Queer People Don’t Care About Aliens
UAPs are very last year...
Every time I open TikTok or Instagram Reels or Blippo Plus or CurdStream right now, I’m completely inundated with videos about how ‘the time of Disclosure is here!’ The US Government has officially declared UFOs / UAPs / ETs to not only be REAL but to also be HEADING OUR WAY AT GREAT SPEEDS. Their ships have emerged from the oceans, and they’re on course to enslave your daughters, probe your sons and, for some reason, just generally zip about for a few seconds and then disappear.
The clips usually show some sort of Senate hearing, with some sort of balding, ex-insider speaking about how they have some sort of access to some sort of information, that may or may not be signs of some sort of extra terrestrial life. They’re usually intercut with low resolution, grainy military aerial footage of a balloon or a light - always just too far away to be able to see clearly - which is, let’s face it, probably AI generated anyway.
I don’t want to sound like a downer on it, because I was an X-Files kid. I grew up on The X-Files - I used to pretend to be Scully in the school playground, and me and my friend Oscar would add mysteries to our notebook called ‘The Z-Files’ (trademarked). I wanted to believe. A part of me still does want to believe. And, if I’m completely honest, I do believe (that there are things going on in the world that we currently don’t have a good explanation for). There’s nothing wrong with my imagination, trust me. I think the thing I’m having a problem with right now - the thing I’m struggling to wrap my head around - is that, if aliens are real, and if we do have unprecedented evidence of them now… why don’t I care?
Each new piece of apparent ‘Disclosure’ I hear about just makes me shrug my shoulders. Big deal, I think… I’ve got bigger stuff to worry about right now. It’s sort of hard to think about aliens when there are enough threats to humanity down here on earth. Not to be too melodramatic, but the world feels pretty scary and confusing at the moment, and ‘humanity’ feels somewhat in short supply. So it’s a bit hard to get excited.
I don’t think it’s out of pocket to say that it seems to mostly be straight men who care about UFOs. It’s farmer culture! Find me a queer Ufologist - you can’t! (Also, while we’re on the subject - ‘Ufologist’ is a really stupid name for a ‘professional of UFOs’. Think about it: ‘UFO’ stands for ‘Unidentified Flying Object’, so that would make a ‘Ufologist’ an ‘Unidentified Flying Ologist’).
Let’s be real, it’s no coincidence that alien-probing exists as a concept. Of course ETs are intrinsically queer-coded. Of course they’re genderless. Queer people don’t need to invent a powerful, imposing threat from another world - we already have enough of it here - and to be honest, it’s very hard to believe that if aliens did visit us, we’d be capable of welcoming them in any meaningful way. In a world where most people can’t even tolerate minor differences, how the hell are they going to manage when The Greys start trying to adopt and get married? I don’t want to see the Westboro Baptist Church picketing the funeral of a dead ET. If anything, we ought to be warning them off. Turn around, before it’s too late!
I dunno, I just feel like at times like these, when we should be looking towards each other, it feels a bit daft to be looking up.
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