Learning what the hell this "queer" word means

Talking about my own misconceptions about the queer community, what it really means to be queer, and why I am proud to use the word queer to describe myself

Three years ago when I entered college I was incredibly ignorant. Mostly I was ignorant by not recognizing my own ignorance. I come from a liberal suburban city, have a well-educated family, and strive to be well informed myself. However comparing what I now know versus what I knew then, there is no doubt about it, I had no goddamned clue. Of course, I still probably don’t, but one thing I do know now is what it means it be queer.

            At my high school there were certainly gay people, and generally I would say that they were respected and accepted. However, I have come to realize that there was little space for people with other identities at my school. Few people fell outside the gender binary, identified as trans*, or identified as anything beyond the most straightforward definition of the L, G or B. At least that was my impression. Still I thought I was an informed person, I thought I was accepting. Even though I did not have very much person exposure to it, I had learned the basics of what it meant to be transgendered, was in support of gay rights and was happy to say that I was an ally.

            I remember filling out this online form  and being confused by the gender box. I recognized that T meant transgender, and that it was cool that they gave that option, however I did not understand it. I remember questioning why it would even be there, thinking that someone who is trans would naturally just choose F or M based what their preferred gender is. Now of course I realize that some trans* people simply do identify as their preferred gender, but that they might  identify as a trans, queer, androgynous, non-binary or countless different distinct self defined gender identities. Now I realize that those three choices still aren’t enough.

I had many other misconceptions about the queer community as well. One thing I did not understand were bisexuals. I was under the impression that if someone was bi it meant they were gay and just hadn’t admitted it yet. Also, I thought that if someone were gay that they would be absolutely certain of it, and have known their entire life. I thought that to like the same sex meant that someone would automatically be attracted to the stereotypically beautiful actor/actress type, and didn’t consider that attraction could be to a variety of different gender presentations. One of the biggest misconceptions I had though was that queer was a bad word. Even writing down each of these misconceptions makes me feel incredibly silly. Each one of these misconceptions I had disproven in some capacity simply through my own experience.

My first experience with the word queer was talking with a girl freshman year who self identified as queer. It was a word I seldom heard, and thought of as a somewhat derogatory term, so I was a little confused when she used that word to describe herself. She was dating a girl and so I automatically assigned the label lesbian to her, and questioned the fact that she had not done so herself. As it turns out her girlfriend (now boyfriend) is trans*, it absolutely makes sense to me why she would chose to identify as queer rather than chose a most restrictive term such as lesbian, as well as the fact that people should be able to identify themselves however they should chose for whatever reasons.

I too have found myself in a place where none of the labels that society seems to deem acceptable, or at least understandable seem to fit the way that I see myself. I would say that I am confident in my identity as a cis-female, but still find myself questioning gender roles and societal gender norms. I have a girlfriend, who I absolutely see as a girl, but who society still sees as male. Neither heterosexual nor homosexual seem to quite capture our relationship. I have a history of identifying as straight, and being attracted to men, however I am now finding myself attracted to certain women as well. The term bisexual seems to imply that there are two genders, and that one is attracted to both, however there are people who fall outside of the gender-binary, some of whom I am also attracted to.

The more I come into the queer community the more I see that gender and sexuality are much more complex than male and female and gay or straight. I have seen people deal with this issue in various ways, refusing to use labels, using whatever label suits the situation, or listing off a long string of terms to try and define each facet of their identity. Personally I have come to settle on the term queer.

I love the word queer. I love that it has been reclaimed from the hands of bigotry to become a beautiful term of self-identity. I love that it can mean countless different things, and could even be used by the same person in different ways should they chose. I love that it is a positive umbrella term for everyone in the LGBTQ community, which anyone can put himself or herself under if they chose to identify that way. It is such a wonderfully ambiguous word, and I just love it. Each day I can wake up with a new idea of what my identity is, and queer still has me covered. If people question my identity or my relationship I can simply call it queer, and then chose if I want to fill them in more or not.