“Daddy Says I Have To Be Home at Nine”

Ageplay, Queer Temporality, and Domesticity

Abstract

In theories of queer temporality, queer experiences of time are commonly constructed as the opposite of domesticity. Queer temporality is linked to the abandonment of normative life schedules, which are closely connected to family-making, reproduction, and social respectability. Thus, queer temporality is often equated with queer nightlife, public sex cultures, and nonrespectable urban spaces. This article, which builds on an interview study with ageplay practitioners in Sweden who identify with littleness, discusses how we can rethink queer temporality’s relation to domesticity by considering experiences of ageplay and littleness. Ageplay is a term for practices and dynamics based on performative age and age differences beyond chronological age. Ageplay is discussed here as a method of doing kinship, which neither reproduces nor rejects the symbols of the socially respectable family institution, but rather uses them in queer and perverse ways. In contrast to depictions of queer temporalities as synonymous with abandoning of the socially respectable routines of the bourgeois family, i.e., what Halberstam (2005) defines as “repro-time” and “family time,” the article discusses the interviewees engagement in temporal practices that appear to align with repro- and family time. Thus, the article explores ageplay practices’ potential to challenge the normativity ascribed to domesticity and its implications for queer temporal theory.