In the year since Profane Beasts was released to the public, I have yapped about the novel to anyone who would listen. Through all the conversations that I have treasured beyond measure of my book, I have felt steady when fielding questions about the themes and plot of Profane Beasts from all angles. Well mostly all angles, except one.
During a discussion with a book club, one of the lovely folks asked me a question that not only seemed obvious but also had strong textual support from the words that I wrote. Is Kelly queer?
This is not a difficult question to answer. In the passages with Kelly’s former roommate, it’s stated that Kelly made several declarations of love to a queer person. Not only that, but Kelly never expresses interest in a heterosexual relationship throughout the story. Put together, it is obvious that while Kelly may not have fully known herself before the end, she definitely knew she was queer.
Which makes it very interesting that all I could do when I was asked the question was hem and haw about how much of a mess Kelly was due to various traumas that pulse through Profane Beasts. As if her traumatic history somehow invalidated, or broke her ability to define herself as queer. Even the phrase that her roommate wrote of “ill advised declarations of love” is one that sits uncomfortably with me today. The question revealed something ugly within my conception of the character, that Kelly’s identity was too shattered by her trauma for her to ever be “truly” queer.
The trope of the child too mentally broken to be queer is one that has been weaponized to frightening effect across the western world. Under the masquerade of wanting children not to inflict supposed “irreversible damage” on themselves, queer kids are constantly subjected to adults asking them to define themselves in concrete terms. Instead of viewing queerness as a self directed identity, queerness is instead viewed similarly to attachment or developmental disorders, a comorbidity where all other causes must be ruled out before the child is considered “legitimately queer.”
This is not a theoretical question, but one that has removed access to gender affirming care from England and large swathes of the United States. Take the furor and scandal around the Tavistock Medical Center or GIDS in the UK, which provided gender affirming care to minors. Staff’s concerns with the program followed a script of pathologization to a tee. Whistleblowers repeated claims that the children were “deeply troubled” or “unable to read or write.” They claimed the kids were autistic, that they had been bullied, or had suffered from horrendous abuse. The belief being that the children were too shattered to form an identity, and that medical professionals should step in to make sure that the children’s desires were “genuine.”
The result of this furor was a lawsuit, a report, and the shuttering of GIDS which cut children who had already been transitioning off from gender affirming care. The damage was not contained to GIDS, as in the UK right now, gender affirming care for children cannot be given through the National Healthcare Service. The state decided that disgruntled staff members at GIDS had more of a right to determine the decisions children made about their own bodies than the children themselves.
The logic of the grievance campaign against GIDS mirrors the logic of anti-queer groups that constantly warn of their children being manipulated by the existence of queer people in civil society. The utility of the shattered queer child trope, is that revulsion and hatred towards queer children is, for the moment at least, outside the bounds of acceptable social discourse. While this explicit phobic response still animates the actions of anti-queer activists, in order to adapt to the bounds of acceptable liberal discourse, anti-queer organizations instead state their revulsion is to fictional systems of queer indoctrination. This also allows anti-queer people to disavow hatred of their own children. In a twisted version of “love the sinner, hate the sin” the anti-queer can displace their revulsion towards their child to social media, popular music, or the existence of queer people in civil society.
In the film Leviticus, this ideology is laid out in the relationship between the main character Naim and his anti-queer mother. During a conversation where Naim is begging his mother to stay with him because he is being stalked by a violent doppleganger of his queer lover, he tries to express his identity. Instead, Naim’s mother states that Naim just got confused by the outside influence of his lover. What bubbles beneath the surface is that both Naim and the audience are aware that this explanation is a distraction. Naim’s mother is repelled by his queerness, and views it as an aberrant part of her child that must be removed by any means necessary. However, liberal society has started to understand how deeply monstrous and damaging this urge in Naim’s mother is, and so she tells Naim and to a certain extent herself a different story. She doesn’t hate her child, she loves her child, she just wants him to be protected from a predatory queer who turns him deviant.
In the whistleblowers’ report on GIDS the idea of protecting children from the predatory powers of youth culture, peer pressure, and domestic abuse are repeated again and again. The report mirrors the move many hate groups engage in today, one of a dark uno reverse card when the impacts of hatred are exposed. For the shattered queer child, letting them form their identity is the real abuse, instead of helping them through their trauma or autism or social anxiety. According to the GIDS whistleblowers, what loving and protecting queer kids looks like is constant batteries of psychological testing where the children are required to coherently self define themselves over and over again until the right treatment can be prescribed. One can almost hear Naim’s mother expressing that to let him be hurt and confused by his queer lover is the real child abuse.
What was disturbing to me as I fielded the question of “Is Kelly queer?” was how throughout writing Profane Beasts my personal conception of Kelly was that she was too shattered by her trauma to be considered “genuinely queer.” I thought I was fully prepared to answer any questions about the book, which is why when I got halfway through my answer of “she doesn’t know if she’s queer because she was traumatized” I found myself shocked.
Because Kelly’s trauma history doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not she is queer.
The assumption shows just how deep and pernicious this idea of a shattered queer child goes. I wrote Profane Beasts with the hope that no one could walk away from the book thinking that religious conservatives had the right idea about queer people. I wrote Profane Beasts to rebut terrible “analysis” of evangelicalism that just omitted entirely its hatred of queer people. But, despite all of that, this idea that some people just cannot be trusted with their own identity became a piece of one of the main characters.
It’s here I guess I have to start talking about myself. You see, the person who I’ve always trusted least with their own identity is well, me. While at times, this has manifested as an ugly fixation with what it means to be “legitimately queer” towards others, this impulse to pathologize has been relentlessly wielded against my own identity. I would parry questions about whether or not I was queer by endless overthinking of what it meant, self-hatred over supposed deviance, and most absurdly, a belief that unless I understood all of the ins and outs of my own identity I could not be considered a “legitimate queer.”
Near the end of Leviticus, after Naim has temporarily defeated the creature stalking him, he again tries to explain to his mom both his fear of his own queer identity and the thing that is trying to kill him. In the most horrifying moment of the film, Naim’s mom responds to this distress by coldly stating that what happened to Naim in the faith healing isn’t reversible. The creature is going to stalk him forever, he is going to be afraid forever, and actually it is a good thing because according to Naim’s mother, “fear keeps us alive.”
The bleakness of this fate, of the fear Naim has to live with for the rest of his life, makes it all the more remarkable how the ending turns hopeful. Naim leaves his mother to meet back up with his lover at the bus stop, and the two of them ride off into the wider world. While on the bus, Naim sees the doppelganger outside the bus, but instead of recoiling, he just nestles deeper into his lover. Acceptance of queerness being the only way he can live, even if the anti-queer revenant will be with him until the end.
When asked about whether or not Kelly was queer, my own doppelganger returned like it did for Naim outside the bus. Mine taking the form of the self questioning, self doubting creature always wanting to ask “well what do you mean by that really?” or saying that I just wanted attention or am confused or just want to claim something that isn’t mine. It is not a mystery why when asked whether or not Kelly was queer, I responded as if the question was about me.
Maybe Naim’s mom is right that this will be with me for the rest of my life, but I don’t want to be scared forever. Because the answer to is Kelly Harden queer and am I queer is the same.
Of course we are.
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