“Queer is about having an infinity of different identities and all of them being valid.”

We are smack in the middle of Berlin, right on the river Spree, in a small wooden mobile home that rests on an undeveloped building site, the bright light of the TV tower like a beacon in the sky. James is a bicycle mechanic and full-time queer activist and this magical place is Schwartzer Kanal, an intentional community for queer women and trans who live and love queer.

For this community and a growing number of queer-identified persons around the world, “queer” signifies more than just who you’re having sex with. Queer is about linking all systems of oppression and looking beyond an individual minority’s struggles. It’s about living in community with others based on shared values of nonhierarchical communication, social equality, environmentalism and respect.

While sometimes the term queer gets conflated with homosexual, especially in the “Queer as Folk” mainstream, many queers believe that living queer necessitates a radical stance against capitalism, racism and all forms of oppression. Within this context, queers have been mobilizing to create a visible force at protests such as the recent anti-G8 demonstration in Germany and are active in no-borders politics.

“When you’re looking at queer as an approach to life,” explains James, “rather than queer as a sexuality or a gender-focused identity… When you look at queer as breaking down borders, then of course it fits together with going against the G8, because the G8 is almost an antithesis to queer. Eight “people”—seven men and one woman—make up the G8. Symbolically they are the most powerful people in the world, leaving the rest of the world pretty much powerless. The G8 enforce their power to the exclusion of everyone else.”

In 2005 queer activists established a “queer barrio” at the G8 protests in Scotland. They organized a queer barrio again this year at the G8 protests in Germany. The queer barrio at such large-scale demonstrations is a colorful creative space, and a haven away from the black hoodie and balaclava-wearing (white) young men that make up a large part of the protesters. The barrio is also an opportunity to “queer” the leftist political movement. 

“Dealing with privilege within that [leftist] space is good for these younger macho dudes … it’s sometimes good to see a queer barrio and have it threaten their sexuality or gender,” says Elliat, a performance artist and director of Travel Queeries, a forthcoming documentary about radical queer artists and activists. “If you want to have political change and it doesn’t have queer people in it you’re not going to get very far.”

The queer barrio is a place to play with costumes, with gender bending performance and cabaret and to be free to express your sexuality in positive and respectful ways. Their mascot? A pink bunny with the slogan: “Annoy the G8 away.” The idea is to tease the police with creativity, trashy flashy clothing, and joy! Some protesters practice tangoing around the police, others use cheerleader pom-poms, finding a creative middle ground between passivity and violent resistance.

Even though the queer barrio was known as the place to go to have a good time, an obvious question might be: If queer is about breaking down borders, why is a queer barrio created at all? Elliat explains that at the G8 protests, the entire protest camp is divided into small sections that are named barrios in honor of the neighborhoods that organized together during the Spanish Civil War; each one is not an autonomous unit, but rather chooses its own unique focus points.

Each barrio sends representatives to the larger camp meeting and each barrio has affinity groups that send representatives to the barrio meeting. Each day the representatives rotate. In this way, the camp actively pursues non-hierarchical modes of organizing. It is also an opportunity to create an intentional living space. Being temporary, it can be the perfect place for experiment.

“Queer is not just about being against something,” explains James. “It is about thinking, what are we for? Making a barrio is how we put into practice non-hierarchical ways of living and communicating; it was a chance to start to communicate as we would in our utopia. To build things.”

Suzanne, a queer feminist activist and organizer of Ladyfest (a women’s festival that empowers and supports female artists and musicians in non-mainstream venues) believes that the queer barrio at the G8 protest was important even if only to say: “Hello, we exist, and we are representing ourselves against some of the biggest repressive forms on the planet today … that was a powerful challenge to these systems.”

Queer activists are not only involved in big so-called “anti-globalization” protests, they have also been instrumental in no border politics. In late September, over 200 people gathered for the UK's first No Border camp to protest the construction of a new migrant detention center. Many of these activists were queer identified.

The link between living with a queer “borderless” gender/sexuality and resisting border-driven capitalist systems is a powerful one.

“Living queer is about having freedom of movement between gender and sexuality,” says Elliat. “People are afraid of moving freely between gender and sexuality because that breaks down social systems that protect people in their hetero-gender-normative lifestyle, for example the nuclear family unit, which is tied to economics and reproduction.”

In this same way, when bodies move freely between nation states, this undermines systems that protect the richest few, those who have access to resources and privilege.

“A queer man is a threat to capitalist systems,” Suzanne explains, “because he doesn’t fit into the prescribed way to order your life; with children, a wife, a house ... Being queer also means being radical, living by punk ideals and ethics, which are of course anti-capitalist ... You can be gay or lesbian and not necessarily reject as many mainstream norms as a queer person. And maybe that’s a reason why some straight people identify as queer, because they are identifying as radical.”

Both Elliat and James agree that heterosexual sex can be part of queer life. What makes a person queer may have more to do with how they identify their own gender and how they examine and relate to their privilege as opposed to whether or not they are engaging in what appears to be heterosexual sex.

Says Elliat, “I think that there can be really macho fags that are totally sexist and for me that’s not queer. There can be people in relationships that look heterosexual but can be really queer because of how they relate to their gender or their privilege … sex parties don’t have to do with penis/vagina, its about how much privilege people are willing to leave at the door. And how much space they are taking up and how they interact.”

"Living and rebelling" as queer means more than lifestyle in relation to sex or sexuality, it means bringing a particular type of freedom and creativity that is nonjudgmental and open to your environment. As James explains, living queer is not about obligation or moral duty; it’s also fun and more fulfilling because you live in close community with others.

That is not to say that there are no divisions within the queer community. There are relative degrees of interest in incorporating "sex-positivity" into queer life; that is, promoting sex parties and supporting sex work and pornography.

Some queer-identified persons worry that as an increasing number of people are attracted to the idea of “queer,” the definition will be watered down. Queer Festivals are popping up from Belgrade to Copenhagen. Queeruption, an international political performance festival, has already celebrated 10 years and is growing.

On the one hand, says James, “queer” is the next step for a community that first must get past the basics; that is, beyond homophobia. They first have to support the local gay bar, and for some communities, even that is radical. In this way, self-identifying as queer necessarily means relative degrees of radicalism.

But as queer slides into the mainstream perhaps the anti-capitalist, community-based radicalism risks being lost. The truth is, as colorful artistic and sexy queers take to the streets, no one can help but want a little piece.