Queer (2 page)
Authors: Kathy Belge
A
ROUND
600 BC
SWEET SAPPHO AND THE ISLE OF LESBOS
Back in ancient Greece, on the island of Lesbos, women often got together and read poetry to one another about their mutual love and devotion. A woman named Sappho was one of these poets, and although most of her poetry has been lost, she became famous because of how often her work is referenced in others' poetry. We don't know for sure if Sappho was a lesbian, but many scholars believe she was and consider her to be the pioneer of lesbian literature. The word
lesbian
itself was born from the knowledge that strong communities of women lived on Lesbos.
Uh, That Explains It (How I Knew I Was a Lesbian)
As a kid, I kept falling in love with my best friends. Sure, I had crushes on guys, but when the opportunities came to be with them or a girlfriend, I always chose the girl. When I go back and read my old journal from high school, I have to laugh at what I wrote. There are entries that say things like, "I'm not queer or anything, but I don't want Lisa to get a boyfriend because we wouldn't be able to spend as much time together" or "We're not queer or anything, but I'd just rather be with Jenny than with Joe" or "I'm not turning to girls, I just really want to be close to Kim." Seriously.
It's pretty obvious to me now that I was trying to justify what I was feeling because I was confused. At the time, I didn't really understand what it meant to be a lesbian, and the thought scared me. Lesbians were something we made fun of, and I didn't really know anyone who was openly gay.
When I got to college and started meeting other lesbians, I was finally able to admit to myself that I was queer. It was no longer some big scary thing because I was meeting some really amazing women who were lesbians. I got to see what lesbian relationships looked like and started going out dancing to lesbian bars and seeing lesbian movies. I became more and more comfortable with other lesbians and with myself. So by the time my first girlfriend, Lori, leaned in to kiss me, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
Gay
men are men who are emotionally and sexually attracted to other men. (The word gay is also used sometimes to mean homosexual in general.) Back in the day, the word gay meant "happy" or "carefree" and also the more negative "licentious," which means "lacking moral and sexual restraints." Gay began being used to describe homosexual people in the middle of the last century, though it's not totally clear why. (Maybe people thought gay people were happy to supposedly have no moral restraints!) Today, gay is usually used to describe homosexual men.
It can seem like there are as many kinds of gay men as there are kinds of music. Gay men who are into alternative rock and punk, underground art, and hipster fashion call themselves
alternaqueers.
(Lesbians and trans people can be alternaqueers, too.) Many large, hairy gay men refer to themselves as
bears.
Some younger men who pride themselves on being thin and clean shaven call themselves
twinks.
Gay men with feminine qualities might consider themselves
queens,
and when those qualities are really exaggerated, they might be called
ñaming.
Gay men who work out a lot are often referred to as
muscle queens or gym queens
and, if they fly around the country to dance all night to circuit techno music,
circuit queens.
Wealthy gays who often dress in preppy styles are sometimes known as
A-gays,
and gay men into leather are
leathermen.
Though you'll find evidence of a lot of these subcultures online and in most major cities, you don't have to belong to any of them, and you could also create your own. Remember, these identities are only to help gay men say a little about who they are to the world. Never take on an identity if you don't want to, or let others label you against your will.
People who can be attracted to either sex are
bisexual.
Sometimes people think bisexuals are equally attracted to both sexes, but this is not necessarily the case. If you're open to dating both men and women, even if you prefer one sex over the other, then you can identify as bisexual (or
bi
). Sometimes people identify as bisexual during a transitional stage before coming out as lesbian or gay. For others, it truly is an identity that sticks with them their whole lives. For some people, coming out as bi is easier because it offers hope to their homophobic parents and friends that they'll end up with an opposite-sex partner some day. For others, coming out as bi is harder because people might want them to "choose" one sex or the other. If you think you may be bisexual, know that bisexuality has been around forever. Some cultures, like ancient Greece, celebrated bisexuality as a great way of life.
A little different than bisexuals,
pansexuals
people are attracted to not only boys and girls, but people who identify as transgender.
1993
THE DYKES DESCEND ON DC
Every year, usually the night before the Gay Pride parades, lesbians take to their local streets in a procession of flowers, leather, motorcycles, drummers, and belly dancers to celebrate the awesomeness of being out in the world. These demonstrations are called dyke marches, and they got started in April 1993, when the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force sponsored a march on Washington for gay and lesbian rights. To make sure that a lesbian presence would be felt, political activists known as The Lesbian Avengers planned to do a women-only march the night before the main event. Word spread like wildfire, and more than 20,000 lesbians showed up to march together on April 24, 1993. That one event started an annual tradition that soon expanded to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, San Francisco; there was no stopping the liberated dykes of the world! Now dyke marches are a tradition in most cities. They have helped us to reclaim the word
dyke,
which was once used to insult us and now means an out-and-proud lesbian.
People who feel there is a difference between their birth gender and the gender they truly are inside consider themselves transgender or simply trans. They often choose to live life as the gender they feel they are, or, in some cases, they don't identify as any gender at all. Transgender people sometimes opt for medical treatment âlike hormones and surgery âto actually change their sex so that their bodies appear on the outside more like what they feel on the inside. People who undergo these medical procedures sometimes think of themselves as transsexuals, though often they prefer to be thought of and referred to simply as the gender they are living as (male or female) since transsexual is sometimes seen as an impersonal medical term. There are also abbreviations for people who change their sex, like FTM (female to male) or MTF (male to female), which are sometimes used.
People who feel they don't fit into either gender may use the terms gender queer or gender fluid to describe themselves. They may feel that they are neither male nor female, both male and female, or somewhere in between. They may also feel that even saying there are only two genders is too restrictive, and may identify with one of the various gender queer terms out there like transboi, bi-gendered, or third gendered.
It's important to understand that while the identities of lesbian, gay, and bisexual refer to one's sexual orientation, being transgender does not. It is specifically about gender. People who are transgender can be straight, gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
Queer
can describe people who are any of the above or people who don't want to use any of the these labels but know they fall somewhere along the LGBT spectrum or that they don't fit into the heterosexual norms.
If you find yourself wondering if any of the terms in this chapter describe you, you might be queer. Of course, you might also just be questioningâand that's OK, too. These days, we often see the acronym LGBT with a "O" at the end (LGBTO). That "O" stands for
questioning,
which means people who are still figuring it out. (And aren't we all just trying to figure something out?) The "O" can also stand for
queer.
Sometimes people even write the LGBT acronym as LGBTOO or LGBTOOI, where the I stands for
intersex
(see
[>]
). With all those letters to keep track of, sometimes it's easier to just say queer!
Dressing in drag (i.e., wearing the clothing of another gender for fun, performance, or to make a statement) has long been a celebrated part of queer culture. People do it to exaggerate traditional gender roles, so they often wind up wearing things like ultra high heels or huge fake mustaches, especially in live performances. When a male performer wears women's clothing, he's called a "drag queen"; a woman performer dressing in men's clothing is called a "drag king". Often these performers lip-sync to music onstage or perform comedy routines, and the queer community (known for challenging traditional gender roles) is a big part of the drag performer fan base.
You may have simply always felt different from other kids. Maybe the words other people use to describe themselves just don't seem to fit you, or you don't feel comfortable dressing or acting the way that society says you should. If you're a boy, maybe you're into "girl stuff." If you're a girl, maybe you're into "boy stuff." Maybe you don't feel like you're a girl
or
a boy but that you're something unique that doesn't really have a name. Maybe you're a boy into boy stuff or a girl into girl stuff, but you feel attracted to other boys or other girls.
Even if you relate to any of the above, that doesn't necessarily mean you are LGBT. Plenty of straight people are into things that most of society doesn't consider "normal" like heavy metal, contemporary art, or raspberry granola, and you certainly wouldn't base your sexuality on what you like to eat for breakfast. Besides, you're in a stage of your life right now when love can feel a bit confusing, and you may not know if you want to kiss that cute soccer player or just want to
be
her. You'll probably get crushes on all kinds of people, from teachers and best friends to celebrities and star athletes. You may even go through a period of trying out different things to find out what's right for you. Some days you might feel one way, and other days, another. Just because your friends aren't talking about conflicting feelings around sexuality doesn't mean they aren't feeling them, too.
That being said, if your feelings persist, then you may decide to start identifying as queer or as any of the related identities. If so, embrace it! Being part of the LGBT community is great, but it does mean that, yes, you are a little bit different than most of the people you know. Being different, of course, is something to celebrate. But it also means that sometimes you might feel like you are from another planet. If so, think of us as your tour guides to Planet Queer!
In the last century, the words
queer, dyke,
and
fag
have been used to mock, shame, and intimidate LGBT people, which is really awful. In the dictionary, the word queer translates to "odd" or "weird," and people called us that because they thought it was weird to be LGBT. Likewise, dyke and fag can be used as insults. But in recent years, many LGBT people started taking these words back, turning them from negative to positive terms. Reclaiming these words started as a political act, a way of identifying ourselves as a group of people who were proud of who we were, and we continue to use these words in a loving and accepting way.
As you may have noticed, some people still try to use these words as a weapon, like if someone yells "dyke!" at you out of a car window or scrawls "queer" on your locker. But these words are fast gaining acceptance in mainstream society and being seen as positive, like in dyke marches or on the TV show
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
You'll usually know if someone is using a queer word in a positive or negative way by the context.
What can be a bit tricky is that the outside world doesn't always get that we in the LGBT community use words like dyke and fag amongst ourselves as terms of endearment. As a matter of fact, some schools, in their quest to be more welcoming to LGBT students, ban the use of the word queer because they only see it as an insult! (Hopefully they won't ban this book.) The schools mean well, and they're just trying to halt antiqueer activity, but we hope it's only a matter of time before everyone views all queer words in a positive light. ("Hey, do you know Marke?" "Yeah, he's that cool queer guy, right?")
Lots of questioning teens think they need to have sex to know if they are queer, and often older people will doubt a teen's assertion of being queer with a response like, "How could you know? You haven't had sex yet!" But the truth is that you don't have to have sex to know if you're LGBT. Most of the time, it's something you'll just have a sense about. For instance, if you're a guy and you consistently have crushes on other guys, then you might be gay. You don't have to act on those attractions sexually to know how you feel. Straight kids have crushes all the time and they don't need to act on them to know they are straight. It's no different for queer kids.