"Contradictory" Queer Labels š³ļøāšš³ļøāā§ļø
After having this conversation with a cis male friend of mine, I thought it would be cool to share w/ the internet in case anyoneās curious:
One time we were talking, and I casually and unironically referred to myself as āa straight personā, which threw him off because heās used to referring to me as one of his āgayā friends, and Iāve never corrected him for it. Basically, as a non-passable trans heterosexual woman, Iāve come to see the issue of labelling my sexuality as less of a right vs. wrong thing and more of a conversation about the utility of words. In other words, I think thereās valid reasons for calling me āstraightā AND thereās valid reasons for calling me āgayā:
Iām a woman who is only attracted to men (***Obviously, sexuality is never that simple bc gender is never that simple, but Iām attracted to people who are often perceived as men), which means Iām a straight woman. When people call me āgayā, it often comes with the implication that Iām not or canāt be a woman in the same way a cis woman is, which is transphobic.
However, before realizing I was trans, I spent several years trying to build self-esteem as a gay boy while surrounded by people who acted like being gay was something embarrassing or shameful that I needed to correct or at least hide from others. For me, making the switch from that loud and proud āIām here! Iām queer!ā attitude to āIām not gay! Iām not gay!ā feels like betrayal to my younger self and the confidence they fought for me to have.
At the same time, Iām not exactly the most passable at this stage of my transition, which means that any partnership I enter with a man is still going to be perceived as queer by cishet society regardless of our gender identities.
At the end of the day, the only real difference between gay menās sexuality and straight womenās sexuality is that one is āsupposed toā be attracted to men, while the other is ānot supposed toā be attracted to men.
As a trans woman, I feel both the pressure to be exclusively attracted to men as a part of assimilating into womanhood and the judgement from those who see me as a crossdressing gay man. I think the most cohesive way to label my sexuality is to say ātransheterosexualā, that is to say, ultimately heterosexual, but in a way thatās complicated by a trans identity. And like most people, I often find myself using āstraightā as shorthand for ācisheterosexualā, which is probably problematic and confusing, but most cis people seem to get that Iām usually not talking about myself when I say āstraight peopleā.
I wanted to share this story because I wish more queer people adopted this mindset with ALL of our various labels. Oftentimes, we get too caught up in trying to find the ārightā label or rejecting the āwrongā one, that we forget that language is a tool we use to express ourselves and sometimes our lived experiences are too complex to be captured by one word. Life is full of contradictions, yet somehow our labels arenāt allowed to be. So the next time you see a queer person whose combination of labels doesnāt make sense to you, say ātell me moreā. You might learn something new about the queer experience.š
