Queer Volume Tarot Spread
For striking a healthy, enriching, & strategic balance
between public expression & sweet, restorative privacy.
between public expression & sweet, restorative privacy.
“Where do the quiet gays go?”
-Hannah Gadsby, Nanette
“These go to 11.”
-Christopher Guest, Spinal Tap
-Hannah Gadsby, Nanette
“These go to 11.”
-Christopher Guest, Spinal Tap
0. Private: What experience to keep to myself?
1. Quiet: What to dial down for my own well being?
2. Balance: How to strike a healthy balance between expression and privacy?
3. Business: Where to be assertive but sedate for the sake of strategy?
4. Loud: Something to speak out about.
5. Proud: Something to take pride in and stand up for.
11. Fancy: Where to show off and make a scene for my own joy?
NOTES:
Two of the biggest queer stereotypes are volume based: we’re either super loud and flashy, or quiet and kinda weird. So much queer representation and storytelling in the media (especially media by cis-het makers) has centered around either campy, flamboyant spectacle or quiet desperation. If you’re not in the closet, you’re on top of the parade float in a feather boa and gogo boots. If you’re quiet, you’re miserable and possibly antisocial. If you’re loud, you’re loud 24/7/365.
Not so reflective of genuine experience, this model. Most of us live somewhere between 0 and 11 on the amp, and most of us turn the volume up and down as desired or needed for joy, strategy, and safety.
Meanwhile, we’ve grown up in cultures that tend to reward consistency and punish variance. We internalize the stereotypes and scripts that say we’re supposed to be one steady thing. This can make it difficult and confusing to embrace the nuanced range of presentations necessary to navigate a meh to hostile world, for safety’s sake, and to embrace our own natural shifts in mood, for health and pleasure’s sake.
If I don’t feel like partying this pride, am I queer enough? If I’m a trans man and want to try femme drag sometime, would that undermine my trans-ness? If I go back in the closet while traveling through a place with high risk of physical violence, am I betraying myself and my people? If I put on a suit to attend a city counsel meeting, am I stuck on respectability politics or selling out?
Questions like these spring from pressures within and without the queer community, and they can do a number on our inner peace. Even for those unhaunted by like pressures, it can be tricky to figure out what experiences to telegraph, what to keep low-key, and when. Social media makes it harder and harder for everyone to strike a satisfying balance between publicity and privacy.
This spread is for giving each of the inner quiet gays, business gays, and loud gays their due, and getting them all to get along within the self.
The focus throughout this spread should be on what works for you, and not on meeting others’ preferences and expectations. This gets tricky, because many of us live in or pass through hostile climates, and sometimes we do have to make concessions or adopt expressions we wouldn’t otherwise to acquire and maintain our rights and safety. Whenever possible with this spread, put your needs first, and when compromise is needed, make sure you get something out of it. That’s the key.
When we dial down the volume, it should be to soothe our peace of mind and protect ourselves, over satisfying others’ judgmental whims. When we meet the over-culture where it is, it should be out of personal taste or to accomplish a goal, and not to police our own or others’ aesthetics. And when we get loud and flamboyant, it should be for the sake of our joy and self-expression, and not to fit in with our peers or to entertain gawkers who don’t respect us. (Intimidating or messing with gawkers who don’t respect us is another story...)
I fully recognize that there’s some cognitive dissonance baked into this exercise. It’s tricky to figure out, tricky to keep in balance, and tricky to feel good about, because it’s tricky terrain. Hopefully, that’s where tarot can soothe and help.
VARIATIONS:
1. Comfort Stretch Mini-Reading: If you’re already pretty comfy at one setting on the amp, and you’d like to step out of your comfort zone, you can do a mini reading exclusively on the area(s) you’d like to stretch into. Cards 1 and 2 correspond to calm, quiet, and privacy. Cards 3 and 4 correspond to balance and business (assertive but sedate). Cards 5, 6, and 11 correspond to being loud, gregarious, and showy.
2. Situational Volume: Weigh the best volume of expression for a given situation by drawing a card each for likely outcome of being silent, quiet, sedate, loud, or fancy. That’s a lot of options, so it may help to supplement and organize your interpretations with a yes or no code for the reading. I like upright-yes-reversed-no.
1. Quiet: What to dial down for my own well being?
2. Balance: How to strike a healthy balance between expression and privacy?
3. Business: Where to be assertive but sedate for the sake of strategy?
4. Loud: Something to speak out about.
5. Proud: Something to take pride in and stand up for.
11. Fancy: Where to show off and make a scene for my own joy?
NOTES:
Two of the biggest queer stereotypes are volume based: we’re either super loud and flashy, or quiet and kinda weird. So much queer representation and storytelling in the media (especially media by cis-het makers) has centered around either campy, flamboyant spectacle or quiet desperation. If you’re not in the closet, you’re on top of the parade float in a feather boa and gogo boots. If you’re quiet, you’re miserable and possibly antisocial. If you’re loud, you’re loud 24/7/365.
Not so reflective of genuine experience, this model. Most of us live somewhere between 0 and 11 on the amp, and most of us turn the volume up and down as desired or needed for joy, strategy, and safety.
Meanwhile, we’ve grown up in cultures that tend to reward consistency and punish variance. We internalize the stereotypes and scripts that say we’re supposed to be one steady thing. This can make it difficult and confusing to embrace the nuanced range of presentations necessary to navigate a meh to hostile world, for safety’s sake, and to embrace our own natural shifts in mood, for health and pleasure’s sake.
If I don’t feel like partying this pride, am I queer enough? If I’m a trans man and want to try femme drag sometime, would that undermine my trans-ness? If I go back in the closet while traveling through a place with high risk of physical violence, am I betraying myself and my people? If I put on a suit to attend a city counsel meeting, am I stuck on respectability politics or selling out?
Questions like these spring from pressures within and without the queer community, and they can do a number on our inner peace. Even for those unhaunted by like pressures, it can be tricky to figure out what experiences to telegraph, what to keep low-key, and when. Social media makes it harder and harder for everyone to strike a satisfying balance between publicity and privacy.
This spread is for giving each of the inner quiet gays, business gays, and loud gays their due, and getting them all to get along within the self.
The focus throughout this spread should be on what works for you, and not on meeting others’ preferences and expectations. This gets tricky, because many of us live in or pass through hostile climates, and sometimes we do have to make concessions or adopt expressions we wouldn’t otherwise to acquire and maintain our rights and safety. Whenever possible with this spread, put your needs first, and when compromise is needed, make sure you get something out of it. That’s the key.
When we dial down the volume, it should be to soothe our peace of mind and protect ourselves, over satisfying others’ judgmental whims. When we meet the over-culture where it is, it should be out of personal taste or to accomplish a goal, and not to police our own or others’ aesthetics. And when we get loud and flamboyant, it should be for the sake of our joy and self-expression, and not to fit in with our peers or to entertain gawkers who don’t respect us. (Intimidating or messing with gawkers who don’t respect us is another story...)
I fully recognize that there’s some cognitive dissonance baked into this exercise. It’s tricky to figure out, tricky to keep in balance, and tricky to feel good about, because it’s tricky terrain. Hopefully, that’s where tarot can soothe and help.
VARIATIONS:
1. Comfort Stretch Mini-Reading: If you’re already pretty comfy at one setting on the amp, and you’d like to step out of your comfort zone, you can do a mini reading exclusively on the area(s) you’d like to stretch into. Cards 1 and 2 correspond to calm, quiet, and privacy. Cards 3 and 4 correspond to balance and business (assertive but sedate). Cards 5, 6, and 11 correspond to being loud, gregarious, and showy.
2. Situational Volume: Weigh the best volume of expression for a given situation by drawing a card each for likely outcome of being silent, quiet, sedate, loud, or fancy. That’s a lot of options, so it may help to supplement and organize your interpretations with a yes or no code for the reading. I like upright-yes-reversed-no.
