A queer activist and remarkable artist, @fifitango (if you’re not following them yet, you should), once told me during an interview that truly deconstructing yourself means first tearing yourself apart so you can rebuild yourself. That sentence has stayed with me. Because it is unsettling. Because it promises no comfort. Because it does not sell an aesthetic transformation, but rather a profound process one that is often painful.
To deconstruct yourself is not about adding new concepts to an otherwise unchanged identity. It is about acknowledging that there are structures both internal and external that must be dismantled. And although this process begins on an individual level, it cannot be understood apart from the collective.
We cannot imagine a fairer, more equal society while relying on the very same logics, hierarchies, and privileges that sustain today’s inequalities. It is not enough to put a fresh coat of paint on the system we must question it at its very foundation.