03/04/2020 | Writer: Aslı Alpar

Burçak talks about how quarantine treats the queers: The impulse of unity always overcomes the distances.

Moods of queerantine*: Can queer fit into home? Kaos GL - News Portal for LGBTI+

How is quarantine going on for LGBTI+'s as we try to comply with the quarantine due to the coronavirus, which the World Health Organization describes as a pandemic?

We asked LGBTI+'s, about how is quarantine treating them, what are they doing at home, what are they being deprived of? How is the quarantine going on for the queers?

The first narrator of our series Burçak is asking “Can queer fit into the home?”

“Home as a form of hiding”

“The house is so strange. I've been repeating that sentence for days. Maybe I'm not used to it, maybe that’s why I say the home is weird. Does the weird thing always have to be unpleasant? I don't think so. Maybe it's hard for me to be in the same place all the time because I'm not very good at connecting with the venues. Obviously, our contact with the house has increased considerably in recent days. Considering the house as the most ancient of places and as a way of clinging to the earth, we see that the "modern house" is not built on a queer foundation. In today's world, where every existence is bound to assignments, 'modern houses' do not easily coincide with a queer context. Of course, I'm not trying to say that queer houses are not possible. I also believe that it already exists, rather than possible. But the answer to the question of 'where is a person's house' corresponds to a place that has no walls for me, I'm sure now.

“In these days, as we stay at home as a form of avoidance, the homes are becoming more and more alienated from their ancient meanings, perhaps mostly because we don't create our own spaces that we stay in as we are trying to hold on to the world or we can create them within the framework of a particular structure.

“We've had an imaginary quarantine in our language for days, I'm calling it imaginary because it doesn't cover everyone who is in danger in the same way. The workers who have to go to work are not involved in this quarantine, or dear Ajda can't be the subject of this quarantine. When that happens, the color of the quarantine becomes "white." It's worth examining the quarantine a little. It seems like a social activity to protect against danger, it points to a halted education semester for children without television and computers as well as an outcome of the clumsiness of the bureaucracy and increased domestic violence.  So, besides the protection that it provides, quarantine comes with the danger of an avalanche. It is also possible to say that the situation we are in is a process where we feel the power of the hegemons in our very bones, not just regarding the matters of state but on our daily lives too. In return for this, the society, which has been kept 'calm' with the rhetoric of 'bigger picture' for years, cannot change its attitude while being tested so harshly, and even those who produce this discourse can't change this. Therefore, both the inside and the outside of the imaginary quarantine are very dangerous.

“Of course, I don't believe that refusing these realities requires being pessimistic, I know there's a solution. The solution is at the same place where we found it whenever we got into trouble, in solidarity.

“Actually, I'm pretty confused like many of us nowadays. I'm having trouble composing my sentences. I'm worried, and I feel like I can't do anything but be afraid about something's going to happen to my loved ones. Fortunately, very same friends who I know, or just feel their existence and solidarity in my heart at any moment, are pulling me away from that climate of fear. My friends and I don't like the distances of modernism. The impulse of unity always overcomes the distances for us. Now many of us expect these days to pass in different houses. Of course, we know that these times will pass, and we dream of the good days as we stand under the goodbye bridge and shake our handkerchiefs."

*The word Queerantina is a word made from the queer and quarantine words, produced by illustrator Adrienne Muse.

Translation: Yiğit E. Korkmaz


Tags: life
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