Abstract

This essay draws our attention to the rhetorics of everyday queer people by routing queer notions of embodiment through queer and feminist work on rhetorical silence. I argue that the queer body engages speech and silence simultaneously, troubling any binary division between the two rhetorical forms. I call for, instead, a continuum model of rhetorical silence that ties together verbal silence with other forms of rhetorical action such as material silence, visual silence, and embodied silence. To show how the continuum model functions, I offer an analysis of Grindr profiles. The social networking app—marketed primarily toward gay and bisexual men—serves as an example for how rhetorical silence is adapted and deployed by queer people. Exploring these profiles allows us to consider the rhetorical action of people who may not live openly queer, those whose claim to queerness is limited to a pixelated square inch of pectoral flesh.