Genderqueer

I have some explaining to do. I am a straight man, nearly fifty. I like women, not just sexually, generally. I don't pretend to understand them. I think you have to be one to really understand women, and I have never felt that I was a woman inside or out, and while I would try it on a lark if I could have my consciousness transferred into a female body without losing my own like in some science fiction fantasy, I would be experimenting with inhabiting otherness. I'm comfortable with my male body and I would as soon chop off a limb as modify my body to match a female archetype.

Still, I'm queer, in every sense I can think of that word, I am queer.

My whole life I've been an ally to homosexuals and transsexuals and pansexuals and bisexuals. I believe love is love, but I thought I was just an ally, adopting causes not my own because of my liberal views, because civil rights are everyone's rights and where civil rights are denied, we are all denied. The story I told myself is that it wasn't me, I was just one of the good straight white men. There have to be some. Don't there?

I've never liked men. I have had many male friends. There are men I've loved with all possible feeling, a mentor, a father, a brother, a grandfather, two sons still growing. There are those I would travel the world to protect, those mentioned, a couple of coworkers, a couple of childhood friends who have stayed in touch. I don't like male doctors, though. I don't want a man to touch me. In business, I avoid boys. I don't identify with the man if I watch a sexually explicit film, but with the woman. It seems strange, and it is. It's queer.

When I was a boy, I was driven out of school by bullies with calls of “faggot” ringing in my ears. I've always thought this was why I don't much like men. I was sensitive, am sensitive. I was creative. I was bookish. I was alienated and alien. I tested out of school at 16 years old, but left with an inflated 1.0 GPA. My difference allowed me to empathize with gays and lesbians and minorities, and I envied them. They, at least, had an oppressed group to be part of. I have always been alone and on my own. Ally has never been one of. Perhaps it is now, for some of you, but I am part of Generation X.

I remember the murder of Harvey Milk. I remember the first cases of the gay cancer, the term people originally used for AIDS, sweeping into California. I remember Jerry Falwell telling people it was god's judgment on an immoral nation, and I remember the calls for President Ronald Reagan to speak and respond to the crisis, and his deafening silence. Allies have always been welcomed, but they were an afterthought in those days, and understandably. There were no protections. Hate was everywhere. Gay clubs were regularly attacked, and gays knew they'd find no help from the police or the public. Minorities of all kinds have always intuitively understood that the police serve the powerful, and if they didn't understand it initially, it did not take much experience to learn it. Only Hollywood and San Francisco cared at all. Probably New York, but I wasn't there. And France. France cared. Unaccountably, the occasional story of a middle America small town that loved its gay native son or daughter, published only because of Hollywood's influence.

With my background of course I've had sex with men, but I never felt attracted to them unless they were trans-something. Just something, and then, regardless of anatomy, they were whatever gender they wanted to be in my eyes. I've never had a relationship like that, though, just moments, moments where two aliens in the world recognized something, but fear and sensitivity never allowed any clarity.

I've been beaten and sexually assaulted and harassed in my life. I've sold myself to others for money and survival. I have trauma, but I am woke, and when I am not, I wake when corrected. My heroes are Quentin Crisp, and Harvey Milk, and Harriet Taubman, and thousands and thousands of courageous, anonymous people that have stood in the way of the powerful in the name of freedom and dignity. I am in love with the anonymous student that stood before the tank in Tiananmen Square. I love David Bowie and Boy George and Elton John and Liberace and Sinead O'Connor and Melissa Etheridge and Ellen, just for being who they are, even when the music wasn't to my taste, (though it often was). There are heroes everywhere. Perhaps you are one.

So that's me, and at 49 years old I thought I understood myself pretty well. I am a labor leader in my worker's union, walked picket lines, gathered signatures. I've stood clinic defense at Planned Parenthood. I have my congresspersons on speed dial. I am a divorced father of two boys. I am an atheist. I am a liberal. I am a humanist. I am not like others, and I never have been, and I have never had any categories that described me in any way that was satisfying. I play chess. I am I, and I am alone. I am unlucky at love, but willing, truly willing, to love. I am I.

A few weeks ago I stumbled on a website that sold feminine underwear for men, and several hundred dollars later I've french tipped my nails and I am wearing a lacey camisole under my partly open shirt as I sit in a local coffee shop writing this incredibly long confession. I don't think I want to dress as a woman, but I do want to wear feminine clothing. I want to incorporate this feminine part of me into my personal expression. Shopping for clothes has been the most unbearably fearful thing I have ever done. I can't meet the salesperson's eyes. If they upsell, I say yes, whether I want the thing or not, just to make them happy. I'm as frightened as if I was walking around naked. The nails alone make me feel naked. I am abashed and I am exhilarated. I am amazed that those who have noticed me have been supportive, but that support doesn't allay my fear. I don't know what I am so afraid of. I should say the amazing closing line of the movie, The Naked Civil Servant, “Do your worst, boys, for it will certainly not be my worst.” Love to John Hurt, who played Quentin Crisp so inspiringly and passed away this week. I wish I could live up to that example.

I didn't know there was so much I didn't know.

 

Thank you for that response! I was so afraid I wouldn't be understood or that something I said would be seen as offense. I can't believe how insecure this experience is making me.

 

Beautiful

 

So I am sorry if any of my words hurt your feelings. I mean that sincerely, because any time someone is hurt by me it's important that I acknowledge that feeling and express remorse. That said and meant, please allow me to respond on the intellectual issue.

I have been called gay with hate and venom more often than any other term. That was the word I used with most trepidation. Homosexual is a neutral term, for open discussion of political or identity groups. Homo, by contrast, is a slur. Queer is a harsh slur that was reclaimed in the eighties, and to me is a beautiful word, with a lot of depth, history, and poetry. It's the word that is most appealing to me to describe myself. I don't use any term to describe anyone else that they don't tell me to use. By default I would describe someone who transitioned from one gender to another, surgically, not as a transsexual, but as the gender they moved into. My view is if you think you are a woman, so you are, and likewise if you think you are a man, so you are.

I knew when I was writing this, I might not understand the newest labeling norms. I rely upon you to understand that what I have said was said without hate and without phobia, and that it was about me, and my history, and the conditions that shaped me. When talking about you, I will gladly use any term you choose.

Fair?

---------- Post added 8th Feb 2017 at 09:12 PM ----------

By the way, it stung to be called a straight man, after I spent so much effort to describe my queerness. It felt like you were rejecting my gender claim, and only countenancing my sexuality. The fact that I am not gay is what has kept me from feeling a part of the LGBT community. It seems as though you might be supporting my exclusion, Darkcomessoon. I hope that isn't true.

 

Point of interest, to me the ugliest term, by far, in the original post was "the gay cancer". That term was used to make the deaths of so many wonderful people acceptable to the public, and allowed HIV to flourish and spread without an adequate response.

 

Thank you, Darkcomesoon. That was a sweet and understanding exchange and I so appreciate and respect you for it.