Abstract:
Acts of care, intimacy, and struggle are practiced outside of ascribed traditional family
structures. Queer kinship is cultivated and nurtured by folks—biological or nonbiological,
queer or non-queer—who intentionally choose to be in each other’s lives.
Queer kinship not only operates based on the identities of queer or non-queer people, but
rather the practices, commitments, and shared values and principles of everyone
involved. In an exploratory study, I centralize queer Filipina/x experiences with
queemess and queer kinship to argue that queer kinship is an intimate site of care,
resilience, resistance, and struggle. I assert that queer kinship and the practices involved
are material responses to current social, political, and economic conditions. Additionally,
I build on using “queer” as an identity marker, rather, I highlight the material
manifestations of queerness through mundane care practices and the collective process of
unlearning internalized homophobia. Participants in the study demonstrate that they build
genuine and intentional long-lasting relationships with one another for the purpose of
fighting for a socially just future.
