You don’t need to know who I am. All you need to know is that I am queer — somebody who falls on the LGBT spectrum — and I very easily could be the person sitting next to you on the bus, or the person who took your order at the restaurant, or your lecturer, or even your best friend. Who I am personally doesn’t matter. For the sake of this article, all that matters is this one fact: I am not heterosexual.
I write this as The Queer Eye, as a person who has had to face discrimination from family and peers, from people however indirectly; a person who has had to sit through countless lectures listening to homophobic comments and slurs; a person who went to an all-girl’s Catholic school and emerged from it questioning everything I was ever taught to be "right’. I write this in response to every person who has ever, somehow, told me that I am not worthy of acceptance or love. Though my name and face may not be known to you, this is my answer to you — loud and proud and written boldly.
The first thing, instinctively, that any person asks when meeting somebody queer is "How long have you known?’ Looking back, I should have probably realized sooner, but thanks to the environment I grew up in, I didn’t realize until well into my Sixth Form days. I dated guys for a long time, and for a while I was convinced that it was all a phase. Surprise surprise, though, it definitely wasn’t.
Needless to say, the minute I realized what these thoughts and feelings were, I panicked.
Nobody wants to be gay. Nobody ever asks for it. If anyone asks to be looked down upon, hated, prejudiced against, then they sure have some serious problems. I didn’t want any of this. I spent the better part of two years, up until I was nineteen, telling myself that I never wanted any of this, that I had to find a way to get out of it. I made mistakes, I hated myself for it. Self acceptance is a tough journey, and some of us quite literally don’t make it out alive (sadly). I was afraid of what my friends would think, my parents, the rest of my family, my future employers. How was I supposed to look my mother in the eye and tell her that I would never have the traditional white wedding she always dreamed for me? How was I supposed to tell the guys I dated that they were just a milestone in my self-discovery?
Being gay doesn’t just mean liking people of the same gender. It stems deeper than that. Being gay means that I have to forcibly smile and say "No, not yet’ whenever certain people ask me if I have a boyfriend. It means that every time somebody asks me if I like anyone, I have to hold back the urge to talk about this really cute girl I’ve been talking to for a few months now. It means that every time I utter the words "I like girls’ or some variation of that to somebody else, I have to steel myself for dirty looks. It means hiding a very important part of myself from my parents, because they’ve made it very clear that if I was ever a lesbian, I would be kicked out of the house. It means being afraid to say the word out loud ("lesbian’…ugh) because it feels like some sort of curse, like I’m condemning myself.
I know what you’re all thinking — "Damn, this person isn’t so self accepting of herself, is she?’ Truth be told, I am. But I’m also not. I’m weird that way. I love myself, I’ve grown to accept myself for who I am and what I can be, but there are moments were I look around me and think "Everything would be so much easier if I just liked males!’
My first thought when I kissed a girl, when I was fifteen years old, was quite honestly "Oh, no.’ I panicked, I beat myself up for it for days. I told myself it had to stop there — I could never do that again. Here we are now, five years later, and I’ve kissed more girls than I care to count. The "Oh, no’ feeling didn’t exactly go away, more like it changed into "Oh…well’ with time. I came to realize that it was a part of me, I came to accept it, and I came to understand that hey…girls are really pretty and awesome and just because I’m attracted to them doesn’t make me weird. It just makes me not blind.
(For real, though, have you seen girls? They are hot!)
Being queer is a myriad of processes: from realization, to self-acceptance, to coming out. It’s a barrage of emotions along the way and a confusion of things. It’s making friends who understand exactly what you’re going through and learning to not care when people judge you. It’s biting your tongue whenever you want to say something, knowing that it could jeopardize your safety. It’s finding friends — gay, straight, and anybody in between — who support you no matter what. It’s telling yourself that you can be stronger than people make you feel, and finding the strength to push through every single day knowing that you’ll be OK.
It’s a lot of things, and I can’t possibly make you understand how it feels unless you are queer.
For now though, I’ll leave you to think about what you’ve just read, and to ponder over how many people you may have met in your life who are gay, bisexual, transgendered, lesbian, intersex…anybody queer. We’re all fighting our own battles; ours isn’t any less than yours.
We Are, the University LGBT+ and Straight-Allies Organization on campus, is available for contact through their Facebook page and through their office at Student House. Contact them here for more details: https://www.facebook.com/WeAreUoM