Beverly Ellison

Queering Therapy. 

Yes, it is about sex & ... it is about gender, and sexual orientation, and pleasure, and de-colonization, and anti-racism, and fat liberation, and a whole lot more. Queer historically means strange, different, not the norm. As queer people we have reclaimed the word as a celebration of our refusal to conform to cisnormativity, heteronormativity, amatonormativity, and allonormativity, when that is just not who we are. But there is even more to the term “queer.” 

To be queer we had to start to look within, to understand ourselves, sometimes without language to express what we felt, what we knew. Queering is the ongoing process of self-reflection, deconstruction of what we were told we “should” do or who we “should” be. We get to define ourselves, our bodies, our loves, and create a life of our own guided by our personal sovereignty and the strength of our queering communities. Queering therapy does not return people to “normal” nor the safety of society, because as minoritized people we may not be safe. It makes sense to feel unsafe and unwell in an unhealthy society. Instead of conformity, queering therapy aims to support people to experience pleasure, joy, and interconnection while also striving for a safer and more just world.