Children are introduced to queerness as an act of sex and desire between themselves and another body. Within this heteronormative label comes the insidious lack of recognition that one’s queerness is living and breathing within them no matter attraction or intimacy.
Despite living in liberal Southern California, hundreds of young queer people in LA are fighting to honor their LGBTQIA+ multiplicity. They are asking, what exactly is queerness?
For this subculture, queer identity is about more than who you’re kissing. Their queerness emerges through their external expression. Painted faces, daggered jewelry, visible scars, dancing poles and spray-painted walls — through their nonlinear, arresting visual representation and their determination to live as open-hearted as the soul can bear, comes the extreme beauty of knowing oneself
