Think Queerly: Meditations & Critical Reflections On Liberating Humanity

In, Think Queerly Meditations, I advocate for inclusion, acceptance, and elevating consciousness by leading from our uniqueness to demonstrate our vital and creative role in society.

Risk leaning into fully expressing your difference and uniqueness in order to liberate your most authentic, queer self.

We are witnessing extreme divisiveness online and in the world, the need to be right and the need to belong to the politically correct group — an absolute need to be fully on one the right side of the equation and at the far end at that.

We see how arguing from extreme polarities only creates further division. But there is no equation to be on either side of — there is only a balance. Between all polarities is a middle space, a gap, in which all possibilities exist. We need to understand that balance is something fluid and constantly changing, never static, and never something that can exist on one side independently.

This book is a collection of highlights, insights, and aphorisms about queerness published over several years on Th-Ink Queerly.

In the 1970s, Harry Hay, founder of one the first gay rights organizations in the world, the Mattachine Society, dared to ask the following questions: “Who are we gay people? Where have we been throughout history What purpose might we be for?” In Think Queerly, coach Darren Stehle attempts to answer these questions and invites readers to do the same. Through short aphorisms and reflections that read like a modern-day Tao Te Ching written from a queer perspective, Stehle shows he is a philosopher for the people and a leader for our time. He gently, but insistently, urges queer people — or anyone who feels they are outside of the norm — to look beyond assimilationist strategies of social justice and to, as he often says, use their difference to make a difference. In doing so, Stehle shows that our differences, far from something we should feel ashamed of, are our greatest tools and sources of strength in a divided world. Think Queerly is not solely a meditation on the nature and purpose of difference, but an urgent call to inspired action. — Jeffry Iovanonne, Writer & Historian