What Is ‘Queer Food’? A Conference Explores (and Tastes) Some Answers.
The New York Times
At Boston University, scholars, students and writers gathered to share thoughts on the role of gender and sexuality in the food space. Snacks were plentiful.
When Sasha DuBose uses the word “queer” to talk about food, it’s a verb, not an adjective. To Ms. DuBose, queering food is “taking how we define food and how we engage with it and twisting it, making it more fun.”
To them, queer food is also okra.
“They way you slice into okra and it’s crunchy and ooshy-gushy — a lot of people think it’s weird,” said Ms. DuBose, a nonbinary transgender lesbian who will soon graduate from the food studies program at New York University. “But okra is queer.”
Queer food can be so many things, depending who’s cooking, eating or serving. During the inaugural Queer Food Conference at Boston University last weekend, queer food was defined as meals made by queer chefs and home cooks. But it was also far broader, almost without boundaries. It was the pie thrown in the face of the anti-gay rights activist Anita Bryant, the gastro-narratives of queer people in El Paso, Texas, and the food served at “topless lesbian gatherings,” as one panelist described it.
“Queer food defies categorization, and that’s its beauty,” said Megan J. Elias, who organized the conference with Alex D. Ketchum, an assistant professor at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at McGill University in Montreal.
Ms. DuBose and Ms. Elias were among the some 160 food scholars, writers, students and industry professionals who paid $45 apiece to gather online and in classrooms and a cookbook library. The mostly Millennial and Gen Z attendees considered food (pie, seaweed), food culture (potlucks, cookbooks) and food spaces (a co-op, clambakes) through queer, Marxist, feminist and anti-colonialist perspectives.
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