(Trans)formative discomfort: What can a queer darkroom do to unsettle affective gender inequalities?

Can infrastructures of queer counterpublic sex disrupt affective inequalities in gender and sexuality? This paper examines DTF (Down to Fuck or Dyke, Tranny, Faggot)—a Berlin-based, all-gender queer darkroom created by intersex and trans activists—as an infrastructure of intimacy that reconfigured the possibilities of erotic encounter. By assembling FLINTA and cis gay sexual cultures, DTF generated a space where gendered bodies, drugs, and desires mixed in ways that challenged normative power relations. Through embodied interactions with the space’s materiality, new queer bodily capacities emerged, momentarily suspending the normative ordering of sex and gender in Berlin’s queer culture. We argue that by making space for transformative discomfort —rather than prioritizing safety—DTF offers a model for navigating difference in pursuit of a transexual queer future.