Queer

Queer. It's a loaded word.

I know people who aren't comfortable with the word because of its history as a slur used against LGBTQIA+ people. I know people who use the word to define their sexuality, because they're not comfortable with any of the other available options. I know people who use the word as a synonym for "gay," or as an umbrella term for the entire LGBTQIA+ community. Here's how I use it.

When I say "I'm queer," I am acknowledging that cis straight people have killed others while calling them queer, and I am intentionally reclaiming that word. When I say "I'm queer," I mean that my existence as someone whose gender is neither masculine, nor feminine, nor related to either masculinity or femininity, is a challenge to the systems which straight cisgender white men have forced onto the society in which I have spent my entire life. Does this challenge look like a reaction to those systems? What else could it be? I'm human, and this world is all I know.

Pronouns and clothes and bodies have no inherent gender, only what we assign to them based on cultural norms, so why do I feel so much pressure to be gender neutral? The culture in which I live won't understand me unless I "look neutral." The culture in which I live won't change unless I yell at them and tell them "I am here, I exist, stop telling me I don't."

This is what a lot of us mean by "visibility," I think -- seeing other queer people who don't apologize for their queerness in any way. It's very hard to be that confident in my identity, but it's easier if I think that by doing so, I'm helping other nonbinary people feel safer, because look, here's someone like you, who's open and who has friends and who's somewhat successful? Maybe? On the way to being a functioning adult? Possibly?

This is about half a post . . . and I'm out of words. Oh well. Enjoy.