Aggressive Queerness Gives Myself the Ick | Autostraddle

Contrary to the backdrop of our world’s shitty transphobic and homophobic politics, the most disheartening and irritating warning flags I experienced within queer area is actually competitive queerness. It’s a very important factor to admit and honor the vast different queer experiences and the various ways men and women have skilled marginalization and harm. But often, typically relating to online dating and cooperation, I’ve encountered folks who attempt to draw rank, to be “gayer than thou” they also can. Often it’s based on their unique demonstration; other times it’s because of just how long they have been away or how many other associates they will have got or actually have. In minutes of kindness, We try to comprehend the impulse. Largely, it simply bums me personally down.

I’ve always looked at relationships as actually like tissues: residing bacteria, self-contained by only of the thinnest membrane layer whereby fragments associated with the larger culture can diffuse in odd, occasionally counterintuitive steps. Diffusion takes place, as you may know, against a gradient. “It’s terrible available,” I tell myself personally, “while the inside the little cellular is really gay. Needless to say things you will need to sneak in round the sides.” It may sound ridiculous — and it’s also — but here is the best way I can clarify just how remnants of homophobia slip in from the grain of queer partnerships.

I believe for the “gayer than thou” trend as an inside-out form of the “oppression olympics.” Rather than the “race for the base” that takes place when anyone just be sure to place by themselves as the utmost Oppressed, here I see people inverting those exact same perceptions generate a hierarchy drawing near to an impossible pinnacle of queerness. They leverage that hierarchy against friends and associates to affirm some thing about by themselves. This has happened certainly to me several times today, from men and women I’ve outdated casually in addition to those i have outdated more seriously. Despite the reality i am safe in my own speech and experience, i have ended up with lovers who want me to understand they’re for some reason before myself. I don’t consider myself personally femme, but lovers who would like to feel a lot more masc than Im have known as myself femme anyhow. Despite the reality I’ve been out for a time, individuals who wish emphasize age or experience will-call me personally a “baby gay.” Once, actually during a gay time, anyone said they could not have clocked me as queer. “Jackets like your own

was previously

a sign,” they mentioned, “but

now

that is precisely how

all

the girls your age dress.” Until that minute, I’d felt beautifully, visibly, conveniently homosexual back at my lovable married senior gay dating. My stompy boots, my beanie, my personal leather-jacket — these were all items we cherished and felt probab me in. This believed even worse than getting erased; it felt like becoming definitely and manipulatively misread.

My personal present crush characterizes these unusual remarks as ”

I happened to be gay earlier had gotten therefore big and played Coachella.

” each time, this has been a jarring and disheartening method of producing all of our shared marginalization as queer people into a tournament, reducing the variegation your knowledge to warped and patronizing scorekeeping. I know a good amount of other folks have experienced this knowledge across various identities, therefore sucks each and every time in almost every course. Folks utilize this pattern of behavior in biphobic means, in butch- and femme-phobic methods along with methods show disdain either for monogamy (insufficiently major) or polyamory (insufficiently dedicated). For me, this has been weirdest in regard to from some body whoever speech is relatively like my very own — like, for my situation as a Carhartt Dyke, how is actually someone wanting to draw rank whenever we can’t actually tell whose overalls are whose? Nevertheless the the truth is this routine isn’t really about any actual difference or discrepancy. The main point is that the goalposts constantly go, never inside my benefit. If our very own speech is comparable, this may be’s about that’s had a lot more associates. Whenever we’ve had comparable variety of associates, subsequently what truly does matter is the length of time they’ve been out. Any perspectives that could rely in my favor never ever count whatsoever.

There were the explanation why I enjoyed these individuals, even though they didn’t treat myself kindly or pleasantly, and I still feel defensive of these while I think of the options they have to have-been penalized for these parts of by themselves. If they flex their own knowledge, i do want to suppose its a defense of the more youthful, prone queer self. They can be attempting to transform a niche site of harm into a supply of strength. Once they pull position over myself about their butchness, their unique femmeness or whatever, they may be trembling a fist at a world that told all of them they ought ton’t end up being proud of who they really are.

Except, within framework, it feels like they are trembling that fist at me alternatively. The regrettable reality with this maladaptive impulse is because they turn their particular discipline about; they resolve their particular problem of too-muchness by-turning it into

my personal

issue of not-enoughness. As my friend Gus claims, this isn’t about shitty queers or internet dating shitty individuals. “Sometimes we talk like we’re the ‘only’ even if we are actually talking to ‘another,'” Gus tells me. This residual injury, this processor chip about shoulder, this something to prove — they are demonstrating it on completely wrong person. They may be gay-tekeeping.

The counterintuitive and counterproductive techniques these ghosts of homophobic damage infiltrate queer really love are hard and painful. I might not vulnerable using my speech or with the way I date, nevertheless stings to learn that someone or crush perceives myself as in some way lacking. It stings added, We’ll obtain, coming particularly from some body i really like and value, whoever affirmation will have designed a whole lot if you ask me. I spent plenty time picturing the harms that precipitated this for them, but I have invested valuable short amount of time receiving any such consideration for designs this friendly fire might accidentally perpetuate personally. As I think mislabeled in many ways that do not mirror my personal speech or knowledge, I have found me overcorrecting or overemphasizing certain things in a desperate quote to be seen when I have always been. Responding to those forms of opinions, I’ve rearranged my bookshelf to help make my understanding of queer literature, idea and history distinguished. I have become uncomfortable concerning the irrepressible pitch of my voice and considered some questionable-at-best haircuts. There is nothing completely wrong with being femme or with being newly-out, for example — it’s simply perhaps not where i am privately at, and when somebody misrepresents me personally, I find yourself exaggerating my own androgyny or focusing personal past experience past exactly what feels right, only to make them recognize it anyway.

There is no way to win, needless to say, because for making their particular issue of too-muchness into my personal problem of not-enoughness, they elide that as another queer person, I currently have my own problem of too-muchness. “perhaps not queer enough” on their behalf is already “also queer” undoubtedly for any globe at-large, and so I’m caught. To be honest, even if I’m not the main one welcoming this insecurity within membrane layer of your union, the onus to consume it nevertheless places on me personally. Because it’s from someone I favor, we find yourself wanting to show myself in ultimately meaningless strategies to satisfy their particular vision of my queerness and also to appease the one individual i ought ton’t have to. I’m a dyke attempting to be in queer love and do enjoyable gay crap with another queer individual, as well as for these to concern my qualifications is to concern my authenticity in the arena.

Identification politics are fraught, and it’s difficult to untangle it in manners that nevertheless feel reasonable. But I’ve learned the hard method in which if someone attempts this odd queer negging on me, I have got to get. Diffusion merely stops after gradient is actually evened completely. I don’t desire the vibrant inside our mobile as influenced by occasions outside of it.