Becoming “Threshold Researchers” in the Community

Queer Theory

Queer theory may have first been used in scholarship by Sedgwick (1990) and de Lauretis (1991) (see also Fuss, 1991). The word “queer” is a re-appropriation and reuse of a derogatory term (Sullivan, 2003). Queer theory, at least within radical and critical psychology, remains relevant, especially with regard to an ethical turn toward others (see Downing & Gillett, 2011). ⁴ Queer theory questions categories of gender and sexuality by showing how they have been, in part, socially and historically constructed (Foucault, 1978) and “performed” culturally as opposed to being scientifically complete, based upon genetic and biological markers (Butler, 1993). As Butler (1993) points out, sexual practices and gender performance problematize rigid biological sex-type distinctions. Queer theory is not a denial of our natural differences (sexual, gender, or otherwise) that exist between people, nor does it deny of our cognitive tendency to recognize sameness within a particular group as an everyday heuristic strategy; most important, it is not a refutation of the testimony of those who feel innate developmental attractions. Rather, queer theory is a critique of how sexual and gender differences get concretized into distinct categories of human existence (Sedgwick, 1993; Sullivan, 2003). Queering is interested in liberation from oppressive normative social strategies that box in peoples’ desires. Queering as a process is applicable to the deconstruction of heteronormativity (Namaste, 1994) and, as such, a queering of both heterosexuality and homosexuality (see Valocchi, 2005).

Queer theory generally comes from the philosophy of poststructuralism (Butler, 1990; Jagose, 1996; Namaste, 1994). Structuralism understands truth as something hidden behind or within appearances, while poststructuralism sees multiple truths that can be discerned through an open dialogue with others. Queering may be a process by which one destabilizes identity (or it gets destabilized) most especially when one’s identity holds encrustations of essentialism; namely, identities that are absolutely rigid, with impermeable and encapsulated borders. This form of identity is asked to be vulnerable to the queering process. ⁵

The poststructural theory of social constructionism (Gergen, 1985), for example, offers a compelling critique of the preexisting (or presocial) encapsulated individual; thus, to be gay, queer, or straight is not fully intelligible without others, and, in fact, these distinctions have either changed meaning or have been linked to other changing social meanings (laws, politics, art, ideology, and psychology) for centuries. Structuralism, essentialism, and determinism often go hand in hand when the assumed essential structures of being human are thought to determine our desires and define our individuality (Sampson, 1993). Poststructuralism stands resolutely against reductive essentialism, or against universal, core, unchanging, and absolute structures that determine the truth of identity; likewise, poststructuralism critiques any assertion of the whole truth behind our psychological desires and behaviors.

Considering the above, queer is a sort of antiidentity and strategic position (positioning) that pays particular attention to the ways that “incoherencies” occur in specific identity categories, such as biological sex type and sexual desire (Jagose, 1996). We can recognize these incoherencies as an aspect of each person’s alterity or otherness (Lévinas, 1969). Alterity here denotes all that we cannot know about the identity of the other person that stands before us; after all, despite all our labels and constructs, there always seems to be more about any person that we cannot grasp or fathom. Therefore, queer as an alterity signifies an excess and difference from particular socially constructed binaries (see Booth, 2011; Namaste, 1994). In other words, to be queer, to act or to live queerly, means to live, at times, on the brink of identity formations; this then, is, in part, the practice of queering. Queer, like alterity itself, is a descriptor of a range of possibilities for being human. The alterity of queerness is not exclusively about sexual identity nor desire alone but about the practice of remaining on the brink of whom we are and who we might become.

Queer is not a privileged position nor is it a permanent subjugated or “subaltern position” (Spivak, Landry, & MacLean, 1996); it is instead a divergent process, self-creating, and a possibility for all identities (Heckert, 2010; Jagose, 1996). Queer is an identity on the verge; but to stand on the brink does not mean one does not make a stand (c.f. Richardson, McLaughlin, & Casey, 2006, on “bordering theory”). Queering is a place to stand for human and civil rights and can thus become a strategically essentialized position (Spivak et al., 1996). In other words, standing at the verge is a place to stand for justice despite its provisional status. A queer practice is agile, adaptable, and ready to move on to or back off from. To this end, queer theory is sometimes used to mobilize social movements like act-up (see Highleyman, 2002).

Deconstruction and Queering

Deconstruction, the core practice of poststructural theory, is an attitude and process of decentering and destabilizing assumed truths within texts, discourses, and institutions. Deconstruction is not simply thinking critically or finding inaccuracies in texts; its concern is with the taken-for-granted construction and dissemination of truth and what may be said to be un-thought or unspoken within a given truth claim (Derrida, 1978). Spivak et al. (1996) says deconstruction is “a persistent critique of what one cannot not want” (p. 28). Deconstruction works at the relations of the marginal (between binary oppositions), on behalf of marginality, and thereby represents marginality as a form of existence.

In relation to deconstruction, Derrida (1978) points out the potentially “violent hierarchies” within binaries used in our everyday language, such as male/female or straight/gay, and his interest is in first reversing these binary distinctions to recognize taken-for-granted power; obviously, only doing this would simply play into the same violent system. Therefore, Derrida shows the oppositional forces inherent in, and disseminated from, particular hierarchies that bring about potential symbolic violence; that is, to the degree to which language itself perpetuates assumptions of superiority that lead to oppression.

What Derrida shows us is that the first dominant term cannot exist without the second or, put differently, that there is a trace of the so-called lesser term in the higher term (Derrida, 1978). In other words, homosexuality and heterosexuality are not simply two distinct states of being; one is unavoidably defined through the other, and so there is a trace of one in another in the sense of attempting to fully understand one or the other (Sampson, 1993).

Queering is an intrapersonal deconstruction because its process questions the assumed deeply natural, taken-for-granted, and hierarchical binaries of, for example, normal/abnormal (see D. N. Warner, 2004), but at the same time, it recognizes that these binaries shape our intimate relations with others and ourselves. ⁶ Binary oppositions of being either female or male are called into question by deconstruction by showing that any rigid distinction between these aforementioned binaries is able to be deconstructed, that is to say that there is a trace of that within this, of female within male, and of other within self (and vice versa). None of this is to say that one cannot identify resolutely, and for a lifetime, as either female or male, or homosexual or heterosexual; but the fact is that some do not identify in these distinct categories, or move fluidly between these binary oppositions, or cocreate new subject-positions to take (see Braidotti, 1994).

Difference itself is the foundation to binary oppositions, but the binary opposition works to cut the flow of differences. To recognize the excess or play within the binary opposition, Derrida (1978) introduces the term différance. For Derrida, différance is the recognition of a position, such as “different than” or “differing” as well as an establishment of action, such as deferring, meaning to put off until a later time. And so, we see that to be queer might mean to represent a differing from any binary distinction and to put something off, as in deferring exactly what one is to others (Namaste, 1994). If we cannot fully grasp or capture the whole of what any person is (alterity), we can say that each of us is always in deference and in difference to others. Queering is, and has been, a specific deference of meaning (i.e., not straight, not gay, not lesbian, not female or male, and so on) as well as a positioning as in differing than male or female, or straight, gay, lesbian, and so on. We all share the experience of difference, that is to say, of differing from one another; consequently, our full presence to another is deferred. In fact, “To call upon différance,” Chela Sandoval (2000) explains, “One must engage with the unsettling pleasures of faith, of ‘hope’ of utopian potentiality” (pp. 147-148; see also Muñoz, 2009). Thus, we see that difference itself holds a liberating potential, even if the identity one elects and partakes in is temporary or lasting one’s entire life.

With regard to deconstruction, Caputo (2004) says, “The affirmation of the unconditional, the experience of the impossible, is what deconstruction is all about” (p. 39). Différance and deconstruction then are no literal places to stand and have no distinct boundaries, rules, or procedures, yet they remain a crucial part of our methodology. Therefore, all others are understood, in part, by virtue of différance and in an attitude of deconstruction, which means, in part, that one may use oneself as differing and deferring to another to better understand another (this, we will soon show, provides a hermeneutic of love). The alterity of any other shows us and brings to us all that we are not, and in doing so, reveals to us our difference and our horizon of possibility (Lévinas, 1978). With Derrida’s deconstruction and différance in mind, how shall we see identity?

Queering Identifications

Can one classify oneself as identical to another? This would mean to make a list of traits that one presumably has as matching to another. When we categorize things, we look to those qualities that each possess and put them into the same category. But as Eleanor Rosch (1977), in her exhaustive work on categorization, pointed out, if the classical theory of categorization were accurate and comprehensive, no member of a category could have any unique standing. This is because, in the classical theory, the properties defining the category are common to all members; therefore, all members would have equivalent standing as category members. But they do not. Rosch showed that if categories are only defined by their jointly shared properties, then there can be no better examples within the category (i.e., no hierarchy). While we could argue that there should be no better examples within sexual and gender categories, this is not how these categorical binaries get socially constructed; rather, one seems to be able to be more or less male or female and one may not be gay enough to subsist within the self-identifying category. Rosch’s work showed that there are asymmetries within categories. Despite the problems with categorization, we do categorize each other and ourselves, and “The categorical opposition of groups essentializes them, repressing the differences within groups” (Young, 1990, p. 170).

Idem-identity is a form of categorizing (Ricoeur, 1992). It connotes that we can, and do, attempt to make others the same as us through the collection and classification of factors that create traits; we use our languages to identify ourselves with various groups as one and the same identity. Idem-identity can be seen as protective; let us note how identity is established, in part, to protect ourselves from all that is unknown. Lévinas (1978) offers a critique of identity as such, “For identity is not something that belongs to the verb to be, but to that which is, to a noun which has detached itself from the anonymous rustling of the there is” (p. 88). Here, Lévinas is describing an identity that is reduced to a totality in relation to the mystery (or, as he says, “invisibility” or there isness) that is existence itself—that mystery, Lévinas would say, keeps us up at night. When faced with the mystery of the other person, we may appropriate (own, make manageable, knowable, measurable) the other person by making them the same, and thereby maintaining this totality for both self and other. The identity becomes assured, rest assured, that it can contain and control the alterity of others and the mystery of existence itself. Identity as identifying with sameness becomes a “substantive” foundation that does not change and that closes us off from others (Burggraeve, 2002). This would then be a reduction of one’s own alterity to sameness with others; it is, in essence, protective.

In contrast to idem-identity, ipseity is recognition of other in self while maintaining one’s self-cohesiveness. Ricoeur (1992) explains that self-cohesiveness is marked by the unstable aspect of our identity, called ipse, which marks what is changeable with regard to identity. Ipseity points to an identity of self that is referred to by others, institutions, photographs, social networks, and stories. And so our selfhood is changeable, narrated, and interpreted with others, but it remains self-cohesive as others are always referring to this self, and yet a self that has changed (see also Hoffman, Stewart, Warren, & Meek, 2009). Therefore, ipseity is not sameness per se, but is a narration that has the same referent. Ipseity, we can see at present, is a disruptive aspect of a concrete identity, and we notice that the place we stand is at this storied cohesiveness: “We confront narrative identity, oscillating between sameness and selfhood” (Ricoeur, 1992, p. 151).

Ipseity offers us a theoretical potential to imagine a threshold between identities; our sense of self can exist fluidly, where we nevertheless may attest to our continued and cohesive self (Lévinas, 1986). Our readers will recognize that ipseity is the by-product of the deconstructive stance outlined above. What it means to be human is found, in part, within the dialectical and narrative relation between ipse- and idem identifications. Ricoeur (1992) relates, “What is ultimately attested to is selfhood, at once in its difference with respect to sameness and in its dialectical relation with otherness” (p. 302). ⁷

Queering as an Ethical Stance

Ricoeur’s notion of the aforementioned dialectic is exactly what we wish to better understand as the experience of threshold researching. Of most importance to us here is that ipseity, for Lévinas, is selfsameness and a selfhood that is continually challenged by the presence of others. Indeed, the face of the other, which presents the compelling command of alterity (Lévinas, 1999), may disrupt our precious and protective egoic bubble (as we have said above). Any other person is a medium by which one knows oneself, and the wholly other (any person one finds extraordinarily different than oneself) offers the radicalized possibility of knowing oneself even more. ⁸

We can see now that to queer oneself is, theoretically, a specific ethical responsibility that emerges at the rupture of self and other, where the other commands and compels, and the self as selfsameness responds with a practice of mutability: “I find that my very formation implicates the other in me,” Judith Butler (2004) acknowledges, and she states, “I am not fully known to myself, because part of what I am is the enigmatic traces of others” (p. 46). ⁹ The recognition of other in self is to recognize and affirm the possibility of being otherwise; Ricoeur (1992) explains, “Oneself as Another suggests from the onset that the selfhood of oneself implies otherness to such an intimate degree that one cannot be thought of without the other” (p. 3). What is so intriguing is that ipseity is at once an affirmation of one’s own self, which can subsequently be an affirmation of the other, and this is, in part, what Ricoeur understands as a hermeneutic and ethical relation.

With the dialectic of idem and ipseity in mind, a community researcher works the threshold of experience with others. But we have yet to explore what this practice might look like; the critical question is how are we able to begin an intrapersonal queering process of differing and deferring of recognition of ipseity, which is an affirmation of the otherness or alterity of the other? A queering practice is a personal deconstruction, as we have said, and may be a practice embarked upon by those researchers willing to be threshold researchers (see herising, 2005).

Threshold Researchers

Limen, in Latin, means threshold. Victor Turner (1969) describes threshold people or “liminal personae” as existing at a horizon of possibility through various forms of rituals and rites of passage: “Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial” (p. 95). Turner goes on that “liminality is frequently likened to death, to being in the womb, to invisibility, to darkness, to bisexuality, to the wilderness, and to an eclipse of the sun and the moon” (p. 95). ¹⁰ Likewise, Anzaldúa’s (1999) “borderland” metaphor allows for an expansion of humankind, which she describes as “a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary” (p. 25). What is natural, then, is deconstructed and thus becomes a threshold or an experience of liminality. The reification of a distinct category with regard to gender or sexuality, for instance, is resisted. ¹¹ Therefore, while a person may self-identify as homosexual or heterosexual (or queer) for a lifetime, this does not mean that this identification, however authentic to the person, covers absolutely and completely everyone else’s experiences within the same presumed category of sexuality, gender, or any other aspect of identity.

Resistance does not denote an ongoing crisis of identity. The dialectic between ipse and idem, or between the liminal and postliminal possibilities, may be healthfully maintained. Edith Turner (2012) touches on the continued resistance of postliminal certainty and at the liminal stage as “a way of life, a much broader phenomenon, generating another whole genre of culture” (p. 168). She continues, “Equality, undifferentiated humanness, androgyny, and humility are some of the characteristics of this condition” (p. 169).

Each of us, in our categorization of ourselves, finds that we are and can be other, and thus more. Following Derrida (1978) again, with a queering practice and standing as threshold researchers, we find a “trace” (i.e., of femaleness/maleness and of hetero/homo), which harkens us to an origin that cannot be fully present and leaves us a leftover and outline that defers the full presence of the origin that presumably produces clear and distinct lines between being female/male, gay/straight, and so on.

One is not, of course, a threshold person in any concrete and lasting sense but is instead “rifting” (Butler, 1990) or standing at the breach where one can imagine the position of the other, not through appropriation and assimilation but as an affirmation (Sycamore, 2008). Rifting, as Butler describes, is both ontological and political (see Murray, 2007), meaning that to stand at the breach is an ethical obligation. Moreover, to be a threshold researcher is not an exotic way of being, and it is not prescribed by others, but is a practice of phenomenology and imagination, of imagining one’s self at the threshold with another and pushing this to its outer reaches (c.f. Ratcliffe, 2012). The threshold researcher does not have a hypothesis with regard to the other person’s experience or presume to put oneself in the place of the other (cognitively or emotionally). The rift is an opening at the threshold of experience that allows the presence of the other person’s experience to meet one’s own experience as potentially shared and not as a facile experience of sameness or accuracy.

We have outlined a threshold stance that, in its resistance to the presupposition of unsullied binary distinctions, recognizes the other’s uniqueness beyond labels, constructs and categories. The threshold researcher, “accountable” to the other (Butler, 2005), may interpret with deference to the other. For Butler, to rift means to use identity changes pragmatically and existentially grounded to a given situation or person. Likewise, here we are affirming rifting as part of the queering process that is transformed into a hermeneutics of love.

Queering and a Hermeneutic of Love

What brings us to these thresholds of experience with others? In this section, we will consider an approach to threshold researching that begins with love, which is to say a practiced loving interpretation of others, which is considered a “wisdom of love” (Burggraeve, 2002).

Alphonso Lingis (2000) tells us, “Love is not only something that befalls us, from the outside, something impossible to produce by planning; it is also itself a fall” (p. 81). Thus far we have looked at the queering practice as compared to a liminal threshold or liminality. A common experience of liminality, which many of us can relate to, is falling in love. It is a provisional, verging experience where we think and feel not fully within one experience “in love” or another “not in love.” Falling in love sometimes pushes us to the precipice of acceptance, for we may fall in love with the “wrong” person for all the wrong reasons, or we may fall in love with ideas and actions condemned by others, and yet these ideas and actions, these people we meet, may concurrently feel right and indeed be right for us and others—it is love or, perhaps, this “wisdom of love” that welcomes and affirms even the contradictory and paradoxical (see Burggraeve, 2002 ).

Likewise, we can embrace an additional liminal and dialectical stance, which resides between self-love and selfless love; note again that this threshold is not a clear line of mutual exclusivity (see Sampson, 2003). According to bell hooks (2000), “Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice” (p. 67). As a threshold researcher, the dialectical tension is maintained between self-love and selfless love. Caputo (2004) relates, “Only when you love the other with a love that respects the distance of the other that you love” (p. 44). Recall that queering is an intrapersonal practice of deconstruction; queering is a loving practice as deconstruction is a practice of love (c.f. Davis, 2002; Diedrich, 2007). Reflecting on Derrida’s work, Caputo writes, “Deconstruction is love, the love of something unforeseeable, unforegraspable, something to come, absolutely, something undeconstructible and impossible, something nameless” (Derrida & Caputo, 1997, p. 173). To interpret at the threshold of possibility, to queer one’s self like one is falling into a selfless love, is to be at our most vulnerable, open, unknowing, welcoming, and understanding of others and ourselves. Again from hooks (2000), “That is why it is useful to see love as a practice. When we act, we need not feel inadequate or powerless; we can trust that there are concrete steps to take on love’s path” (p. 165). ¹² Love is an “act of transcendence,” Jean-Luc Nancy (1991) explains, which creates an “ontological fissure” (p. 96), for love moves us beyond a singular being having love or, in a linear way, simply sending love. Love, rather, allows us to move beyond our narcissistic egos and toward others. To queer oneself means to lovingly bend and interweave, to fragment, and to dissolve; this is a falling, and it is not passive or possessive, where one recognizes oneself and the other as property possessed. Love as a practice, and queering as a loving practice, is transcending the possessive and the passive to an active practice.

Additionally, queer practice may be an interpretive practice of love for and with others (c.f. Sedgwick, 1990). A hermeneutics of love then is the practice of interpreting with love as a point of reference and departure. Hermeneutics is a way of understanding and interpreting that began with the interpretation of sacred texts (Caputo, 1987). Its roots go back to the Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the gods. Hermes, we may recall, traversed the seemingly impassable divide between mortals and gods and was, therefore, an interpreter and translator from gods to humans. In other words, Hermes stood at the threshold of understanding. In thinking of Lévinas, we can imagine a similar divide here and now, between self and other; a divide which we might say is comparably awe inspiring. The threshold researcher does not put oneself in the place of the other but betwixt and between self and other. The threshold researcher holds to a hermeneutic of love (Sandoval, 2000).

Hermeneutics has been “suspicious” as it has mistrusted the other’s intention or its suspiciousness has led to the search for lurking, deeper, and superior truths within what is spoken, acted out, or hidden behind the written word, and said truths could only be discovered by an authority (see Ricoeur, 1970). We know from our personal relationships that suspiciousness undermines love. A hermeneutic of love, in contrast, is an interpretive approach toward others that is a brave and trusting love, resolutely given at the threshold of understanding and interpretation. We must be ready, willing, and able to “get burned” to be let down and deceived; at this queering threshold, we have no protective barrier, and thus our only hope is to return again. If as a community researcher one must interpret, then one may interpret as a practice of love, which just might have to include the queering of oneself as an act of love, and to be “undone by another is a primary necessity,” (p. 136) which grounds our responsibility to others as Butler (2005) says. Can we do good work with each other while standing at the brink, at the abyss of our own unknowing and unraveling where the totality of our identities is verging?

Community and the Voice of Others

The following research is rooted in a qualitative methodology and grounded theory. Glaser and Strauss (1967) developed grounded theory as a rigorous and systematic method using two styles of content analysis. One involves coding the data (the interview or observation) and the other involves uniformly analyzing the codes in order to formulate a grounded conceptualization. “Grounded” then refers to the degree to which the data is inductively coming from, and supported by the lived experiences of the participants (Charmaz, 2009). Semistructured interviews were conducted to gather idiographic data about people’s experiences as queer identified activists (Seidman, 1998). A purposive sample was used, reaching into a community on campus and based on prescribed theoretical and experiential criteria (see Creswell, 1998; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Oliver, 2006). Given the inaccessibility of this marginalized population, snowball sampling was employed, such that 17 interviews were conducted (ages of 21-31 years). Four concepts were identified: (1) the role of sexuality and gender identity as core elements in queer identity, (2) the role of resistance to hierarchy and exploitation of power, (3) activism as a shaping influence of queer identity, and (4) the role and influence of social relationships and community. The reader will note that these aforementioned concepts emerge below as intertwined with other concepts and experiences.

Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The open coding involved identification within the texts of elements of meaning directly related to prescribed questions. Questions included the following: (1) What does it mean to you to be queer identified? (2) Can you tell me about your experiences as an activist and provide examples? (3) How have these experiences affected your understanding of self and your understanding of power? (4) Who or what has been most influential? (5) Is there anything else I haven’t asked that you think I should know?

Participants consistently described queer, as they understood it, to be an ongoing possibility. Every participant reported coming to a queer understanding of themselves by first exploring their gender and sexuality. Realizing that their sexual desires or practices were nonnormative, they began to see themselves as “other,” especially in the face of heteronormativity and even, in some cases, homonormativity. Being labeled as explicitly straight or gay was inherently problematic for many. One participant explained, “I tend to identify as straight but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate (and occasionally have attraction to) a beautiful woman.” Others explained the ways in which their gender expressions and gender identities were nonnormative. The intersection of gendered sexualities was especially problematic for many—they reported the notion that to be properly lesbian, one must be butch, or to be properly gay, one must be a “sissy” or “queen” (Concept 1). Most participants talked about the way in which the expectations from within the gay community were found to be binding and rigid and not reflective of their authentic experiences. One participant expounded,

We don’t fit into the mainstream gay movement . . . we felt like the movement left us out . . . because we’re poor, we’re black, we’re trannies . . . whatever it was, we felt like the movement didn’t accept us.

This othering, then, did not simply stop within their experience of straight culture. Participants described feeling marginalized even within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Several spoke of not acting “gay enough” or being told that “bisexuality is just a myth” and that they simply wanted to “hold on to their straight privilege” (Concept 1).

Participants, however, did not use queer to only describe gender and sexuality. Many shared the sense that it was about a way of acting in the world. One participant stated that queer “has the potential to be anything.” There was a sense that queer ought to be translated into a verb and applied to experiences beyond just sexuality. As we have noted above, while typically used to denote sexual orientation or gender variation, queer can be lived, and it indicates stepping beyond binaries and boundaries or living seamlessly within them. One participant described it as “pushing the limits of society and social expectations” (Concept 4). Another participant explained, “When you’re queer, you’re different. You’re the oddballs,” while another stated, “[When most people use the word queer], it means everyone in the gay community. But in the gay community, I use the word queer [to denote] the people who are even weirder than the rest of the gay community.” One person defined queer as having “mutual respect and understanding for other people, people that think differently than you do” (Concept 4).

Asking participants to define the concept of queer was complex and nuanced—many resisted defining it at all. One thing was clear, almost everyone interviewed used queer to explore constructions of identity that went beyond rigid dichotomies. When one participant was asked if he identified as trans*, he responded,

Yes, but with a grain of salt. The term trans implies that you are between gender A and gender B, but I don’t believe A and B exist. . . . Nor do I believe those (limited choices) are necessary. . . . For example, I went to the grocery store the other night wearing what some would call “drag,” but for me, it was actually just closer to where I feel comfortable. . . . Even though I like miniskirts and go-go boots, I also like to work on trucks and ride bikes.

Thus, living an authentic life for most seems to indicate that they push the expectations for “straight” and “gay,” for “girl” and “boy.” This blurring exists beyond just sex and gender, though these areas tend to be the first to be explored by our participants within a queer identity.

Queer is used to describe a multitude of experiences, and there is a danger in overgeneralizing it to the extent that it loses its meaning. For example, while several participants felt liberated by this openness and flexibility, one participant noted that it may be losing its “power” as it gets more watered down (Concept 2). Another explained that while he does not wish to challenge someone’s right to self-identify, he has concerns about whether or not the person has a shared experience of oppression. He stated,

If someone says they’re queer, then they’re queer. I don’t ask them what that means. But if they start saying that gay marriage shouldn’t be a political campaign . . . while I probably agree with them but I want to hear it from someone who might be directly affected by that legislation. (Concept 4)

While queer has the potential to be connected to many evolving identities, it is more of a process of self-discovery, a process by which participants came to understand many parts of themselves as changing and existing between binary expectations. For participants, it also signifies honoring the struggles of oppressed and marginalized groups.

Ultimately, participants suggested that it was the “struggle” that makes it worthwhile; that each may define for her or himself what queer means. It is the very process of exploring that makes queer a worthy endeavor. One person stated, “I’m always changing. I’m a person in-flux. I really always am, at least to some degree, unsure of my identity and who I am, honestly.” We note the dialectic of idem and ipse in this response; the recognition of being on the threshold while at the same time searching for an honest place to stand. Another said,

The interactive process that contributes to the creation of self . . . contributes to being compelled to take action. It is self-reflective, it is interactive and therefore a creative process and I believe that that is an act of social change. (Concept 4)

So it seems that being decentralized in relation to the assumed normal and natural is an act of rebellion for some (c.f. Shepard, 2010; Song, 2012) as well as a creative act.

There was a sense that perhaps queerness goes beyond issues of sexuality and gender and can be more easily (though temporarily) “defined” as a deconstruction of power and hierarchy,or, at least an awareness of how power is used in our day-to-day lives and how hierarchy is resisted. Participants talked about the ways in which they challenged social expectations for sexuality and gender, and the ways in which this carried over into other areas of their lives. For example, one participant explained that his experiences helped him “look at the world around him and question the things he has been told about it” (Concept 2). Another participant related, “If people didn’t want to have power over somebody and create that whole subordinate/dominant relationship then sexuality and gender (expectations) wouldn’t be an issue either” (Concept 2). For many, exploring power inherent in their relationships was also a way to explore power in the greater social structures. One participant explained that she “wants everyone to be free,” not just in their self-expression but in their lives in general. Many participants offered critical class or race analyses of the world—places where power and hierarchy has been maintained, as one participant wrote,

We need a system where everything is shared in a more equitable fashion . . . wealth seems to mean power. For the poor and underdogs . . . the main struggle is going to be about how to get these people more power.

For many, like the person above, a broader analysis of power began to inform not only their personal and sexual lives but also their political ones.

Participants discussed feeling called to help others, especially given a shared sense of oppression. One person described doing outreach and educational talks on LGBT issues as “necessary,” even though it can feel basic or redundant. Another described her activism as a “moral obligation” (Concepts 2 and 4). Almost every participant discussed the various ways that they felt they worked for justice in their communities. This included a wide range of actions and issues from volunteering at LGBT centers, to working on antitrafficking campaigns, to antiwar demonstrations, police brutality, labor rights, and affordable health care for all. One participant explained, “The queer movement stuff that I was reading about—people were making connections between things like race and class” (Concept 3). This intersectionality gave participants the sense that activism centered only on sexuality and gender issues were not enough. There was a sense that the work was much broader. Another related, “The whole goal was to queerize the radical community and radicalize the queer community” (Concepts 2 and 3). This participant went on to say that the radical, anarchist activists in her circles were not always aware of issues of heterosexism and transphobia. At the same time, she wanted the queer community to begin thinking about their politics from a more multidimensional, critical view moving beyond gay marriage.

For many participants, their experiences of othering often resulted in feelings of isolation and loneliness. Finding community and developing strong social relationships has become an important characteristic of queer life. One participant discussed his gender expression and sexual behavior stating that he was used to rejection by most people in his life. However, finding others who identify with a similar experience of being marginalized gave him a sense of connection: “I have found community under the word queer but I’ve been hesitant to really get close to people because I’m so used to rejection” (Concept 4). Another conveyed, “We’re all together, because we’re all alone” (Concept 4). Other participants discussed creating their identities in relation to members of their community. One participant related that the community of other queer activists had the biggest influence on her identity development. She recalls, “We have quite a group of queers here. . . . I am constantly learning from my friends” (Concept 4). When another participant was asked who had the most influence on her development of self, she replied, “My identity has been built based on the community that I am in” (Concept 4).

In fact, participants reported feeling disconnected from other people throughout their lives. One commented on the cultural norms of staying disintegrated and separate. He stated that, as a culture, we are not “encouraged to interact with people in the community, especially if they aren’t anything like us” (Concept 4). Another participant stated,

I realize things are enslaving because we end up just working for those things and it disconnects us from each other. It disconnects us from being ethical, from considering other peoples’ needs and other peoples’ situations. Because we’ve become isolated to this whole pursuit of making money so that we can . . . make more money and collect more things.

Participants were consistently concerned with people who have different identifications but share a similar sense of oppression. One participant reported, “I worry about my interpretation of queer trampling somebody else’s” (Concepts 2 and 4). Note the unwillingness in the aforementioned to use an identifying label to perpetuate the symbolic violence of making the other the same within the labeled category. We see that the experience of being queer as a threshold experience is closely tied to an activist and thoughtful stance with others. One person argued that if you are truly “emotionally, mentally and spiritually healthy” then you “can’t accept when other people are being abused and exploited” (Concepts 2, 3, and 4). Another related that he was introduced to the world of activism because he had “seen tears and held shaking hands” after particularly traumatic events in women’s lives. Another affirmed, “I feel that my life needs to have some kind of meaning beyond just living for myself so that’s where a lot of my activism comes in” (Concept 3). And so there was a consistent concern for sharing power among the community: “Non-hierarchal organizing means that everyone participates in the process” (Concept 3). One participant suggested, “Being queer for me is rejecting that dogma, no matter where it is coming from” (Concepts 2, 3, and 4).

We note that grounded theory has its limitations as the initial coding is always to some extent subjective and in this study we have a limited sample size upon which to make our interpretations; therefore, we have a limited generalizability even while data was recognized as co-constructed by researcher and participant (see Charmaz, 2009). For these resaons, we chose herein to give direct voice to our participants as often as possible.

Epilogue: Thresholds and Community Action Research

What we have shown above, both theoretically and experientially, is that the queering threshold experience can lead to an interpretive, loving, understanding, and affirmation of others, all others. Therefore, we advocate for a queering threshold practice, which is an imaginative practice that can be facilitated as a training in group settings. In other words, queering as a threshold practice and a hermeneutics of love is, as we have shown, more than about sexuality and gender and, as such, is available to researchers who self-identify in various ways. Victor Turner understood that there must be rituals that allow participants to embark upon threshold practices with members of a given community. For example, herising (2005) calls for “regulatory prescriptive practices” (p. 131) that comprise asking critical questions about one’s (the researcher) relationship with the other in a community as well as one’s right to enter into and become involved with a given community (e.g., questioning one’s privileged status as an academic and researcher is a good start). Of most importance is an appreciation of the creation (and assumption) of the border of otherness and self and to address when these assumed borders are “reconstituted” by the researcher (herising, 2005, p. 131).

A threshold experience would, in part, mean politicizing (Grace & Hill, 2009) or making culturally relevant the threshold encounter thereby reflecting current oppressions. The threshold researcher’s stance is, in effect, an activist position, which then facilitates participatory, community-based action research (Hacker, 2013; Lewin, 1946). Of paramount concern to us here has been to show that being a threshold researcher is a humanistic endeavor, born of love and belief in the dignity of all people. We look forward to embedding threshold experiences within our psychology program based upon a practice of self-love and selfless love; ¹³ we feel it is this hermeneutic of love that is transformative and empowering.