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Quote :The Queer Art of Failure
Failing is something queers do and have always done exceptionally well; for queers failing can be a style, to cite Quentin Crisp, or a way of life, to cite Foucault, and it can stand in contrast to the grim scenarios of success that depend upon "trying and trying again." In fact if success requires so much effort, then maybe failure is easier in the long run and offers different rewards. And what kind of rewards can failure offer us? Perhaps most obviously, failure allows us to escape the punishing norms that discipline behavior and manage human development with the goal of delivering us from unruly childhoods to orderly and predictable adulthoods. Failure preserves some of the wonderful anarchy of childhood and disturbs the supposedly clean boundaries between adults and children, winners and losers.
All of us measure our lives, in some ways, by what our bodies do. Right after we're born we're called infants. When we start to walk we're called toddlers, then adolescents, then teenagers. That thinking has been based on the assumption that everyone is heterosexual.
This old nursery rhyme reinforces that progression:
Jake and Jenny sittin' in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
First comes love,
Then comes marriage,
Then comes baby in a baby carriage.
This life order is what Halberstam refers to when she talks about "the punishing norms that discipline behavior and manage human development." If we look at most people's lives, we see that many events are actually "out of order."
Many of us, homosexuals and heterosexuals, at some point in life, mess up the order of things. Dad's mid-life crisis means he buys that red Camaro he wanted to buy when he was sixteen. Mom takes a karate class at fifty-five because back in her day, girls weren't allowed to.
Failure to fulfill expected gender norms messes with time. What Halberstam wants us to think about is that every person has her own timetable for development. We all mature in different ways, and at different intervals.
Stepping outside the expected timeline, the queer person—and this can include anyone, regardless of sexuality—can examine her own life and make life decisions in whatever order seems best.
The implications of this way of thinking are far-reaching. In Halberstam's view, failure helps us be happy. How? We achieve things when they feel right, not when we feel pressure to make something of ourselves.
So as queer people fail to be this kind of man or that kind of woman, whole new worlds full of differently satisfying possibilities open up. Then there is only one expectation left: you should be happy with yourself, and with your life.
That sounds like an okay expectation to us.