A Stupid Person Believes That Memorialization Blocks Anticipation

August 23, 2025

My friend recently drafted a lengthy yet dense article about the mourning and becoming of queer identities. I want to make a point here that part of the thesis, unduly summarized in the title, is a little stupid.

Jido makes a terrifyingly tangled analysis about objects that we think can be mourned and objects that we think can be desired. The outstanding citation to support this comparison is Testo Junkie, which contains statements that are too correct.

It is too correct that traits are stated to be divided into this dichotomy by ideology, because things have always been this way, things have increasingly been this way, and things will always be this way. Queer people sometimes reject one side of the dichotomy and sometimes the other, but never both.

Take this example: I am me when I am respected. I am also me when I am desired. The identity, which I am not going to go into today, is an intertangled mess of how one desires to be respected and how one’s desires are respected. We should not confuse this, Jido, as I have said, and as many people only seek being desired through traditional means of being mourned. You are partly right; marginalized subjects mourn the lost opportunities to be accepted, to be respected, and to be desired. But what do you feel when you say this?

Does it not feel like the object of mourning is something to be, and the verb is something to do?

Memorialization seems like blocking a future, but it is shaping the future. Many speak of shaping an identity, but who browses in the identity store and selects base packages and add-on packages and premiums and markups? I do not choose the clothes I wear, the body I have, or the things I am accustomed to. I resort to them. A resort is a memorial, a memorial of things I have done in my clothes, the people I have disappointed with my body, and the actions that has passed through my instruments. The only things I also resort to is anticipation; be it redemption, revenge, or repetition.

A living memory is a memory that hopes—that hopes to be forgotten.

In case of any serious readers, this article is just as unorganized and unedited as the draft that inspired me. As always,

This is a short-short article in a series of short-short opinion pieces. Ideas are of my own except when they are not.