Contested Queerness: Identity Politics at the Party by Ostbahnhof

Here, I provide a descriptive account of The Party by Ostbahnhof grounded in interview and ethnographic work. Ostbahnhof is an underground warehouse party that "puts queer people … first." By closely examining a polemic manifesto, calling for the exclusion of "basic white-cis-homo-normal" gays, I document the popular theories of queerness that determine which individuals can participate in Ostbahnhof's project, how, and to what ends. I use the aperture of an the ever-contentious question-who qualifies as a queer person?-to uncover the contradictory and multivalent nature of queerness as theorized in and outside of the academy. Following the party's organizers, I conclude by questioning the political utility of purely "anti-normative" queer ideologies and look to their example if a "positive" definition of queerness as a potential roadmap for navigating a rapidly expanding queer public sphere.