Posted on 15. June 2026.
Originally posted on 15. June 2026 on Discord.
hello and welcome ladies, gentlemen, neithers, boths, and inbetweens, to day 8 of milkas' expression corner !! today we'll be discussing HETEROTEMPORALITY, also known as "Queer Time" !! (as an article on the minnesota women's press puts it, "the term “straight time” was already taken by the jazz community" :P )
heterotemporality is the idea that a queer person might experience life, more specifically the passage of time, differently than a non-queer person, due to aspects such as queer milestones in their life. it's a term largely used by queer theorists.
heterotemporality is based on the idea that time-based needs and events in a person's life are personal, and as such queer people, with entirely different needs, would experience them at different times, hence making the passage of time feel entirely different at certain times.
this can be, for example, due to coming out. a person coming out would most likely feel entirely reborn, due to having basically a whole new life ahead of them, where they can feel more like themselves as opposed to what they were doing before.
it can also be due to experiencing love at a different time than non-queer people for one reason or another, wherein love-related events in your life will happen at a different time than they would for the average person.
for people in the closet, heterotemporality may feel like a double-life, since the important queer events in their life would happen alongside non-queer important events with a large degree of separation, enough to invoke a sense of different lives outright.
i know today's subject is a short one, but i personally find it really interesting and wanted to touch on it anyways. if you have any comments or questions, i'd love to discuss them !!
a couple articles for those willing to read more (note the second article has even more inside):
https://radiantbutch.medium.com/heterotemporality-and-queer-time-b91cce4f538e
https://www.womenspress.com/undoing-heterotemporality/