On queerness

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I came out as a lesbian when I was 17 and in the throes of my first relationship (which was with a girl) and then had to crawl back into the closet a few years later, after we'd broken up and I started dating men too.  Bisexuality, as an identity, did not seem terribly appealing.  I'm a words person and there's something about the unpleasant sibiliance of it - bi-sex-shual - which sounds as if it's being drunkenly slurred.  Not to mention that bisexuality is an identity constantly debated, belittled and mocked by straight and gay people alike.  You'll forgive me if I wasn't desperately keen to come out as bi.  But it was all I had in terms of terminology, so that's how I, reluctantly, ended up identifying.

It's only in the last decade that the term 'queer' has begun to gain traction in the UK.  Long used as a homophobic slur, it was reclaimed in the 80s and 90s by activists in America and began being used more widely in the 00s as a catch-all for the various identities that fall under the LGBT banner. Where I found bisexuality a limiting identity and an unpleasant word, queer was to provide an alternative.

Queer is political, radical, a term much used by activists.  There's an inclusiveness about it that is rather lovely, the way in which one word can encompass and embrace a range of identities from lesbian, gay & bisexual to trans, asexual, intersex and genderqueer folk.  And let's face it, even in its original meaning it's a fantastic word, bespeaking all manner of oddities and weirdnesses.  It was liberating, a few years ago, to find this new identity.  Instead of being pigeonholed in the 'B' of LGBT, I could glory in being part of the whole queer family.

And then I fell in love with a man, which rather put a spanner in the works of my glorious second coming out.

I've never, not even when walking hand in hand with a girlfriend, been visible as queer.  No matter how hard I've tried at times to butch up, I'm femme through and through and I just don't 'read' as queer.  In many and numerous ways this gives me enormous privilege, vastly reducing the risk of my falling prey to homophobic abuse or violence.  But  it can be problematic, too.  Many's the time I've had to 'prove' my queerness in order to gain entrance to a gay bar or club (being able to give a detailed account of the plot of The L Word usually works).  It can be hard - in the absence of what people regard as common visual markers of queerness - to convince family and friends that yes, I really am queer, not just pretending.  And now that I have a male partner, someone I hope to spend the rest of my life with, it can sometimes feel as if the queer bit of my identity is disappearing.  If only I know it's there, does it still count?

It can also feel to me that by entering into a life partnership with a cisgendered man, I'm fulfilling all of the worst stereotypes about bisexual women: that we're just experimenting and not really queer; that what we really want is cock; that in the end, it's just straight girls playing at being gay.  I feel sad that, by being with the person I love, I'm seen (and perhaps see myself) as less queer than I was before.

Part of me mourns for the loss of my queer identity.  Part of me feels like I'm no longer part of the gang, like I've lost part of what made me me.

But a much larger part glories in the miracle of being able to wake up every morning next to the most amazing person.  A person who completely accepts the copies of Diva magazine littering the house, who puts up with me perving over Ellen Page and Kat Moennig (and who, in fact, when he sees a woman he thinks I'll fancy - I have a very definite type - will point her out to me).  A person who isn't, and shouldn't be, defined by his gender or sex but by the fact that he's perfect for me and to me. I think I need to wrap my head around the fact that being with him doesn't make me less queer. It just makes me incredibly lucky to have found someone amazing.  For anything I've lost, I've gained far, far more.