
tiqued for being abstract and impractical.21 Yet, merging the abstract, impracti-
cal concepts of queer theory with the personal experience of autoethnography
can ground these concepts in particular, everyday contexts. In so doing, queer
autoethnographies can demonstrate specific ways to use specific (raced, classed,
gendered, dis/abled, etc.) bodies for social change and/or to describe practical
options for reclaiming and celebrating silenced and neglected affects and experi-
ences. Conversely, queer theory can respond to the atheoretical critique directed
at autoethnography, because the queer autoethnographer can use intricate
queer concepts to make sense of personal experience.
Identifying neglected and shameful experiences—­ one purpose of queer
theory—­is, simultaneously, also a way to discern cultural norms and expecta-
tions: what should (not) be felt, talked about, celebrated; what should (not) be
praised, kept secret, hidden from everyday interaction. Merging queer theory
and autoethnography can thus offer a key way to show how personal experience
is pierced with cultural norms. This explicit personal–­cultural connection helps
to fortify autoethnography against charges of narcissism.

) ) ) Queer Autoethnography | A Bid | Derek

When quests for certainties reveal little more than bare despair, I am moved
to articulate queer autoethnography as a genre of constructive doubt. Queer
autoethnography is not a race, contest, or panacea—­no one is the queerest, no
queer undertaking is superior, and, at its best, a queer autoethnography will not
be the cure. Although good queer autoethnography need not spark an insur-
rection, it should empower at least the writer. When the emotional labor of
writers of subjugated knowledges find readership, these knowledges stand to be

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108 ( Tony E. Adams and Derek M. Bolen

rendered valid and legitimate. Queer autoethnography is thus a collaborative

project undertaken by makers, audiences, and societies.
It strikes me that queer autoethnography, like autoethnography, isn’t
isomorphic—­it’s polymorphic. They are their own method and methodology,
and each method and methodology varies in myriad of ways. Nonetheless, it
seems as though, axiologically, queer autoethnography isn’t worth doing if it
lacks passion. Without passion, how can personal experiences be moved to
political stories that pull back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz? Sure, we cri-
tique, teach, relate, and entertain. But passion drives a commitment to resist
tacit compliance. Passion also unites communities, which are too often divided
by a particular strand of queer that positions an individual’s difference as
paramount—­eclipsing difference as a common link.22
)))
I am proud of the work students do in the graduate program I direct. A recent
graduate publishes his first autoethnographic essay, and I am excited to post
the first page on the program’s corkboard below a list of other graduate student
publications. His first publication before even beginning his PhD program—­an
accomplishment of which to be proud, right?
I carefully curate that corkboard with a precision my first grade teacher,
Miss Miller, would appreciate. A week later, I notice a blank spot. His article has
been taken down. The push pins, which once held it in place, are neatly lined in
a row as if to mock the transgression.
The writer of the missing autoethnography vulnerably and graphically sto-
ried experiences about parasocial relationships in the years before he came out.
Someone took down the first page of his autoethnography, his story, his experi-
ence, and, in some ways, him . . . me . . . you? Someone tore him down. Instead
of playing “whodunit,” I play “whydunit.”
Questions. Was his essay taken down because:
1. We shouldn’t be wasting corkboard space on graduates of the program?
2. Someone was concerned about the pressure it may place on students who
­aren’t PhD-­bound or interested in publishing?
3. Let’s cut the bullshit—­because the essay is about a gay man exploring
sexuality?
All too familiar with the inextricable power and discipline inherent in ques-
tion three, my queer blood boils. I march to my office and militantly print off
another copy. Although I’ve read drafts of his essay since the first draft, I can’t
recall what’s on the first page. Pulling the warm page from my printer, I notice
the second to last line: “‘I want to unzip your pants and give you a blow job,’ he

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 Tragic Queer at the Urinal Stall, Who, Now, Is the Queerest One of All? ) 109

confesses.”23 This gay story begins with talk of a blow job, which, spoiler alert,
doesn’t even happen until page three.
4. It named the unnameable. He wasn’t naming a gay man in theory, he was
naming a gay man in practice. He wasn’t becoming a gay man in private, he
was becoming a gay man, on the page, in public.
I repost the first page. I believe his autoethnography was taken down—
­silenced, censored, disciplined—­for storying, not a blow job, but someone
else’s desire to give him a blow job. A storied desire of nonnormative sexuality.
His story is an accomplishment of what is possible from here. My stomach
sinks, and I worry, “Am I going to get in trouble for reposting the page?” I
reassure myself, “This is a peer-­reviewed, academic publication. This is some-
one’s life, worth more than the paper it’s printed on.” Reposting this is my
queer fidelity. I design and print an oversized, golden-­yellow star that reads,
“2016 Top Paper Award, Popular Culture Interest Group, Central States Com-
munication Association.” I position the top tip of the star over the words
“blow job.” I snap a picture to send to the chair of my department explaining
my action. And I am ashamed.
A few days later, the page is gone again. This time, it’s clearly been torn down.
)))
It’s not about answers. It’s about questions. Not whodunit, but whydunit. Along
the way, it’s about taking risks and exposing vulnerabilities—­risks now so
that they don’t always have to be risks, vulnerabilities now so that they don’t
always have to be vulnerabilities. Pushing back with what we’ve got, I like to
think of it as “queer fidelity” (partly because “fidelity” is replete with heteronor-
mativity). This is my bid for queer autoethnographic projects that don’t stop
at problematizing. The turn toward “possibilizing” is close, and it can be seen
through the inherent plea for social justice in queer autoethnography.

) ) ) Queer Autoethnography for GLBTQ Worldmaking:

A Forum

We invited contributors to explore, and offer practical and embodied insights

about, the intersections of queer theory and autoethnography. Taken together,
contributors:
• Use fieldwork, deep hanging out, storytelling, and performative writing to
create personal, vivid, and vulnerable descriptions of queer experiences;

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110 ( Tony E. Adams and Derek M. Bolen

• Interrogate harmful norms tied to sexualities, intimacies, relationships, and

identities, especially as these norms exist in everyday contexts;
• Demonstrate how autoethnography and personal experience can facilitate
activism, social justice, and GLBTQ worldmaking;
• Acknowledge and celebrate peculiar, uncomfortable, and/or inappropriate
emotions and affects, including shame, longing, anxiety, and failure; and
• Identify what it means to be human and which lives are (not) recognizable or
grievable.
We conclude the forum with Ken Plummer’s essay, a brilliant articulation of the
necessity of personal stories, and a reminder that stories are temporary, unstable,
incomplete—­a bit queer. As Plummer notes, there are always queer tales to tell.
The stories of this forum offer insightful snapshots of what it can mean to be
queer, what doing queer autoethnography can mean, and what it can mean to
stand in, and as, communities of resistance.24

n ot e s
We would like to thank Charles E. Morris III and Thomas K. Nakayama for the
opportunity to assemble this forum on Queer Autoethnography. We also would like
to thank all of the contributors to the forum; without them, the forum would not
be possible.

1. Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham, NC:

Duke University Press, 2006).
2. Frederick C. Corey and Thomas K. Nakayama, “Sextext,” Text and Performance
Quarterly 17, no. 1 (1997): 58.
3. Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974).
4. Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General Systems Theory (New York: Braziller, 1968).
5. Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-­to-­Face Behavior (New York: Pan-
theon Books, 1967).
6. Gust A. Yep, Karen E. Lovaas, and John P. Elia, “Queering Communication: Start-
ing the Conversation,” Journal of Homosexuality 45, nos. 2–­4 (2003): 1–­10; Gust A.
Yep, “The Violence of Heteronormativity in Communication Studies: Notes on
Injury, Healing, and Queer World-­Making,” Journal of Homosexuality 45, nos. 2–­4
(2003): 11–­59.
7. Joseph A. DeVito was talking about what I was thinking about around the time I
was graduating from high school, almost ten years earlier. Joseph A. DeVito, “The-
ory and Research in Gay and Lesbian Relationships.” Paper presented at the Annual
Meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, November 1999.

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 Tragic Queer at the Urinal Stall, Who, Now, Is the Queerest One of All? ) 111

8. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings (New

York: Pantheon Press, 1980).
9. Jenna Wortham, “When Everyone Can Be ‘Queer,’ is Anyone?” New York Times
Magazine, July 12, 2016, accessed July 20, 2016, http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2016/​07/​
17/​magazine/​when​-­­everyone​-­­can​-­­be​-­­queer​-­­is​-­­anyone​.html?​_r​=​0.
10. Texts that use “queer” to describe same-­sex attraction, gender nonconformity, or as
tied to/synonymous with identities such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
include Corey Creekmur and Alexander Doty, eds., Out in Culture: Gay, Lesbian,
and Queer Essays on Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995);
Alexander Doty, Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); Pamela Demory and Christopher
Pullen, eds., Queer Love in Film and Television: Critical Essays (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2013); Jack Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bod-
ies, Subcultural Lives (New York: New York University Press, 2005); and R. Jeffrey
Ringer, Queer Words, Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homo-
sexuality (New York: New York University Press, 1994).
11. Texts that use “queer” in reference to critiquing and disrupting heteronormative
practices and expectations include Karli June Cerankowski and Megan Milks, eds.,
Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2014); Michael
Cobb, Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled (New York: New York University Press,
2012); Julia Erhart, “Donor Conception in Lesbian and Non-­Lesbian and Television
Families,” in Queer Love in Film and Television: Critical Essays, ed. Pamela Demory
and Christopher Pullen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 83–­93; Sandra L.
Faulkner, “Bad Mom(my) Litany: Spanking Cultural Myths of Middle-­Class Moth-
erhood,” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 14, no. 2 (2014): 138–­46; Michael
Warner, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); and Eleanor Wilkinson, “What’s
Queer about Non-­Monogamy Now?” in Understanding Non-­Monogamies, ed. Meg
Barker and Darren Langdridge (New York: Routledge, 2010), 243–­54.
12. As Jose Esteban Muñoz writes, “Cynicism, opportunism, and other bad sentiments
can be responses to the current emotional situation, which many of us interested
in the project of radical politics understand as hopelessness. . . . ‘Bad sentiments’
can be critically redeployed and function as refusals of social control mandates that
become transformative behaviors.” Jose Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then
and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 177. Addi-
tional texts that use “queer” to describe emotions and affects others might classify as
uncomfortable, inappropriate, and maybe even disgusting include Sara Ahmed, The
Promise of Happiness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Lauren Berlant,
Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Jack Halberstam,
The Queer Art of Failure (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Erin Rand,
Reclaiming Queer: Activist & Academic Rhetorics of Resistance (Tuscaloosa: University
of Alabama Press, 2014); and Desireé D. Rowe, “Cruel Optimism and the Problem
of Positivity: Miscarriage as a Model for Living,” in Communicating Pregnancy Loss:

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112 ( Tony E. Adams and Derek M. Bolen

Narrative as A Method for Change, ed. Rachel Silverman and Jay Baglia (New York:
Peter Lang, 2014), 259–­66.
13. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973);
James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Harry F. Wolcott, Ethnography
Lessons: A Primer (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2010).
14. Arthur P. Bochner and Carolyn Ellis, Evocative Autoethnography (New York: Rout-
ledge, 2016); Norman K. Denzin, Interpretive Autoethnography (Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage, 2013); Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir (New York: HarperCollins, 2015).
15. Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures; Bochner and Ellis, Evocative Autoethnography.
16. Steven Seidman, “Identity and Politics in a ‘Postmodern’ Gay Culture: Some His-
torical and Conceptual Notes,” in Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social
Theory, ed. Michael Warner (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 137.
17. Numerous authors have written about the connections among queer theory, per-
sonal narrative, and autoethnography, including Robin M. Boylorn and Tony E.
Adams, “Queer and Quare Autoethnography,” in Qualitative Inquiry through a Crit-
ical Lens, ed. Norman K. Denzin and Michael G. Giardina (New York: Routledge,
2016), 85–­98; Shinsuke Eguchi, “Queer Intercultural Relationality: An Autoethnog-
raphy of Asian-­Black (Dis)connections in White Gay America,” Journal of Interna-
tional and Intercultural Communication 8, no. 1 (2015): 27–­43; Shinsuke Eguchi and
Andrew Spieldenner, “Two ‘Gaysian’ Junior Faculty Talking about Experience: A
Collaborative Autoethnography,” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 2, no. 3
(2015): 125–­43; Richard G. Jones and Bernadette Marie Calafell, “Contesting Neo-
liberalism through Critical Pedagogy, Intersectional Reflexivity, and Personal Nar-
rative: Queer Tales of Academia,” Journal of Homosexuality 59, no. 7 (2012): 975–­81;
Stacy Holman Jones and Tony E. Adams, “Autoethnography and Queer Theory:
Making Possibilities,” in Qualitative Inquiry and Human Rights, ed. Michael D.
Giardina and Norman K. Denzin (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2010),
136–­57; Kerri Mesner, “Outing Autoethnography: An Exploration of Relational
Ethics in Queer Autoethnographic Research,” Qualitative Research Journal 16,
no. 3 (2016): 225–­237; and James McDonald, “Expanding Queer Reflexivity: The
Closet as a Guiding Metaphor for Reflexive Practice,” Management Learning (2015):
391–­406.
18. Tony E. Adams, “Missing Each Other,” Qualitative Inquiry 18, no. 2 (2012): 193–­96.
19. Jane Ward, Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men (New York: New York Univer-
sity Press, 2015).
20. Laurie Essig writes that a queer representation “forces us to shake ourselves out of
our commonsensical understandings of the world and to enter the very shaky and
liminal space of asking how this world came into existence and who benefits and
who doesn’t.” Laurie Essig, “Michael Warner’s Queer Essay,” Chronicle of Higher
Education, January 5, 2012, accessed July 2, 2016, http://​chronicle​.com/​blogs/​
brainstorm/​michael​-­­warners​-­­queer​-­­essay/​42750. Muñoz also notes, “Queerness is

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 Tragic Queer at the Urinal Stall, Who, Now, Is the Queerest One of All? ) 113

essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality
or concrete possibility for another world.” Muñoz, Cruising Utopia, 1.
21. For a synthesis of these critiques, see Tony E. Adams and Stacy Holman Jones,
“Telling Stories: Reflexivity, Queer Theory, and Autoethnography,” Cultural Studies
↔ Critical Methodologies 11, no. 2 (2011): 108–­16.
22. Max H. Kirsch, Queer Theory and Social Change (New York: Routledge, 2000).
23. M. Cuellar, “The Makings of a Boyfriend: Doing Sexuality through Parasocial Rela-
tionships,” Popular Culture Studies Journal 3, nos. 1–­2 (2015): 270, accessed July 5,
2016, http://​mpcaaca​.org/​wp​-­­content/​uploads/​2015/​10/​pcsj​_vol3​_no1​-­­2​.pdf.
24. Manuel Castells positions queer identities as resistance identities, which challenge
the institutionalized norms of society. Castells contends that resistance identi-
ties give rise to the emergence of subversive communities of collective resistance.
Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997).

)))
Tony E. Adams is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Com-
munication, Media and Theatre at Northeastern Illinois University. For infor-
mation about his work, visit www​.TonyEAdams​.com.

Derek M. Bolen is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication

and Mass Media at Angelo State University. He is the founder and director of
the international Doing Autoethnography conference.

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