Queer: A Section of Me

“Intersectionality is simply about how certain aspects of who you are will increase your access to the good things or your exposure to the bad things in life.”
-Kimberlé Crenshaw
 
 
I got married. Most of my family will learn that information when they read that sentence. And most of them will not correlate that information with the fact that this essay is about my life as a Queer woman. And it’s not because they can’t make that mental connection, but because they refuse to. My wife to them will still just be my friend who I happen to live with, and go on trips with, and celebrate holidays with, and…💦
 
My Queerstory is a common one for those in my age group but could be considered woeful compared to the living-out loud experiences of many Queer youth today. The denial and self-loathing that provided the foundation for the lies I told myself, and others, was an expectation of our existence. Though Gay had been the claimed word for a majority in our community, and for over fifty years by the time I was realizing my truth, our society overwhelmingly saw us as people who did not deserve our pursuits of happiness. That shunning and banishment of our community to beyond the fringes of our society continually stoked the blaze of fear inside me that still simmers in deep-rooted embers.
 
As it had been those many years ago, when I was trying tactics like praying the gay away and dissociating from those kinds of people, my queerness is as defining and conscious as my Blackness and my womanhood. To paraphrase Baynard Rustin, the day I was born a Black girl, I was also born Queer. My queerness refuses to be tamped down, no matter how quickly my heart beats as I scan for danger when holding my wife’s hand in public. My queerness blossoms in safe tucked away places where we celebrate drag performances and openly kiss our partners. My queerness reminds me of how love feels when I see my wife’s smile.
 
Though its progression has been some steps forward and many steps backward, I love the now of queerness in our society. Sure, representation should be elevated, and our protection of trans people, especially those of color, needs to be more of a priority in the Queer community; at least it’s finally known that our community is not just scantily-clad white men dancing to techno music. At this current moment of queerness in our society, people are learning facts like the 1963 March on Washington was the brainchild of an uncompromising, Queer Black man. And prior to his architecture and execution of one of the most pivotal moments in American history, a young, nonbinary Black law student wrote the arguments that became the basis of cases that helped to dismantle lawful discrimination against women and people of color. In this now of queerness, closet doors are finally being burned down to allow the rightful light into those spaces that many, especially our American government, have intended to shut away forever.
 
Though I have another essay that talks about the American section of me, just as this one speaks of my Queer section, it would be an awful miss to not discuss the villainous role our American government has played in the lives of its Queer citizens. Since the inception of this country, many elected officials have not only made it their platform, but their personal plight, to bellow the lies of indoctrination and recruitment as a basis for “protective laws” to be decreed. Those two lies have been used to not only constitutionally oppress all marginalized communities in our country, but the irrational fear they stoke escorts the comfort of tolerating unnatural actions like cleansing through genocide. Within my lifetime unspeakable atrocities have been acceptable like the allowance of the crack epidemic to decimate impoverished, BIPOC communities and the intentional neglect of an entire generation of Gay men as they slowly and painfully perished.
 
Since I like this view from my self-constructed soapbox, there is an additional lie I’d like to address in this essay, and that is the lie of choice. As previously suggested, the realization of my truth scared the shit out of me. I certainly didn’t want to experience the potential dangers that came with being Queer. I didn’t want to potentially lose family and friends. And I don’t think any of us would intentionally choose to have a dating pool that is only 5% of our society.
 
This lie of choice was the unspoken theme in a recent conversation I had. In that conversation, the discussion was around being Queer and being religious. It was rather shocking to hear a Queer person say that the two need to remain separate; implying that being overtly Queer in church is disrespectful. As someone who vividly remembers sitting in church, prior to my coming out, terrified as the preacher spoke of the sinful, unnatural ways of those people, I still, to this day, do not know how I could have been present yet separated from myself. I understand what it means to conceal and suppress part of yourself, but even in those instances of concealment you cannot help but be in totality of yourself. Hence, our struggle of people not understanding that we cannot choose when and when not to be Queer.
 
The day I was born a Black girl, I was also born Queer. As scary as that realization has been for much of my adult life, it is now a sustaining nectar that is critical to my existence.