Skip to main content

My Childhood, Coming out, and the Diagnosing Queerness. (Oh My!)

       

    As a kid I grew up hearing my parents say things like "I support gay people but I would never want a gay child" and I was always shaken by that statement but never knew why. But when I started interacting with queer spaces in middle school all I would ever hear about is how coming out is this freeing experience that lets you live your "true self" so when I first found an identity I could relate to I jumped out as soon as I could,  I thought if I didn't I wasn't living my "truth" so when I did it was clunky and weird and I had to come out again later because no one really understood what I meant when I said "aromantic" and I didn't have to tools to explain it properly. But my family surprised me by being accepting. But my mom also keeps asking when I plan on telling the rest of the family, and for a while, I wanted to. I felt this guilt at "lying" to them.

    It took me a while to realize how messed up the culture of coming out kinda is.

    For starters what the actual fuck does "living your truth" even mean? Does this mean that the only way to be yourself is to tell everyone from aquatints to family every detail about your life? Or just that you shouldn't lie about who you are? Because both are kinda bullshit to queer people. Coming out can be so dangerous but also so personal so telling people they all have to come out is like saying you don't care if they are safe and can maintain their relationships. Also, why do you have to tell your coworkers or random friends and family you're queer? What does telling them do in the long run? Does telling Dave from your dads' side of the family you like girls really matter when you see him once a year?

   If someone doesn't want to tell people but they do it anyway because of the pressure they feel to "live their truth" that's something I would consider traumatic. This isn't to say coming out is bad or that no one should ever tell people they are queer, but the notion that you have to reveal this intimate part of yourself to everyone you know and interact with is a lie. 

    I am also struck by the urge in medical professionals to turn queerness into a mental disorder. Until 1994 (I think) but Asexuality was on it until 2013 when the DSM 5 came out (interestingly it still has a section for a lack of sexual desire but has its own side note about asexuality removing the need for a diagnosis). I think this has to do with the need for people to be in control of everything they don't understand. Like our conversation from class on Thursday about why white people are obsessed with black trauma and how there's always the white savior character in those movies. But instead of being the one nice white person, they want to be the person who gets what it is like.
    Straight people want to pretend they know how to deal with queer people or even what the experience of being queer is like. They think they can look at a queer person, decide what they are, and most importantly how to change them. Because queerness isn't something they can ever understand in any meaningful way. Giving queerness a definition and a list of treatments makes it seem more manageable like this is something everyone can possibly deal with if given the right circumstances, but it's also is a form of shame. Shame for not being what you're "supposed to be" and shame for being unwilling to change. 

    Maybe that's another reason coming out is pushed so hard, the more queer people they know the more they can pretend to understand.
    

    



    

Comments

  1. Trent SmockApril 4, 2021 at 7:39 PM

    I definitely can see the reasoning behind saying that cishet people often want to pretend to understand queerness as a way to be "included" and honestly I agree. One thing that I see a lot is people saying they're bisexual when they really aren't, it's a way for them to fake a sense of understanding in a way. I personally think that the concept of coming out is a bit strange though because queer people have no obligation to constantly tell people they're identity. I don't tell someone about my own identity unless I'm specifically asked and if I know the person or like the person. Coming out is an action that isn't required, people don't have a right to know about ones identity. Making queer people constantly say what their identity is can be a dangerous habit considering that there are plenty of people out there who hold hate for them. It's almost asking them to put themselves in an unnecessary dangerous situation.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Tragedy of Lesbian Romance

      Lookup a list ranking lesbian films and you'll likely notice a weird trend. Some lists seem intent on specifying whether or not the two leads die, whether they actually get a happy ending. I would even argue that on those list of "100 best lesbian films" a solid 1/3 is all about sex and sexualizing lesbian women. None of these lists ever really mention whether they end up together or break up. The trend these days tends to be a bit more optimistic but it took a lot of time to actually get to that point. The only movie I can think of off the top of my head that doesn't follow is "But, I'm a Cheerleader"  and even then that story isn't a romance but a coming of age film. Where's the cheesy lesbian Love, Simon ? or the deep and thought-provoking lesbian  Moonlight ? Where's the wild and out-of-control lesbian I love you, Philip Morris? Why do lesbians' love stories have to end in a break-up, in death, in close-ups of sweaty breasts tha...
3 comments
Read more

Alike, Isolation, and Queer Choice

 One of the things I felt the hardest when watching Pariah was the feeling of isolation Alike had throughout the film. I think that's one of the biggest hallmarks of being young and queer, this feeling that no one can possibly know what it is you're going through. The desperation to have your family understand you.  I adored how Dee Rees uses the frame-within-a-frame technique throughout the film to show this feeling. Nothing feels more isolating than being in public, surrounded by people, and knowing none of them can really see you. Rees uses this most often when Alike is around her family because those are the people who are supposed to understand her and she knows they don't. Her father is the closest to really know her and there are several scenes where she realizes he doesn't. Even Laura and Bina can't seem to fully understand what she is dealing with at home and within herself. I think that's there's always a sense of helplessness at being queer'd....
4 comments
Read more

Pelo Malo and Hollywood's queer pain problem

     I really loved Pelo Malo  mostly because of how different the queer narrative is compared to the American (and subsequently white) queer narratives present in media.     In most white American queer films the pain comes either from a character's struggle to come out (like Love, Simon ) or how for whatever reason the two leads can't be together ( Brokeback Mountian ). The possibility of actual injury or death should the characters' queerness be exposed isn't really the focus (or it isn't present at all), the worst that can happen is a bully makes fun of them or their families get mad. Abandonment is also there as a possibility but it isn't often explored. Queer pain often feels more like shallow window dressing, not something that's really given meaningful observation or study. These films feel like queer stories written for straight audiences by straight writers (which is weird to me because Love, Simon  is the only film, as far as I know, on this...
4 comments
Read more