HappyComeLucky

I posted My Pride a couple of weeks ago. I had thought a great deal about what to write before that. I thought I had done my reflecting and, for now, had an answer.

In reality, I wasn’t finished and my thoughts have carried on ticking over. I have kept coming back to my response to whether I am queer.

Claiming a powerful label like queer is a huge part of declaring belonging. I worry that this is part of why I don’t think I am queer.

My Pride.

This is the quote from my previous post that has been provoking my continued analysis. I don’t feel the same threshold of needing to feel that I belong in a group or community when I state that I am bisexual. Bisexual is a totally personal identity that doesn’t need anyone else’s validation of acceptance. Even if I was totally solitary, I would still be bisexual. It feels easy. It’s a consistent label that has a clearer shared understanding of what it means.

Queer on the other hand feels different to that. The way it has been used, abused and reclaimed has changed over time. Different people and different groups define it differently. Maybe that is one aspect that makes it less easy to claim for me.

Those differences in definitions feel as though it makes it harder to hold as an identity. I don’t look queer. I don’t live a life that is obviously queer. I don’t want to have to explain to random people why I am queer – not that I would, but the knowledge that they could discount me and reject me is there in the background.

I’m also wondering whether my feelings have been also partly due to internalisation of cis-male fetishisation of female bisexuality for their gaze and therefore the lack of connection with LGBTQIA and queer identity. I was certainly aware of that from a young age.

Queer, for me, at the beginning of this, was an identity that stated a belonging and a visibility that I felt was for other “more valid” people than me. I was gatekeeping myself out of the identity due to long lasting issues from childhood of feeling an outsider. Realising this has been a slow process but one that has felt like watching the gentle arrival of dawn. I haven’t had a life changing moment of realisation. I’ve relaxed my rigid reactions and let the understanding flow in.

2020 might be a whole heap of awful but it is also Pride month 2020 that has been the space that has allowed me to open up to, and welcome my queer identity.

So, to update my summary from my previous post: I am an amazing, queer, bisexual cunt.

I have to express my thanks to Mx Nillin for their One Rainbow Apart meme. Without this, I may have taken a whole heap longer to address these thought of mine and move forwards.