The Life of an Ex-Queer

I revealed my bisexual identity to my mother a few months before turning fifteen. I, young, naïve, and scared, did not know how to navigate or even express my sexuality. I knew many gay, lesbian, and bisexual people; despite this, they had college degrees, children, and careers, unlike me. Alone, I hid myself in the fog of confusion and vagueness that shrouded my identity.

In May of 2012, I had reached a turning point that would create a lasting impact on the ways in which I diverted from sexual and gendered “norms.” During the time, I attempted to immerse myself in the culture that I was supposedly a part of by attending an LGBT educational summit and dance party in Denver. As I attended workshops about sex, gender performance, and safe environments, I heard many people mention the word “queer” multiple times. I did not know what “queer” meant; it seemed alien and enigmatic to me. I then learned that straight and cisgender people viewed the term from the same perspective, for “queer” represented a plethora of identities that could not be easily categorized as “straight” or “cisgender.” I had gone a whole year without knowing that my identity was considered “queer.” This new realization stuck with me as I awkwardly swung my hips amongst a crowd of dancing youths. It began to make more sense as I received perplexed glares from cisgender males while using a men’s bathroom that was supposed to be a “gender neutral restroom” for the night. I had been baptized in rainbow flags, glitter, and video clips of old Divine flicks. I was born again.

I finally embraced “queer” two months later. My Sweet Sixteen marked a coming-of-age ritual; while quietly chanting Marxist incantations to myself, I shaved my head and found an outlet for my frantic teenage angst in noisy punk shows. Although I was just a timid baby in the local music scene, I quickly grew fond of the LGBT punks who I would often see at my favorite venues. Four packs of cigarettes, two jean jackets with stitches where rips once were, and several backwashed Pabst Blue Ribbon beers later, I began to associate “queer” with “family,” “community,” and “home.” I rejected my homophile past of apologizing for my sexuality and wishing to assimilate into heteronormative structures. I sought to make my queerness political, bold, and angry.

Nevertheless, upon delving deeper into the catacombs of punk—which I grew to view as a “…masculine and male-dominated genre”—and finding a radical queer scene, I soon grew disillusioned with the identity (Jones et al., 34). I thought I’d fit right in; I didn’t shave my legs, I listened to Limp Wrist, and I alienated myself from straight people. Ironically, I ended up alienating myself from the queer punks; the majority of them were white and female-assigned people with poorly shaved undercuts. I did not see any transgender women. I did not see many people of color. I could not find any disabled or neurodivergent people in the crowd. These white, transmasculine punks did not care about the ways in which heterosexism intersected with racism, misogyny, class discrimination, and ableism, thus proving that “the intersections between sexuality and other forms of marginalisation and privilege are too often overlooked” (Clarke and Peel). They solely relied on their sexual oppression as the object of their anger.

Furthermore, I began to notice how the concept of “queer” as an umbrella term had been perverted into a misogynist, nonsensical phrase that welcomed straight people with unconventional sexual practices and/or attractions while “…[enfolding] female homosexuality back ‘into’ male homosexuality and [disembodying] the lesbian once again” (Jagose 97, 117). Once again, I had returned to the painful solitude I had experienced at age fourteen. Donald Morton was correct when he argued that queerness is “[a] lifestyle, certain ways of talking, walking, eating, dressing, having your hair cut and having sex” (Jagose 109). Queerness became a competition of who was the most polyamorous, who had the most sexual partners, and who could regurgitate the most complex and verbose poststructuralist jargon.

I am now an ex-queer. I will never find shame in being open about my sexuality and supporting my friends who still identify as queer; however, I will never have the same relationship with “queer” that I once had in my younger years. While I thought that I identified as queer from a position of empowerment and justice, I actually identified as such from a position of privilege; while many had “queer” hissed at them moments before they were cast away from their families, beaten by an intimate partner, or murdered by strangers, I had the luxury of never facing such violence. Contemporary—and dominant—queer culture is not a form of resistance; instead, it is a haphazard chaos. Heteronormativity has begotten reactionary homonormativity—a contradictory cultural phenomenon which upholds the same hierarchies that queerness claims to destroy.

I do not see an alternative to the label of “queer” or even “LGBT”; in fact, I view the future of queer/transgender inclusivity with a nihilistic spitefulness. Scholars and advocacy groups may propose as many acronyms or additions to them as they please, but their fruitless attempts at creating “…an infinite set of pronouns, pride flags, and labels…” will not address the alarmingly high suicide, incarceration, and murder rates that many people who do not identify as straight or cisgender face (“Gender Nihilism: An…”). Instead of embracing “queer” or searching for less problematic terms, the individuals who are assigned—and designed—to materialize the social concept of an LGBT community must accept that “only pure rejection, the move away from any sort of knowable or intelligible future can allow us the possibility for a future at all”

(“Gender Nihilism: An…”).

http://www.abstract.lib-ebook.com/a1-psychology/1629516-34-queers-monsters-drag-queens-and-whiteness-unruly-femininities-wome.php

http://www.scielo.mec.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0874-55602009000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso

https://libcom.org/library/gender-nihilism-anti-manifesto