Communal Intimacies

The reproduction of the American home hinges on a clear public/private distinction, wherein the private sphere is traditionally viewed as domestic — a space for interpersonal care and social reproduction, distinct from the abstract political culture of the public. Due to American legal and cultural norms maintaining this division, the mainstream LGBTQ rights movement has privileged privacy as a portal of legitimation, often to the detriment of poor, queer people of color without access to private property. Amid residential segregation, mass incarceration, and welfare reform, queer people of color must reshape and repurpose both public and commercial space to collectively affirm their erotic desires and care for each other through “communal intimacies,” the spatial-kinship practices that decouple care from the domestic, create a pathway for the transfer of libidinal pleasures, and act as a foundation for envisioning and enacting a world of belonging and transformation despite gentrification. Through cultural analysis of John Leguizamo's performance of the “Manny the Fanny” character from his 1991 show Mambo Mouth and Sean Baker's 2015 film Tangerine, this article illustrates novel forms of homemaking that blur the boundaries denoting the public/private spatial divide inherent in neoliberal property regimes.