So I had a feeling that yesterday’s essay, which proposed that cramming all sexually marginalized folks — be they L, G, B, T, Q, A, I, K, P, or some other letter entirely — all under one umbrella is maybe less helpful for progress than some might think, might strike a nerve, and indeed it did.
I have conflicting feelings about questions like “who ‘counts’ as queer?” because I have conflicting feelings on anything related to how we talk about sexuality and gender presentation. It’s all made up, and yet it has very real, measurable impact on the quality of people’s lives because of the way we collectively enforce what is functionally just a fairy tale. On the one hand, I feel like “queerness” can be considered a broad rejection of the very idea of “normal” sexuality and gender — or as I noted earlier this week, queerness in the bell hooks sense — but on the other hand, I think that queerness is fundamentally a term about same gender attraction, if only for expediency’s sake. When I’m really leaning into that definition, I don’t even necessarily consider all trans people queer — and indeed, I have had discussions with trans people who’ve told me that transitioning made them feel alienated from the queer spaces that had once been their homes, because they now saw themselves as straight.
So it’s a little bit messy, really. My brain contains contradictions, and the context for a conversation will always influence what exactly I mean when I say “queer.” I understand the arguments for why queer must all sexually marginalized people, and on some level I agree with said arguments, but on other levels I don’t, because — as I mentioned yesterday — I don’t even agree that tossing the Ls, Bs, Gs, and Ts all into one group has necessarily been helpful.
There is a flattening that comes with the acronym, with “queer” as a broad term. We are at record levels of LGBTQ representation in Congress, except really we are at record levels of LG, and mostly G, representation in Congress, because we have one fewer bisexual in Congress than we did at the peak of out bi rep on Capitol Hill, and we have exactly the same number of openly trans members of Congress as we always have: 0. We also have zero openly ace, poly, and kinky members of Congress, and yet when we talk about all of this as “queer” we are erasing that absence too.
So when I talk about my preference for specificity, I’m not even really saying “LGBTs over here, and everyone else over there” — because in many ways I think the Ls, the Gs, the Bs, and the Ts need to be considered separately, and also that the removal of specific gender from the B and T categories is odd, and also that racial and cultural identities can be relevant here, and also —
This is where my brain starts to collapse in on itself, I think.
If the question is “who gets to come to the parties,” then personally I think the answer really should be “everyone who is cool and chill.” As I said before, I’m not someone who screens my friends based on their orientation or gender — one of the friends I talk to most frequently, nearly daily, is an allocishet man and he is valid — so much as by their ability to be chill and openminded, their ability to exist in a space of bell hooksian queerness, if you will. If the question is “who gets access to resources and community support,” then it’s really “whoever needs it,” which is fundamentally an individual level consideration.
All those “are the straights okay” jokes aside, I don’t really see the world in some hard and fast straights vs queer binary, because I don’t think that generalizations and aggregates actually communicate much about individual people. And most of my interactions, most of my movement through the world, are about individual people.
But it’s all useful food for thought, anyway. I am tempted, more and more, to simply say “same gender attracted” when that is what I mean, rather than use “queer” as a stand in for it and run the risk of confusion. Queer means a lot of things, and if you feel yourself to be queer then I’m not going to argue with you, because honestly? The more people committed to upending business as usual, the better.
If we're talking "Who is pride for" I think of as different from “who gets to come to the parties”.
Pride is for queer people. Pride is absolutely for straight trans people who want it to be for them. Bride is for bi, gay, lesbian, and ace people who want it to be for them.
Pride is not (IMO) *for* straight cis people (yes including polyam and kinksters), but they can march to support pride, like PFLAG.
Addendum:
Also, there's a lot to be said for solidarity in politics. If every group goes off and does their own thing, we get less done than we might if we all work together. Pride is political. Being any form of non-cis-het is political. No one forces anyone to participate, but when we participate together, we're stronger and more influential. We can decide to be part of a larger community.
I’m polyamorous and bi. I don’t care if LGBTQ+ orgs call out polyam folks in their mission statements or whatever. I *do* care about them not throwing us under the bus, so I am happy when I see them openly acknowledging that plenty of LGBTQ+ folks are non-monogamous and that cultural norms about monogamy have looked different from in straight culture. That helps cishet polyam folks too.
Where I get upset about polyamory not being included is in things like diversity or welcoming statements. If a group is going to name a list of not-straight, not-cis identities that are okay by them, they damn well better include polyamorous. Is that saying polyamorous people are queer, because it is adding them to a list created with queer people in mind? I dunno.