Liam Ostermann

“I have used the word ‘tolerance’ in this chapter because it is the term that the people I am writing about use with real intent. Tolerance here, I think, is not what Goethe brilliantly diagnosed when he wrote, ‘Tolerance should really only be a passing attitude: it should lead to recognition. To tolerate is to offend.’2 So often, as Goethe knew, to talk of tolerance is a sign and symptom of the failure to integrate – and a hierarchical, patronising attitude towards others. We will tolerate you if you fit in with us: an attempt to keep power relations in place, while disavowing their force. But tolerance towards queerness is a much more unstable dynamic, which requires a different, more radical form of hospitality to otherness, and an acknowledgement of the impact of queerness on one’s own sense of self, and a consequent loss of bearings. Tolerance in this sense is an exploratory value, and not just a gesture of political self-congratulation.”
― Simon Goldhill, Queer Cambridge: An Alternative History