CW: gender questioning, bullying<\/p>\n
I\u2019m super insecure, about most things. Don\u2019t be fooled by this faux-extroverted shell \u2013 I\u2019m a bottler, a repressor, a true charlatan. This weekend I found myself in a particularly fragile state \u2013 somewhat mentally, mostly physically \u2013 and, after mistakenly assuming someone had questioned my sexuality\/identity, I was asked what being queer was to me.<\/p>\n
I was stumped, it\u2019s not like I hadn\u2019t thought about it. It\u2019s not like I hadn\u2019t thought about it all day every day for the last few months. Yet, I couldn\u2019t muster the mental power to put into words what it was to be queer for me.<\/p>\n
Now, I put this down to a few things:<\/p>\n
Those don\u2019t add up to the totality of my issues with this question but are the most imposing pieces. I went into an internal melt down shortly after, which would last until Sunday evening. What did it mean to be queer for me? Why am I struggling with that question? Am I valid? What was I missing?<\/p>\n
Little did I know, Netflix would point me in the right direction. My pride evening was spent with a dear friend, junk food and the movie \u2018Alex Strangelove\u2019 \u2013 a movie, by the way, that is a million times better than \u2018Love, Simon\u2019.<\/p>\n
I actually recommend it, it\u2019s really quite funny.<\/p>\n
Anyway, there\u2019s two scenes which stuck with me. The first being the titular character\u2019s inability to feel comfortable being sexual with his girlfriend. The second being a flashback to a traumatic childhood memory of him being aroused in a communal shower room and subsequently being beaten up for it.<\/p>\n
The former struck a chord with me due to my own general uncomfortableness with my body and being touched; the latter with how suffocating I found masculinity and gender whilst growing up and still to this day. The chokehold of \u201cbeing a man\u201d is stifling, to say the least.<\/p>\n
And that was it, my eureka moment. The reason I couldn\u2019t answer what queer meant to me wasn\u2019t because I had no idea, I had just been trying to define it within the wrong context. Sexuality to me is pretty simple. I fuck who I fuck, I am attracted to whomever and that\u2019s ok. There are intersections between, say, my mental health and how I sexually interact with people \u2013 but ultimately, I\u2019m happy with the fluidity of my sexuality and where it is, where it\u2019s going and that it\u2019s a journey, albeit a fucking rollercoaster sometimes.<\/p>\n
So here it was, right in front of me \u2013 all shiny eyes, panting eagerly, with its tail wagging – my queerness lies in gender<\/strong>, not<\/em> sexuality. Those two scenes were particularly poignant to me in such a painfully obvious way \u2013 never underestimate your ability to be untruthful with yourself, it\u2019s an incredible feat we all possess \u2013 like secretly favouring smooth peanut butter but advocating crunchy.<\/p>\n It was, and has been, obvious to me that my issue with my body \u2013 or at least how others interact with it \u2013 has an internal and external factor. I have found myself questioning whether my body dysmorphia is actually gender dysphoria for around a year now. I first uttered the words \u201cI am unsure about my gender\u201d to my then partner and remember being asked whether I thought I was trans. Feeling completely alienated, I swiftly retreated back in my shell, burying whatever vestige of curiosity that had been aroused.<\/p>\n But I kept asking myself that very same question. It loomed over me and constricted my every thought and interaction on the daily. Am I? What did that mean and how does that fit into who I currently<\/em> was? Ultimately, I like my body, my physique, I don\u2019t dislike the changes that I went through in puberty \u2013 my voice, my height, my bone structure and broadness. Although I have always been relieved to not be particularly hairy (I\u2019d most certainly be a waxxer).<\/p>\n What has been glaringly oppressive to me since childhood, and continues so to this day, are the restrictions put on my body and gender externally<\/em>. The double dogma.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always found boys repulsive. Their violence, aggression and demeanour. I didn\u2019t slot into that. I was the kid that wanted to sit around and draw or sew. My favourite Nintendo character was Kirby, owing to their ability to be a pink ball of squidge that absorbed enemies and took on their traits. You\u2019d often find me playing vet with my toys and treating their pretend ails.<\/p>\n I hate(d) sports. Football especially. There wasn\u2019t much of a presence of it in my life or my family, but I steered clear of it for all intents and purposes. There was nothing scarier to me than masses of men in one place, the hysteria of winning or losing. It\u2019s violent, I don\u2019t care what people say \u2013 and a centrepiece of toxic masculinity and misogyny. Yet, I was pushed into trying to like it. You weren\u2019t a real boy if you didn\u2019t like it; you were a gay, a pussy, a fag. When I did convince myself I liked it? I couldn\u2019t choose my own position. I was told I\u2019d be a goalkeeper and I was kept out in the rain and cold for several hours having balls kicked at me to \u2018toughen\u2019 me up. I gleefully broke the straps on my goalie gloves that evening and declared to never play football again, and I haven\u2019t. That was 20 years ago.<\/p>\n Years later, whilst in Argentina, I felt the oppressive football obsession wash over me in Buenos Aires. I was cornered by a pair of young argentines. Upon discovering I was English they wanted to know what team I supported and whether I\u2019d be going to watch the Bocas (one of their most popular, most successful school teams in the city \u2013 I guess it equivalates to college football in the US?) match the following day. I let them down with precision \u2013 not liking football was a badge of pride for me. Subsequently they looked at me in disgust and in full, complete seriousness spat at me \u201care you gay or something?\u201d and proceeded to ignore me or give me filthy looks for the remainder of my stay at the hostel.<\/p>\n I was most comfortable in all womxn spaces growing up. I sought solace around those that I most likely aligned myself with. Although not every womxn in my life exhibited the traits I desired, as I quite often say that my mother is the most masculine person I know (aggressively and painfully so for me in my early years) I was still happier there than uncomfortable with men.<\/p>\n Men have always presented themselves as a threat to me. They are either trying to engage with you to lift themselves up the masculine ladder or are trying to make you more masculine to ensure they aren\u2019t perceived as lesser than. It\u2019s a trap and it\u2019s forced, it holds no prisoners and you will find yourself shunned, looked down on or pushed aside as soon as you don\u2019t subscribe to the heteronormative ideals of cishet men.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, in my late teens and early 20s I had partaken in the culture and decidedly aimed to push aside all of my doubt and questioning of belonging and forced myself to be. To be one of them and be the best at it.<\/p>\n I guess you could say I was moderately successful. I was the straightest non-straight person you\u2019d have met. It was obnoxious and like all masculinity, it was forced and devoid of emotion. I sucked my partners dry of emotional labour, I gave nothing back. I was a blackhole of nothing in terms of how I engaged with the world, my head was a vacuous space \u2013 if you had put your ear to mine you\u2019d hear the swish-swashing of whisky and unsuccessful one-night stands (not sure what that\u2019d sound like? I\u2019d imagine it would be like a private conversation among the love island men).<\/p>\n I was nasty and offensive, to myself and everyone I came in contact with.<\/p>\n Ironically, I found the majority of the relationships I had in that time oppressive. Being someone who, to themselves, quite clearly didn\u2019t fit into the confines of the gender binary \u2013 and who also was not on either end of the monosexual binary either \u2013 having to be a \u201cgood\u201d boyfriend, being the protector or provider in any capacity, having to be strong and masculine, it hurt. It went against everything I felt but thought I had to adhere to.<\/p>\n I remember distinctly being asked if I was gay by an ex due to objecting to something, it was all a bit too much. I had gone three-sixty in life; little cishet boys, or those supporting them, can sniff you out if you don\u2019t fit into their world and you get bullied for it \u2013 and I was bullied continuously through school starting at age 5. I was now, ultimately, being gaslighted by my partners. Having my gender and sexuality questioned for not fitting into \u2018conventional\u2019, heteronormative gender roles.<\/p>\n All of these anecdotes, and they are a pin head in relation to everything else that has accumulated in my experience of gender, have pointed me towards where I am right now.<\/p>\n Not fitting into the boy\u2019s club used to be scary. Where else would I go? Who would have me? The more I learn, the more I understand about myself (but also other\u2019s experiences), the more I realise I am not alone. I can clearly see by the choice of who I spend time with, the people I choose to leave behind, the people I don\u2019t feel comfortable around. There\u2019s common denominators. Small reflections of myself in others that I relate to and cling to.<\/p>\n I think a lot of people who\u2019d speak to me on the daily would say I hate men. I can\u2019t deny that, I do hate men. I have yet to be presented with a man that doesn\u2019t in some way provide me with anxiety or hasn\u2019t contributed in someway to my gender trauma. I also can\u2019t remain ignorant to the history of men, the history or violence and oppression, to the subjugation of womxn and the unbearable heaviness of \u2018being a man\u2019.<\/p>\n But, this stems from the fact that I am not a man.<\/p>\n Yes, I have male sex traits and no I wouldn\u2019t change that. I have been socialised as a man, but don\u2019t associate myself with it. You\u2019d see me in the streets and not think twice, I fit into a stereotypically look of what a cishet man would look like and I am not what some would deem \u2018outwardly\u2019 queer. I am slowly finding ways to subvert my own notion of my gender, or lack thereof and I understand the concept of gender – being separate from biological sex traits, that gender is a social construct; a mask, a charade, a way in which we present ourselves and are presented in the world – can be a scary thought.<\/p>\n It undermines everything we are taught, it goes against the heteronormativity we are prescribed at birth. Men are men and women are women. There are only two genders. We are naturally inclined towards heterosexuality, anything else is a choice, a deviation of desire. Taboo.<\/p>\n So, I\u2019m genderqueer. I don\u2019t subscribe to either, I feel a neutrality in the space I take up and my inability to align with either makes that crystal clear to me. I can\u2019t say out loud that I am a man, just like I could never bring myself to say I was straight way back when.<\/p>\n Tell you about my queerness? Sure, there you go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CW: gender questioning, bullying I’m super insecure, about most things. Don’t be fooled by this faux-extroverted shell – I’m a bottler, a repressor, a true charlatan. This weekend I found myself in a particularly fragile state – somewhat mentally, mostly physically – and, after mistakenly assuming someone had questioned my sexuality\/identity, I was asked what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133,666,117,116,749,269,750,682,122,588,84,690,114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bisexuality","category-blog","category-blogging","category-coming-out","category-dogmatic-gender-rules","category-gender","category-genderqueer","category-lgbtqia2","category-men","category-non-binary","category-sexuality","category-toxic-masculinity","category-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8218"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8490,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8218\/revisions\/8490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}