I was having a conversation with my friend Christopher this past Friday. When he and I get on the horn we talk the gamut, but one thing that almost always arrives, somewhere, somehow in the conversation, is Queerness. Being Gay. LGBT. Trans. Or any of the myriad identifiers under the big umbrella of Queer. Depending on who you ask, who is looking, where you are, or what you do - both of us live somewhere under this umbrella. We claim it in our own ways, but for me, a lot of the time being Queer is less about who I say I am, than it is about how I am perceived and/or treated (or sometimes used) by the people around me. What I mean is, I don’t constantly think about my Queerness, just like (most likely) my straight counterparts don’t constantly remind themselves of their heterosexuality. The identifiers tend to come into sharpest focus when someone else puts their eye on it/you and they either label you, or demand that you reveal to them your label - for better or worse, good or bad. So part of Christopher’s and my conversation yesterday centered around the idea of: what does it mean to be Gay if you are an elder, living alone, separated from your community - like many have been before, and during COVID-19. What does it mean to be Gay if you are celibate? What does it mean to be Queer, if the concepts of Queerness that go along with the labels Gay, LGBT, Trans, are not quite how you live your days? What does it mean to be Queer when no one is looking? The questions reminded me of two pieces I wrote this past year, one which was a call for essays from Sinister Wisdom (I ended up not submitting it), and the other is a poem that has been rejected a few times, but remains a part of my current manuscript. One paragraph from the essay kept rolling around in my mind as Christopher and I were talking. As I re-read it now, it almost feels like a prayer. And the poem is a good example of what I mean when I say: who are we—any of us, really—when no one is looking? Who are we making everyone else out to be when we look at them? And what might life be like if we didn’t do that, didn’t turn other people into our own ideas about who they are or should be?
Excerpt from the unfinished essay, “For White Women Coming Into: Lesbian Spaces of Politics and Practice”
How I long for the rainbow flag to symbolize liberation for everyone. Not just for the cis and normative gays and lesbians who want to marry, or adopt, buy a home or work in white collar jobs. But for all the Queers, who refuse the status quo. How I long for the rainbow flag to represent the future freedom of all the unseen and unknown people shouldering the burdens of a society that despises anyone who does not fit, cannot or will not assimilate into its normative ideal. All the people who are in any way oppressed, excluded, exiled, and harmed by the dominant society, the dominant economy, the dominant culture. And how I long for the rainbow flag to symbolize the liberation of even those people who would benefit from the unjust society, for they, possibly most of all, need to be liberated from the belief that they are somehow spared, or chosen, or safe.
From the forthcoming manuscript Unquiet Passings, “The Source of the Problem”
Standing in South Park, the actual small park in the middle of all those venture cap firms in the neo San Francisco Gold Coast, I drink my Blue Bottle pour over, and try to get my Slowpoke in a PokemonGo gym. A loud voice getting louder is heard, a person being walked by their dog. A small, ravenous, yanking, desperate dog. The person says “oh don’t bother that man, you leave that man alone. Don’t bother that man!” I look around. There’s no one but me.
I am worried about this dog. I am unbothered by being “gendered.” I do not feel misgendered, because I don’t experience myself as being particularly of one. I don’t even think about it, until our eyes meet and I see:
1) Shock, on the face of the person who has just gendered me, as if being this gender, the one they just assigned me, as opposed to the other gender, the one they originally assumed me to be, is a fate worse than death.
2) Irritation, in the body language of the person who has just gendered me, as if their having to spend time gendering and re-gendering me is my fault. How are they to know how I should be treated, when I am not affecting the correct symbols of the gender I am supposed to be, forcing them to do all the work of gendering me themselves, so they know who to tell their dog to leave alone? And
3) Hate, in the heart of the person who has just gendered me, because how dare I pretend to be something I am not, something that does not fit into the order of their days.
I feel an urge to save this dog. Tell it that everything is going to be okay. Instead, I turn back to my coffee, keep playing my PokemonGo.
—MF
What does it mean to be Queer?
Agreed! More please! Also, I don't feel a gender either, though I know my outter expression often reflects a societal gender catagory. Or put another way, my appearance reflects the way I have been gender-socialized. In part, at least. But I don't feel a gender in any interior way. I'm glad for that. More please!!!
More! More! I've also thought quite a bit lately about queerness, now that I find myself in a safe and accepting bubble. I think, "am I passing, or are people more accepting?" Perhaps some of both. I'd love to read a part II of your perspectives! 😉