In their continuing mission to run the exact same bisexual personal essay, albeit with minor variations, again and again and again, Insider now has an essay from — wait for it — a white bisexual cis mom who is married to a man and has a fraught relationship with calling herself queer. This one is at least a white woman from South Africa, though I don’t know that that makes the essay better, just… a white woman from South Africa! That sure is a perspective.
Anyway. I’m not particularly interested in dissecting the essay itself, because to be perfectly honest it’s pretty boring and not in any way surprising or thought provoking. But I am really interested in the guilt the writer professes re: calling herself queer. Like, guilt? What an interesting emotion to have here. What does it even say that a bi woman would feel guilty about calling herself queer?
In order to address that, I think we have to define what queer even means though — because despite the fact that many of us casually throw the term around, I don’t actually think there’s a consensus! Indeed, I can think of three different definitions:
Queerness as a radical politic. Think of this one as “not gay as in happy, queer as in fuck you.” By this definition, queerness is a political framework, one that is focused on destroying the social expectations of heteronormativity. This is, I think the most limited definition of queer, at least in the sense that many same gender attracted people do not qualify as queer within this framework. A middle of the road liberal like Pete Buttigieg, with his marriage and military career and history of bread price fixing? He certainly may be gay, but he is not queer. To be queer is to intentionally live outside of — or at least openly reject — societal norms, to see one’s same gender attractions as the basis of a political identity. Can a married white bi mom be queer under this definition? I mean possibly, but it very much depends on how she is structuring her marriage and her family life and, again, her politics.
Queerness as in same gender attraction. I think this is the most broadly used definition these days, and it’s definitely the most basic one. If you’re an L, a G, or a B, you are queer by virtue of your attractions, full stop. (Sometimes people include all trans folk in this definition of queer which mostly just makes me think of the time when I had crush on a trans girl who kept talking about herself as queer but was only attracted to men, which made me feel like a dummy doomed to keep falling for straight girls. It happens.) If we’re going with this definition, then all bi people are queer, regardless of their gender of their partners (or if they have any partners at all).
Queerness as in any non-normative sexual or gender identity. Okay this is the one that I find the most confusing but that a lot of people will advocate for regardless. Under this definition, “queer” means anyone under the LGBTQIA+++++∞ umbrella. So not just LGB or LGBT but also intersex and ace and potentially kinky and poly too, depending on who you ask. My issue here isn’t one of worth or who “deserves” to be considered non-normative and thus queer; for me it is simply a question of dilution of definition. If a cis straight ace man is as queer as a trans allo lesbian then what is the unifying thread of queerness, you know? Just feeling like an outsider? Regardless: if we’re going with this definition of queer then a bi cis married mom is, again, queer by virtue of not being a straight cis allo married mom.
So that’s queerness, right? For me there’s really only one definition that the essay writer might not qualify under, but it’s not by virtue of her motherhood or marriage necessarily; it is simply about how she manifests her politics (though if she feels guilty then chances are good she is not manifesting her politics in a queer way). And even there, guilt does not feel like a useful emotion: if you want to be politically queer then, you know, just be politically queer. In a certain light, even a straight person could have and enact queer politics, though let’s not open the exhausting can of worms that is “can straight people be queer” (if you send me that bell hooks quote I will knife you.).
But lest any of you accuse me of being dense: look of course I understand what this woman is trying to communicate. She feels guilty because she feels like there’s some qualifying exam for queerness — like you have to tick off this many pussies eaten or at least not end up with a man if you want to identify as a queer woman. But that way lies madness, friends.
I used to see women posting on Twitter about how tragic it was that they’d discovered their bisexuality later in life, after they’d already happily partnered monogamously with men — and the phrasing always made it sound like they would somehow feel more secure in their queerness if they had an ex-girlfriend in their back pocket, if they’d at least given the LUG life the old college try. But as someone who dated multiple women before having a long stretch of only dating men, I feel like that’s a false assumption: my history of dating women didn’t make me feel more securely queer. It made me feel like someone who had turned her back on her queerness. (And to the “I just want to know what sex with a woman is like” question — I mean this is kind of a fool’s errand, isn’t it? It presumes that all people of one gender are functionally identical in bed, that gender is somehow the most important factor in a sexual experience. And… it is more complicated than that.)
It is also, I think, worth remembering that few of us would question whether a virgin teen gay or a lesbian, or a lifelong closet case in a straight marriage who is only now, late in life, coming out was “actually queer” despite the details of their lived history. If those folks need no qualifying exam beyond desire, then why is it different for bisexuals?
Anyway. If you’re bi, you’re queer. Congrats. I would urge you to think bigger than just your own personal identity, however. Personally I would love to see a return to queerness as a political action. Because that would be something we could shame people over, for sure — thought I’d be more interested in going after Pete Buttigieg than some married cis white bi mom.
I want to push back a bit because I feel like some combination of the first and the third definitions is more useful here, and I think the tension of wanting to "not dilute" the phrase because "If a cis straight ace man is as queer as a trans allo lesbian then what is the unifying thread of queerness, you know?" is exactly the question I struggle with when trying to figure out whether or not I, a cisgender heteroflexible aromantic woman, "count as queer enough." And like, I'm in community with queer people! I love my queer friends! I donate to queer causes! But there is something cutting in hearing "Well, you know, if those people are queer than anyone is queer" from someone talking professionally about biphobia and alienation from queer spaces as a bisexual.
I've found a lot of thought provoking stuff in your writing, enough that I've been considering more commonly calling myself bi even though my attraction to women is circumstantial and occasional, but honestly that's not really me. "Am I queer" is something I still struggle with though, not because I would be devastated by an answer one way or other, but because being on the line feels like I'm constantly being asked in and out of the cool kids' club and I am fucking exhausted by the dance. And it's just as exhausting to go "Okay, y'know, I've accepted it, I'm not really queer" and then have my friends try to convince me that no, I still count.
Labels should be descriptive, not prescriptive. Queerness is as weird and expansive of a label as it is because a lot of different people got lumped into it. That doesn't mean that there isn't a unifying thread, it means that we have a lot of different communities under the same umbrella.
My suggestion is that you're queer if you're in community with queerness and you feel the label fits you. It's an unsatisfying definition at the best of times but it's all I got at the moment!