Queer family is real. And indeed, the realness of queer family has as its counterpoint the hegemonic notion of family as based in blood. While all family formations are political, queer family formations ask that we think the politics of family as an always already problematic formation. The existence of queer family, then, highlights how other family forms necessarily exceed the normative definition and practice of hegemonic family claims. Of course, hegemonic practices of family have evolved beyond the logic of blood, but one might argue that a notion of “blood relations” is still very much the basis of how even families made through adoption are generally understood. Unconditional love and commitment comes to stand in for blood as a way to perpetuate normative codes for the hegemonic family form in patriarchal white supremacist capitalism.
Interestingly, one might say that for a certain generation of gay men, blood, too, has...
