A Look at Queer Intimacy and Astrology
One of the best things about how queer people use astrology is that we don’t use it to divine, to prophesize, or to preach from above high—we use it to flirt, to tease, and to play amongst our dirty, little selves. We don’t use it to talk about the shifting of world powers or about when the next big event will be.
We use astrology to talk about how our Cancer placements ensure that we will always have some kind of brat energy in certain scenarios, that Pisces season somehow brings out the powerful slut in all of us, and about how it’s the earth signs who enjoy long and patient hours with a lover. By doing this, in the words of Adorno, we bring those pesky, little stars right back down to earth where we live our lives.
Queer people don’t look to astrology for answers; we use it as a language. Languages exist so that they change. We use astrology as a thing that opens conversations about consent, permission, and acceptance.
When you know the sun, moon, or rising sign of someone, it becomes a shorthand for knowing them beyond whatever institution or workplace or event you last met them through. When you know someone’s sign, it means that you have really engaged with this person, and that you’ve had a conversation with them that doesn’t center around whatever it is you are both supposed to be doing. It means that you enjoyed each other at some point, if only for a brief cigarette break.
When you know someone’s sign, it means that they either told you themselves, or that someone loved you both enough to whisper this secret and mystical information to you because, see, rarely do people remember detailed placements of another person unless they care enough about them to know their favorite breakfast.
Queer intimacy is mediated through astrology, but it is not enforced by astrology. Rarely do I find a queer person trying to use astrology to tell me who they expect me to be. Instead, I see people using astrology to talk about what they are comfortable with and not comfortable with—to talk about mystical yearnings. “Quiet, enby Gemini seeks to bathe you in longform poetry while we luxuriate in papaya.” “Plant dad Virgo wants to explore the subtleties of touch on your sweaty skin over these long, summer days.” “Hi! I’m a shy Leo who wants to be gazed at. Directly. Lovingly.”
Sex isn’t always easy for me, as I suspect it isn’t for many people. Sex is very hard to define. What is it, anyway? What sorts of actions count as sex? A lot of the time, it involves taking off your clothes, which is something that I am very uncomfortable with. I get overstimulated during sex, and I am often too embarrassed to ask for a break. Embarrassment and sex go together for me. I am embarrassed asking for what I want, and I often do not know what I want. I prefer structured and negotiated play outside of sex, and I am still figuring out how to do that during sex.
And astrology, somehow, has helped me communicate this with my partner. I am a Pisces Mars, and they are a Cancer Mars—somehow, it doesn’t feel so strange to say that I do not need my play to be embodied, that I prefer sharing fantasy with someone even if we sit next to each other with all of our clothes on, as a Pisces Mars.
It becomes less about whether my needs are pathological or logical and more about what it is I need in order to feel safe enough to feel pleasure. It’s somehow easier to ask my partner what they want when I ask “What does Cancer Mars like?” instead of phrasing the question in a way that would catch us both off guard. For the shy, astrology helps us name the nuances of our desires without having to speak directly from the “I.”
And, so, we play. We play by imagining ourselves as cows, as moons, and we play with fictional characters that flatten or become multifaceted at will. We play with Yoongi from BTS and imagine him as a cat, a bride, and as an easily duplicated clone. We roleplay and break to giggle. We start scenes over spontaneously, and we plan them as if they are long, multi-chaptered novellas. Sometimes, we imagine ourselves from a bird’s eye view. Sometimes, we close our eyes, and other times, we look at each other. Can you tell that I am deeply in love yet?
I like to think of the kind of imagination play we do as deep water sign play. Things distort and extend when placed in water. Roleplay is deep water play because your idea of who you can be blurs and shifts from moment to moment.
And astrology play isn’t just about sex—it’s playing house with a best friend, cracking jokes that only another Pisces placement can get; it’s done walking down the street under a full moon; it’s my friend teasing me for being a totally different type of Aries than they are.
In the past, I have dated a Gemini Mars and a Leo Mars. I dated a straight guy with Cancer Mars when I was very young (there are a lot of Cancer Mars people in my life because I was born in 1992, close to the time Mars retrograded while in Cancer and spent close to a third of a year in that sign). We didn’t have fun together, and I think he was a little afraid of me. We never talked about astrology together because he didn’t see the appeal. When I looked up his placements, it felt gross because he wasn’t there to define his experience of his placements with me. It felt like spying.
Astrology changes when it is used in collaboration with someone who is equally enthusiastic. It becomes a way for you to know someone deeper and a way to invite someone to ask about you in a way that you have never been asked. Astrology is a little like intimacy—it’s something that deadens when you use it in fear and something that envelopes you when you grow it through negotiation.
There’s something risky about engaging with astrology as queer intimacy as well. There is something too comfortable about sitting in the dead of the night and Googling someone’s placements while wondering if they could ever love you. This type of astrology is like the quiet divination of peeling petals from a daisy. Daisy peeling never arrives at an answer but only carries you through anxiety. Astrology as queer intimacy is different because it’s purpose it not to make the future knowable but to commit yourself to the present. It forces you to think about what you like and don’t like and, to the best of your ability, to speak that.
To be very honest, astrology is also an industry. A lot of this industry—the compatibility reports, the love horoscopes, and aspect theory—is about daisy peeling. And daisy peeling, again, is about anxiety. The reason why astrology as queer intimacy has less content surrounding it isn’t due to lack of practice—astrology is practiced as queer intimacy every day, all around the world—but it often happens not in solitude but with community and not online or in corporate space but in real time.
There isn’t anything about queer culture that innately resists commodification. There also isn’t anything about astrology that resists commodification. I’m sure that there are thousands of compatibility reports and products about twin flames that can easily be adapted to queer folks. However, queer intimacy is not just about sexuality or friendship or family. These things don’t exist neatly arranged, resisting one another. Queer intimacy is just as much about lack of sexuality, loneliness, yearning, and that desperate moment of realizing the need to clarify some relationships that have existed boundary-less for too long.
Queer intimacy exists in such as way that the anxieties that we have about alienation, capitalism, and the future cannot be soothed by the promise of one relationship model triumphing over all the others. And, thus, astrology within queerness exists not to promise marriage or to threaten but to do the work of asking you, “Who are you really, and just what the hell do you want at this very moment?”
