Was having this conversation with some new friends earlier and was curious. When did you guys figure out your sexuality/identity or whatever? Was there a person that helped you or a particular moment or event?

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[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And I know you already know this on an intellectual level, but it never hurts to have a reminder: one’s queerness is not dependent on who they’re currently in a relationship/having sex with!

What I'm looking for isn't so much an internal sense of my own queerness, but more of the "queer as in fuck you" queerness, where my visible existence challenges the norms around me.

To misquote Tales From the City, "If two queers walk down a street and no one notices, are they even queer?"

That's what I need my queerness to be. Not an internal feeling, but an active and explicit middle finger to the heteronormative bullshit that society puts on us that makes so many of us repress and hide from ourselves. And when I was just seen as another unqueer face in a crowd with an unqueer partner, I didn't feel like I was challenging heteronormative bullshit. I felt like I was involuntarily assimilating in to it, and losing myself all over.

When I'm with my girlfriend, I get all of that. I love her, and I love that our happiness is a middle finger to the people who have told us we shouldn't be who we are. Our little polycule is very much "queer as in fuck you". But, I'm navigating my relationship with her around split attraction, and in some ways, trying to capture all of that with the single word "queer" feels like it loses something :)

[–] Evkob@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is all a very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing! For what it's worth, I think living your true self is in itself "queer as in fuck you".

Also related song suggestion for anyone reading who's into queer punk: Queer as in Fuck You - Dog Park Dissidents

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago

Living your true self is the most powerful thing you can do. But for me, my true self apparently needs to be visibly queer. I felt like I was losing myself when that wasn't the case.

In my case, the "fuck you" part is in being able to give a shit eating grin to people who are uncomfortable with my existence, as opposed to those people just assuming I'm one of them. I want them to know that I am not :)