TW: butchphobia, homophobia, lesbophobia, transmisogyny, Christian supremacy, internalized queerphobia, arophobia, dysphoria, body part mentions, transphobia. heterosplaining, cissplaining, concern trolling, betrayal, rape discussion, sexual harassment, coming out, conversion therapy, suicide, abuse, bullying, hypersexualization, online harassment, brainwashing, gaslighting, acephobia, racism, misogyny, body policing, self-harm, homelessness, invalidation, bathrooms, pornography, profanity, sexuality, romance, biphobia, sapphobia, religion, panic attacks, self-hate, d-slur, q-slur, police brutality, medical neglect, slut shaming
Wow, it's officially been over a year since I started this blog. (And it's Pride Month again.) And in that time, I've come out five times...first as bisexual, then as pagan, then as genderfluid, then as aroflux (I finally found a better term for my romantic orientation than 'gray-panromantic'...which I don't think would work anyway, because lo and behold I'm not romantically attracted to men), then as gray-ace.
And honestly, I'm pretty sure that a lot of cishet readers started to take my comings-out (coming-outs? Outings?) as a joke around the time I revealed that I'm genderfluid. Which is pretty transphobic, really, and I'll probably yell at you all later for it.
But I think a big reason people haven't been taking me seriously is that they don't understand or think I'm just a confused teenager. And, hey, I might be. But, first of all, that's part of growing up. You figure yourself out and realize how you relate to the world. Second, there's no rule that says a person can't change their minds about the labels they use for themselves. Third, queer sexuality, (a)romance, and gender can be ridiculously complicated and orientations aren't static for everyone. Fourth, the concept of being straight and cis is just as strange to me as being genderfluid, gray-ace, gray-aromantic, bi, or any other kind of queer probably is to cishet people, or even some queer people.
I can barely even write romance, and when I can, there's almost never a man (who is consistently a man; he could be genderfluid though) in the relationship because I've never gotten a crush on a guy (on the plus side, this means there's lots of lesbian, multisexual, asexual, nonbinary, and aromantic representation in my work!). If there IS a man, he can't be in a relationship with another man - I just don't know how to write that - and I have to write from the viewpoint of the man.
And sex? I've never even tried writing any kind of sex. Since I rarely feel sexual attraction, the little sexual attraction I do feel tends to be toward woman-type people, I can't really differentiate between sexual and aesthetic attraction to men, and I'm pretty much apathetic to partnered sex, my relationship with sex and sexuality has always been...unconventional, to say the least. It just never occurs to me to write it. If I ever write sex, I'll probably have to get inspiration from the M-rated section at Fanfiction.net (word on the geek street is, this is the only porn around that's actually somewhat realistic. Yet another reason we need feminism.), or go around interrogating allosexuals to figure out what their deal is. Which would be really funny, actually. I can see myself staring intently at someone with a very serious look on my face as they struggle to explain the appeal of genitalia and I'm dutifully taking notes like I'm in class.
Ahem. Back on topic. So, my queer journey. As the title says.
The first time I figured out something funky was up, I was probably about five or six years old. Thanks to Minnesota laws (because that's where I lived back then), I had to start kindergarten late in the year. Thanks to other stuff I don't really remember, I also had to go to day care a few days a week. And there was this kid I connected with in day care, a little squirt named Dawson something. That child was basically my best friend. As far as Dawson was concerned, I was essentially just another little boy. Which he was kind of right about, actually. I was a little boy - a little boy who was also a little girl. (Thanks to internalized cisheteronormativity, I also decided I was in love with the kid. But that's a whole 'nother story.)
And that was why we connected so well. I didn't fit in with the little girls, what with my insistence that color had no gender and my love of 'boy toys' and the whole 'boys are icky!' thing that so many girls have gone through at some point. I didn't totally connect with the boys, either, since my girlhood was a huge part of me, too, and there are some things about being a girl that cis boys just can't relate to (or worse, have been taught to look down upon). Also, the little boys were just as grossed-out and confused by girls as the girls were by them. But, again, here I was. A girl who was also a boy, and for that reason I was not-icky enough for some of the boys (and also, some of the girls) to welcome me into their fold.
It was by hanging out with these boys, unconsciously studying them, connecting with them as one of the guys, that I realized - I really was one of the guys. Partially, anyway. And of course I decided to tell my dad about this. He was my hero, you know? My role model. I wanted to be just like him. And even eleven years after his death, I still wonder if he would accept and be as proud of his son as he might have been of his daughter.
But my dad was a Republican, a Catholic, and a middle-class white cis (and, I assume, het) guy. And this was the early-to-mid 2000s, which meant it was still essentially the nineties. Any USian queer person who remembers the nineties knows firsthand what an awful decade that was.
So Daddy Dearest had never been exposed to any kind of queerness before, and if he ever met any trans people besides me, he either kept it awful close or he just didn't know. Of course he had no idea what to do when his little princess announced that she was his little prince. No idea, that is, besides looking horrified, telling me I was wrong, and yelling "KATHLEEN, TELL OUR DAUGHTER SHE'S NOT A BOY!"
Now, I was a precocious kid. I knew that two adults together weren't going to take the word of a five-year-old at face value. And I thought that adults were 'smarter' than kids on pretty much everything. After all, they had the college degrees to prove it. So I decided to keep my mouth shut and tell my parents I was just kidding. And for a few years, I convinced myself that I really had been.
After my dad died, my mom and I moved back to Michigan. It only made sense - our family was here, and Daddy was the one who'd wanted to live in Minnesota in the first place. I joined the brownie troop at my new elementary school, and for the first time I really connected with other girls. It was Brownies, after all. And Girl Scouts of America is a fabulous and very feminist and wonderful organization for girls, but the enjoyment that I got out of it was that nobody cared if I acted like a boy, but I also wasn't disrespected for being like a girl. Most of us were tomboys, after all, and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if one of my former troopmates were to also come out as transgender.
I could get as dirty and sweaty as I wanted, I could cut my hair short, and I could wear masculine clothing. None of it was questioned - something that reminds me of Not Aiden, the trans man who writes the blog Not Another Aiden, actually. (It was Not Aiden - he chooses to stay anonymous because he's stealth - who helped me realize I was transgender in the first place, and that I didn't have to be hypermasculine to be valid, or even to have a totally even mix of masculine and feminine traits. After all, he's not only trans, he's, and I quote, "one of the most flamingly gay guys I know. The two who beat me are both cisgender and I figure if they can be camp then so can I." Well said, Not Aiden. Well said. And as long as I'm derailing my own post here, I just want to say that feminine trans guys are valid. Masculine trans girls are valid. Nonbinary people who aren't androgynous - even if they're butches who were assigned male or femmes who were assigned female - are valid. You're all valid and important. Screw gender roles. As long as you don't - shudder - call yourself trans for 'political reasons' or think it's some fad or a game to play on Tumblr, you're totally valid in my eyes and I will stand by you. No matter how neo your pronouns are, no matter how weird the name of your gender is or if you even can name it, no matter how you present, no matter what gender(s) you're attracted to or if you even are attracted to any, no matter what kind of medical procedures you do or don't want, you're valid. 'Kay, I'll get off my soapbox now.)
But the whole world wasn't a Girl Scouts meeting, and even at those meetings, there was something in the other girls that separated me from them and I'd never been able to put my finger on exactly what it was. After all, I took ballet, had a vagina, had mostly girl friends, and sometimes wore skirts - didn't that mean I wasn't a boy, even if I sometimes felt more like a boy than a girl? Even if, as my body started changing in fifth grade, everything just felt wrong?
Gender roles were a confusing thing, even to me. I liked skirts and dresses and Bratz sometimes, yes. But those things weren't for boys. Baggy shorts, short hair, and t-shirts were. That's what I'd always been taught and that's what I'd internalized. So I began to dress more masculine and seek out male friends to imitate, starting my transition at only nine years old, before I ever even heard the word transgender.
I also got my first crush in elementary school, too. My mother thinks it's a boy named Ryan in the fourth grade, but looking back, I think the situation was more like what I'd had going with Dawson. Ryan just saw me as one of the boys, and I think on some unconscious level he knew that that's what I was. And he didn't shut me out for being part girl, like so many boys did at that age, because everywhere they turned, they were told that being like a girl was something shameful. I told myself I had a crush on him because I liked him as a person. Again, internalized heteronormativity and cisnormativity. After all, vagina=girl=attracted to boys and only boys, right? But I didn't like Ryan that way. I don't feel that I've ever been romantically attracted to any boy.
No, my first crush was at six years old. A girl who we'll call Anya. I met her in first grade and her desk was next to mine. Typical, little kid, one-sided puppy love, except that one of us was only a boy part of the time. And except for the fact that I didn't even know it was puppy love, because as far as I was concerned I was a girl and Anya was a girl and girls only liked boys and that was that. Gah, heteropatriarchy. It's a parasite and it will eat our souls.
Anyway. Moving on.
I don't even remember that much about Anya, besides that she had long blonde curly hair, her voice sounded fancy, she once invited me over to her house, and I kept getting butterflies around her and wanting to hold her hand. And that, when another little boy showed interested in her, I got jealous and chased the kid off the playground. I had a rivalry going with that boy up through the fifth grade, even though Anya left our school that year. At one point, we had the whole class taking sides (almost everyone sided with me, in case you're wondering).
I started dressing more femininely in the sixth grade, after the gossip and internalized queerphobia finally got to me. But it didn't always feel right, especially when I was on my period. And you have to realize, I was a fat kid. I bled heavily every time. I totally support trans people who are okay with their periods, but God the dysphoria was awful.
I wrote a lot of short stories back then, with androgynous main characters. In retrospect, I'd been trying to write about other genderqueer kids without even knowing it. The old files are probably somewhere in my hard drive.
Sixth grade was also a milestone for me: it was the year I first heard the word transgender. Granted, the person whom I'd asked to educate me was Ella. You guys remember Ella? The Christian cousin I used to be friends with? Yeah, well, as you may have guessed, she's one hell of a lot more ignorant about queerness than she thinks she is (she once tried to convince me that some people had a 'mental disposition' and 'certain tendencies' that made them more vulnerable to Satanic influence and, therefore, more likely to be gay or BPQ. I don't speak Homophobe, but I can only assume this means my cousin thinks all women - which in Ella's mind means vaginas - into women are masculine or androgynous, and all men - which in Ella's mind means penises - into men are feminine or androgynous. Maybe this stems from the culturally and systemically enforced heteronormative belief that all non-hetero identities are pale imitations of the cishet "ideal". Who knows? Cishet people are weird like that. Whatever the case, it's actually really ironic, considering that not only am I queer, AFAB, and leaning somewhat more toward femininity on the androgynous spectrum, but her sister's best friend is an openly bisexual and very masculine boy, and this one gay man whom we have both known most of our lives - his family is friends with our family - looks like a lumberjack even though he's basically a big teddy bear. Ella's also been known to equate homosexuality to murder - no, she said it was worse than murder - thinks every single queer woman ever is attracted to her, is horrified by the thought of using the same public restroom as a trans woman, is convinced that there's a gay agenda, thinks that she "loves homosexuals but hates homosexuality", and would like to know why the MOGAI community isn't more tolerant of all this. I'm not even sure what the gay agenda is or how it's possible to love someone while denying them the same rights that you take for granted, but let's give my cousin a serious side-eye because this stuff is all skeevy af, everyone!).
Ella's definition of trans was - and is - "a boy who think he's a girl, or a girl who thinks she's a boy." That's what she said when I asked her. I'm not even kidding.
Wow. Well, in retrospect, she wasn't much more bigoted or ignorant than any other cis seventh grader. She's just a hell of a lot more bigoted and ignorant than most college students now (something that I think is a testament to our public education system and just one of many reasons that feminism is so necessary). And, Ella, if you're reading this, I'm going to be getting really pissy about you in this post. Frankly, you have treated me like crap, you seem to have no moral compass, you think it's okay to be totally disgusting to other people but expect them to not judge you, you appear to see LGBTQ+ people as less than human, and it's honestly amazing how little you know about how little you know. So if you don't like it, don't bother continuing. But I think you'll want to.
So, anyway, going by Ella's wildly inaccurate definition of transness, it's only natural that I didn't realize I wasn't cis until years later. But something I did realize about myself soon enough was that I liked girls as well as boys (when I say that I like boys, I mean I like them sexually, not romantically...at least, I don't think so. I've never gotten a crush on a boy, but gender has never been a big deal to me. I care less about that, at least in theory, than I do about a person's aesthetic attractiveness and personality). And that's a big reason I began dressing so much more femininely in my early teens. I thought I was a butch lesbian and that prospect horrified me. That's called butchphobia and it's horrible. It's also very prevalent, both in the lesbian community and outside of it.
Seventh grade was a really bad year for me. I developed fast, so I was dealing with all my body dysphoria at once. I'd started questioning my sexuality and trying unsuccessfully to convince myself I was getting crushes on boys when I wasn't actually getting crushes on anyone at all (I just found both boys and girls attractive and was sometimes turned on by boys and sometimes by girls, but very often I didn't feel attracted to anyone at all and I felt mostly apathetic toward sex) and hadn't since Anya. I couldn't hide my breasts, because I'd never even heard of a binder and didn't understand why I felt so uncomfortable with my body in the first place. I'd assumed it was because I was fat, or because all girls felt that way. (Another reason we need feminism.)
But as I grew older, I began to feel marginally more comfortable with my androgyny, dressing femme when I felt like it and tomboyish when I didn't. And I was still in denial about my bisexuality, even though I'd questioned it in middle school.
That facet of my identity was something that came to light and pretty much smacked me in the face when I was about fifteen. My sophomore year of high school, and also the year I fell for the new girl (not that I ever worked up the nerve to tell her). We'll call her...Cammie. My second crush ever, and a DFAB genderqueer bisexual. She was brilliant, a dedicated dancer with a 4.0 GPA. She was curious, a great listener, and willing to consider things other people never would have thought of. And she was damn near the only person I'd let call me 'pretty.' I almost fainted with delight when she did.
Even though I was romantically attracted to Cammie (and, I'll admit, slightly disappointed and jealous when she said that she had a crush on a guy we knew), I was usually happy fantasizing from afar. My desire for a romantic relationship with her fluctuated, I didn't really want to have sex with her, and I was almost relieved when I realized I'd lost feelings for her. The fluctuation of romantic attraction I've felt throughout my life - very often feeling none at all - is called aroflux. But I didn't know that yet.
And since we had mutual friends, coming out wasn't really a feasible option. I was so terrified they'd tell Cammie how I felt about her, and I'd had experiences that terrified me out of coming out.
I did make progress, though. I managed to squeak out that I was questioning. That was in a conversation with three mutual friends. Two of them came out as asexual that night, and a third was bisexual. (One of the other asexuals later revealed that she was a demigirl, and they both are aromantic.) Ironically, this took place at a Catholic conference. Called Rainbow.
Yeah, go ahead and snicker quietly to yourself.
A couple months after that, I had my first Day of Silence. Now, if you don't know what that is, I'll explain here. See, suicide and self-harm rates are really high among MOGAI youth. We face a lot of homophobic and transphobic bullying from our peers - I've even been sexually harassed by a group of cishet girls on my way home from school - as well as abuse from our families.
Did you know that approximately 40% of homeless youth are MOGAI? That's no coincidence. It comes from kids being kicked out when they come out to their parents, or running from something even worse than homelessness. Like conversion therapy, the practice of trying to make a queer person straight or a trans person cis through methods like forced conformity to gender roles, mental or spiritual manipulation, or physical pain. Thankfully, the use of conversion therapy on minors is being banned from the United States, but that progress doesn't fix everything.
And it can't bring back Leelah Alcorn, Melonie Rose, Blake Brockington, Taylor Alesana, or the many other queer and trans teenagers who have taken their own lives. But we can stop the body count from increasing.
That's what I was trying to do when I impulsively wrote a poem in honor of DoS and published it on my old blog,
The Bronte Chix. Ella and her sisters saw it immediately and freaked out. I actually stated in the poem what Day of Silence was, so I'm not sure if they actually read it all the way through and had no respect for what it meant or if they just skimmed, saw the word 'gay', and ignored the rest.
My cousins tried to argue with me in the comments, but I couldn't really reason with them. I mean, it's sort of hard to use logic on people whose idea of morality is whatever the Bible tells them is right and whatever straight, cis, white, Christian authority figures have brainwashed them into believing. Anyway, at some point, they told me that they weren't homophobic...which is a load of bullshit as far as I'm concerned. Their reason for this belief, like that of pretty much every conservative Christian ever, is that they love homosexuals but hate homosexuality. Yeah, I'll believe that when they actually treat us with dignity.
Let me ask you something, ladies. If you love queer people - and it's not only homosexuals - why don't you seem to value our lives? Why do you compare us to murderers? Why do you think our liberation movement threatens your religious freedom, when it really doesn't affect you at all if other people are free to openly have sex, date, and get married to people who have their same genitals (this is actually not what homosexuality is, because gender is not genitalia, but you don't seem to comprehend this no matter how many times I explain it.)? Why don't you realize that, whether it's intentional or not, you're hurting people you claim to care about when you support antiqueer people, laws, and organizations? That you're putting our lives in danger? That you're putting
my life in danger?
If you really care so damn much about queer people, why can't you respect your own queer
cousin when I tell you that your concern isn't wanted or needed, and that you come across as creepy, brainwashed cult members when you try to "help" me? Or that you're actually really ignorant about us and you're being totally rude and invasive by violating our privacy and bodily autonomy?
Or do you not care?
And, just so you know, trans women are not trying to rape you or anything when they use the same bathroom as you - they're trying to
avoid being raped. Using the bathroom or changing room can be really dangerous when you're trans. If you use the men's, you risk being attacked physically. If you use the women's, you risk the other occupants being irrationally afraid of you, harassing you, yelling at you, staring at your chest and genitals, and calling the authorities to have you removed. Since I'd been assigned female at birth, I do have some protection as far as bathrooms are concerned. But if I'd been assigned male, the chances of something happening to me would be so much higher. That's called transmisogyny, by the way (and the intersection of transphobia and misogyny that Freyja and I face for identifying partly, but not wholly, as women is called demimisogyny).
And trans people are not a threat to anything. From personal experience, we have more reason to be afraid of cis people than they do of us - especially in spaces where people will be partially or totally nude. So really, if you see a gender variant person in the bathroom or changing room, just leave them alone and let them do their thing. As the hashtag says, we just need to pee. If you actually love us as much as you claim, support our right to do so safely.
Moving on.
Once the heat over my poem seemed to have cooled, I decided to risk a post about LGBTQ history for Pride Month. And I'd been considering coming out in that post.
First, though, I figured I should probably ask permission first, because I shared the blog with my cousins and two other girls, both of whom were queer (but I hadn't mentioned this to my cousins). Which is ridiculous, as I'd done most of the work on the blog, had as much right to post on it as anybody else, half of us supported LGBTQIA rights, and at least two-thirds of us were queer (number four was an aromantic, gray-heterosexual, cis girl, but she didn't know that until several months later, when I showed her Aven).
But of course my cousins - mainly LiLi and Ella - were horrified by the idea and threatened to leave the blog if I tried to write the Pride post. They also concern-trolled me several times through email, often sending me Bible quotes, using my spirituality to manipulate me, and generally expressing their hatred for queer people...excuse me, for our
sexualities. At one point, they even made a post all about their hatred of homosexuality, and anything they perceived as homosexuality, on our shared blog. Hypocritical, much?
I know that post was probably triggering for some of our readers - remembering it is triggering for me - so I apologize on my cousins' behalf. I hope they can eventually get the help they so desperately need. And I hope that someday, they'll apologize for their own actions.
I knew I deserved better than that, so I decided to make my own blog, where I could write whatever I wanted and be hella queer without offending anybody's Christian sensibilities...okay, I can't even say that without laughing. Sorry you were so horrified by the fact that I basically fart pride colors.
The blog would be amazing. It would be fabulous. It. Would. Be. So. Effing. Queer.
This is that blog, though it's evolved quite a lot since I first started it up last year in a fit of bisexual feminist fury, ready to battle homophobia like a little bike badass. I've become increasingly more feminist, converted to paganism, found family, friendship, and love among other queer girls, realized I was nonbinary, joined Skittlr, realized I was aroflux, realized I was gray-ace, joined Aven, come out several times, renamed the blog, acquired an underling (Hi, Freyja!), gotten two more crushes (once with an androsexual, bigender femme, and that crush faded really fast. I think it wasn't even a crush. And the other was on a queer cis girl, is partly platonic and partly romantic, and has not faded).
But enough with the spoilers about the
Gay Women's Channel soap opera that is my life. We shall continue.
That first summer was...awkward, to say the least. I was living this weird double life where I was out (as bisexual) to the friends who actually cared about me, regardless of my sexuality or gender, but faking straightness and cisness in front of my family (and probably doing a really shitty job of it). The blog was where the two worlds met and waged war. I wrote about queerness, but was very careful to not mention that I was queer myself.
I had to walk on eggshells, trying to seek the approval and validation of people who didn't like me for
me. I hadn't yet learned that the only person I owed love to, the only person who really needed to validate or approve of me, was myself. And that anyone who got in the way of that needed to get out of my life.
At one point, I wrote a fanfiction that included an interracial, interfaith romance between a white androgynous bisexual Christian girl, Quinn, and a Latina, pagan femme lesbian, Cara. I talked to my family about the story, always very careful to not reveal that Quinn was a girl. I couldn't - they would have thrown a temper tantrum.
There were - and are - times when I got panicky and anxious that Ella was right about queer people and I really was angering God, sometimes feeling physically sick because of it. I know, it's ridiculous. And it's a sign that I should have cut her out long ago.
When I joined a Facebook group for feminists last July, I did so with the self-hating, puritanical mindset I'd internalized - the one that taught me sexuality was something negative, that my body was shameful, that my worth was contained in my relationships with men and others' opinions of me, that my needs were unimportant, that peace was more important than justice. Immediately, the other women in the group despised me. I don't blame them. I would have despised me too.
A big reason for that was Christianity. Now, I'm not saying that all Christians are bad or that my church was one of the bad ones. In fact, as far as Catholic churches go, it was pretty feminist. There were several non-Christian and openly queer kids, the youth group was diverse and welcoming, most of us accepted religious diversity, we held functions to help the sick and poor, and a woman of color was in charge of the youth ministry program. My friends and I were queer feminists, fighting the kyriarchy with our words and actions and calling out any oppression we found around us.
Most of the reason I internalized this mindset was because of my cousins. I don't blame them, though. They are victims, just as I once was. Just as so many Christians still are. I want to help them, because I'm angry at the system that took power and agency away from us.
But their influence on me needed to be confronted and torn down. Even in my darkest moments, I knew in my heart that they were wrong about homosexuality. Who knew what else they were wrong about?
I spent weeks educating myself by researching statistics and reading articles, eventually coming to the conclusion that I no longer agreed with Christianity. I couldn't believe that a loving God would damn innocents to Hell when many of them hadn't even been heard of Jesus - or that this God would condone the deadly evangelism used to convert them to Christianity.
I didn't believe in Satan - I thought he was just a scapegoat so people didn't have to confront their own sins and faults and could just blame those things on someone else, and a tool to control the masses to make them afraid of 'bad' feelings and desires that weren't. I didn't believe in hell or purgatory. I didn't believe Jesus had risen from the dead or was the Messiah. I believed in evolution and had no problem with sexual, romantic, gender, religious, and philosophical diversity or with abortion. And I had a few questions about God.
Why would God demand that pregnant people die rather than have an abortion that could save their lives? Why wouldn't God just make everyone demisexual, if He wanted us all to be chaste until marriage - while this isn't what demisexuality is, wouldn't it make the wait much easier? Why would He punish Eve for eating an apple, when He hadn't explained why she wasn't supposed to, or even given her the mental ability to know right from wrong? What was with this "He" thing, anyway? WHY
CAN'T GOD BE A WOMAN?!
Now that I knew what I didn't believe in - and what was triggering me into moments of self-hate and self-destruction - I needed to focus on what I did. I still had great respect for Jesus, but the thought of what his followers had done to his legacy of love filled me with revulsion. I agreed with his philosophy of love and compassion, with selflessly offering assistance to those in need, with living life to the fullest. But those weren't ideals exclusive to Christianity. And other aspects of my spiritual beliefs - my conviction in sexual freedom, my awe of nature, my fascination with sexuality, my belief in giving others as much respect as they gave you, my passion for justice, my theory that God was nonbinary - fell more in line with paganism. I didn't really fall into any particular path, which is how I eventually found the label
eclectic.
But I was also skeptical, logical, and scientific in ways that didn't really go well with religion. I demanded facts, sources, proof. I was analytical and critical, refusing to fully accept anything unless I had a good reason. I couldn't prove that a deity of any kind existed. Really, did I know anything about the celestial and supernatural? Did anyone?
For that reason, I also identify as agnostic. I acknowledge that I don't know what the truth is, but I know what my personal theories are.
And I knew that, what with the harassment and bigotry I'd faced from Christians as a nonbinary bisexual, the idea of calling myself a Christian repulsed me.
I'd face more bigotry soon enough. When I angrily posted on Facebook about a transmisogynistic robocall Michelle Duggar had made, Ella and LiLi closed in and made several disgusting, ignorant statements about trans women and LGBTQ people in general, once again using religion to gaslight and manipulate me. When I, again, tried to reason with them, they refused to listen. After comparing homosexuality to murder, saying that God didn't support "selfish" love, and assuming that queerness was based only on lust, Ella told me that gay people were just as intolerant of Christians, if not more, as I claimed she was toward us.
I just have to ask, Ella. This is just something I've been wondering for a few months now...you do realize some gay people are asexual or heterosexual (they would, in this case, be homoromantic and heterosexual), right? Queer identity isn't just about sexuality. And even if it were, even if literally everyone in the world was heteroromantic but not necessarily heterosexual, was cisgender, and was dyadic, even if we could only fall in romantic love with someone whose junk didn't match ours...what would be so horrible about consensual sex between two people with penises or two people with vaginas? Why is sexuality always considered such a negative thing? Why exactly do you care so much about other people's genitals, anyway? Why is the concept of bodily autonomy so horrific to you?
You say that you love queer people, that you feel concern for us. I dare you to prove it. Prove it by respecting our privacy, by supporting sex education and health care that isn't heterocentric, by listening to us, by treating us as you would want to be treated. Prove it by loving us not as some creepy godly vessel on a mission to control...sorry, 'save' us...but as a human. I dare you to show us love as a human loving other humans, because that is what we all are and that is how everyone deserves to be respected. Don't support things and people that hurt us, like conversion therapy.
Do you realize there are politicians, not just in Russia or India or Uganda but right here in the US as well, that have said they would kill us all if they could get away with it? Do you realize that people who are supposed to protect us, like police officers and medical professionals,
already have killed some of us and gotten away with it?
Do you realize how lucky you are, as a middle-class, able-bodied, cishet white Christian woman, that you don't fear being murdered or raped, as I and so many other queer women do?
That this story, even though it's completely fiction, is actually very similar to what has actually happened to many lesbians, all over the world? That you know for certain you will never suffer the same fate as Penny Proud or Jessie Hernandez, as CeCe McDonald or Julie Decker, as Bri Golec or Lisa Trubnikova, as Britney Cosby or Crystal Jackson? Do you realize I don't have that same guarantee, but I still choose to be out because I deserve to live authentically and because I choose to fight for my queer siblings' right to do the same?
And don't compare our sexualities to murder; all that makes me think is that you lack a moral compass and that you would do far worse, including deliberately, physically hurting queer people, sex workers, and non-Christians, if you didn't fear hell.
Consensual sex, worse than murder? Honey. You really need to get your priorities in order. And stop treating sex as a sin; other people's sex lives are NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.
Treat
rape as a sin, if you want to focus on sexual sin. Because rape is the ONLY sexual sin. Be as disgusted by rape as you are now by queerness. Prioritize consent. Fight rape culture. Talk about Josh Duggar as hatefully as you would Ellen Degeneres - with one exception: DON'T pretend to love him. Treat Josh Duggar and every other rapist on the face of the Earth as the vile monsters they are. Pour your energy into that, and into validating and supporting their victims, and you might actually accomplish something real and positive.
And yes, I am intolerant of you. I do judge you, not for who you are but for how you act. I judge you for prioritizing fetuses over the people who carry them. I judge you for demanding religious freedom only for people who are basically carbon copies of yourself, while you deny it to everyone not like you. I judge you for favoring peace and quiet over justice, for wanting compliance and forgiveness when those things would only result in more suffering. I judge you for your hate and prejudice, even as you refuse to admit you have any. I judge you for assuming you have ANY place making decisions about other people's bodies. I refuse to be tolerant of that. As long as you hold these beliefs, I refuse to be tolerant of you.
I have one more thing to say to you, Ella. And to LiLi, too. I don't hate you. I pity you. You, by no fault of your own, surrounded yourself with people who encouraged and fed your ignorance. Questioning authority was discouraged. Sexuality - especially female sexuality and sexuality that differed from social norms - was taboo. Diversity and acceptance were squelched. I know this because I used to be a lot like you. And if I could change who I was back then, I would. I hope someday you'll realize why, and be angry at the system that took power, autonomy, and voice away from all of us.
Now. Let's continue.
By the end of that conversation, I was shaking with anger and with dark, self-hating thoughts. I knew they would continue and I refused to take any more abuse. I ordered Ella and her sisters to never contact me again unless it had something to do with our family; it was the only way to protect my mental health - and my physical health, too, because you can't have one without the other. When I wrote a blog post about what I'd experienced, a commenter (correctly) guessed I was queer and didn't want to come out. The comment shook me, so I lied for my own safety.
I did, however, make a post a few weeks later, revealing that I was bisexual. No one reacted negatively...not overtly and to my face, that is. But for those of you who did, fuck you. Don't think I didn't notice your biphobia and homophobia.
And here, I just want to say this to anyone in the closet: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO COME OUT. I chose to, but I had also been in a position where I had a support network,
a chosen family, and ways to protect myself, had things gone south. Prioritize yourself. Your health and safety are important, and if coming out might endanger those things, you don't have to do it. If you just don't want to, you don't have to do it. No one is entitled to your identity; they shouldn't have assumed you were cishet in the first place.
I also came out publicly as bi in front of my classmates, when I had to give a speech about the American Dream and casually mentioned that one of my dreams was that I would have the right to get married, that my rights wouldn't be taken away at the word of a cishet Christian white man (*cough cough* the majority of the American government *cough*).
I found a family, forged from people who shared my blood and from people who shared my struggles and history. Other queer girls were a huge part of that. They were the sisters I never had (except for the one I fell in love with, of course) and understood me like no one else could.
I used music as a source of strength. I found the courage to come out again, as genderfluid and pagan, and later as aroflux and gray-ace. I learned about self-love. I made friends with another genderfluid, multisexual teenager, and we're starting a GSA next year at our high school. I made myself pride jewelry, visible symbols of the queer culture I'd learned to embrace. I figured out more of my own identity, carefully selecting the words I now use to describe myself.
Aroflux, gray-aromantic, and biromantic for my romantic orientation, to declare the fluidity of my attraction, my ability to love fully in ways that aren't always romantic, my rejection of amatonormativity, my frequent and predominant lack of romantic attraction, and my love for multiple genders.
Gray-ace, bisexual, and queer for my sexuality, to reclaim a slur and demand to exist, to reject the idea that sex was the height of everything, to say that it's okay to feel apathetic towards sex, to acknowledge both the sexual and asexual parts of myself, to make sense of my lack of sexual attraction, to say that I wasn't broken.
Genderfluid, nonbinary, genderqueer, and trans, because I am both male and female and sometimes neither, because I transcend the label assigned to me at birth, because I break the social rules of gender with my very existence, because so many of my experiences are shared among my trans siblings everywhere, because I take pride in the history that shaped us.
This is my journey. I hope I can learn about yours, readers. Maybe we can learn from each other.
