Touched by Mr Happy: I’m Queer, You’re Straight

Zine of the Gay

front cover of I'm Queer, You're Straight. A smiling anthropomorphic circle and a frowning anthropomorphic squareI spend a lot of my day with kids and reading kids’ books as an early childhood educator. Silly round cartoon characters are not even close to unfamiliar to me. It’s nice to see these characters in something made for me, and not focused on 123 and ABC. I think I needed that deep in my soul; educators, you might know what I mean. So this week I chose I’m Queer You’re Straight. Characters and art help us deeply comprehend stories and ideas, and I think the circle (queer) character and the square (straight) characters in this zine are a great example of that.

I’m Queer, You’re Straight is a short 8 page zine from Amsterdam, published in 1996. It unpacks ideas about sexual liberation, assimilationist politics, and the goals for how queerness should operate in a hetero society using our two main characters, a smiling circle (queer) and a frowning square (straight). The zine depicts them as opposite each other in some fundamental ways, and uses this to critique gay assimilationist politics and imagine a better (“freer”) future.

Queers like things to be free. Illustration of an anthropomorphic circle talking to a bird in a tree.Straights like things to be free. Illustration of an anthropomorphic square going to the supermarket.The first page shows the round (queer) cartoon character looking at a bird in a tree. The text below states, “queers like things to be free.” On the next page, a square character (straight) shops at a supermarket. The text below the image says, “straights like things to be free.” In this, queerness revolves around standing by your community. Straightness revolves around consumerism and individualism. The same idea appears when, on one page, a straight hand holds tightly onto a chain, and on another, a queer hand breaks that same chain.

Equality=Oppression

On page eight of the zine, cut-and-paste text reads, “equality = oppression.” On the next page, text reads, “Gay rights = equal rights. The right to murder. The right to torture. The right to oppress. The right to crush. Gays in the army. A ‘right’ we can all live without.”

Gay rights = Equal Rights The Right to Murder The Right to Torture The Right to Oppress The Right to Crush Gays in the Army A "right" we can all live without!This raises a question about the difference between gay equality/rights and queer liberation. Gay equality is just gay people becoming the same as straight people, losing our culture and our identities in favor of assimilating. The dream is to become like them. We can fight in the army too. We can also uphold the nuclear family just as well as they can. Our relationships can uphold heteronormative standards so well that they won’t even be able to tell the difference. We don’t need to make the world better. We can “like things to be free” too.

What’s the point of equality if the thing we’re becoming equal to sucks ass? I don’t want to be equal. I want the world to be queer.

Straight culture imposes the systems that benefit them through oppression among many other tactics. So, what would equal rights to straight people look like? The systems are built for them. Why would the model of an ideal life still be the oppressed wife and the free husband?

The same thing pops up again later. A note on the last page says, “from Alice, bless her – trapped in AmeriKKKa.” In the same way that you can’t do gay equality without reproducing and assimilating to hetero culture, you can’t ignore the KKK in America. It’s literally inside of it. It goes down to its roots. Ignoring the thing that’s at the core of it doesn’t get rid of it. Assimilating to it only rots you too.

The tenets of “sexual liberation” outlined on the first two pages represent a different approach. They have nothing to do with making queer people assimilate, but rather focus on a new “liberated” world. It describes a world where “sexual relationships are free from power manipulation” and “without laws and sexual abuse.”

SEXUAL LIBERATION A world where sexual relationships and free from power manipulation.. A world without state Intervention In' our mutual sex lives. A world without, male domination. A world without adult domination. A world without heterosexual domination. A world where we are all QUEER and labels become meaningless. A world where everyone's sexuality will be respected. A world without laws and sexual abuse.

The point about laws and sexual abuse also feels indicative of the difference between assimilation and liberation to me. It doesn’t say that abusers will be punished or that laws will be different. It sees laws and prisons and the police state as what they are–ways of upholding dominant culture through pressure and violence. Police, after all, are a huge threat to our communities. Instead, it says that laws and sexual abuse simply won’t be present. It presents a hopeful view of the future which is simply better than today, and in which the remnants of these things just don’t exist.

One of the statements about sexual liberation that I enjoyed was this: “[sexual liberation is
when we have
] a world where we can all have a lot of fun.” The zine isn’t an instruction manual for being queer the ‘right way’ by anyone’s standards. It’s a hopeful vision of a future that can go beyond trying to ingratiate ourselves to our captors.

I really appreciated the straight being represented as square. Heteros need to learn to have more fun!

Arabella (She/They) is interning at QZAP fall of 2026. She is an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee finishing her last year in Women’s and Gender studies. In her free time Arabella likes to spend time with her dog Magdalena and butchering the banjo.

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