Competitive Queerness Provides Me the Ick | Autostraddle

Against the background of our earth’s shitty transphobic and homophobic politics, perhaps one of the most disheartening and irritating warning flags i have experienced within the queer area is competitive queerness. Its a factor to accept and respect the vast different queer experiences therefore the various ways folks have skilled marginalization and damage. But sometimes, often relating to online dating and cooperation, I experienced people who just be sure to move ranking, as “gayer than thou” however they can. Often it’s based on their unique speech; other days it’s because of just how long they are out or what other lovers they will have had or now have. In moments of kindness, I you will need to see the impulse. Mainly, it simply bums me .

I have constantly thought of relationships as being like cells: living bacteria, self-contained by merely because of the thinnest membrane layer through which fragments of bigger society can diffuse in peculiar, often counterintuitive means. Diffusion occurs, as we know, against a gradient. “It really is terrible available to you,” we tell myself, “therefore the within the little cellular can be so gay. Of course situations make an effort to slip in around the sides.” It may sound absurd — and is — but this is actually the proper way i could explain exactly how remnants of homophobia sneak in from the grain of queer partnerships.

I do believe of this “gayer than thou” experience as an inside-out version of the “oppression olympics.” As opposed to the “race to the base” that occurs when people make an effort to position themselves as the Most Oppressed, here we see folks inverting those exact same interpretations to produce a hierarchy approaching an impossible peak of queerness. They leverage that hierarchy against buddies and lovers to affirm some thing about by themselves. It’s happened to me many times now, from folks i have outdated casually including those I’ve outdated much more seriously. Even though I’m safe during my speech and experience, I’ve were left with associates who desire us to know they are in some way before me. I do not give consideration to me femme, but partners who want to feel much more masc than i will be have known as myself femme in any event. The actual fact that I’ve been out for a while, those who should highlight age or knowledge will-call me a “baby homosexual.” When, actually while on a gay go out, the individual explained which they would never have clocked me as queer. “Jackets like your own

had previously been

a signal,” they stated, “but

now

that’s exactly how

all

girls how old you are outfit.” Until that second, I’d thought fantastically, visibly, conveniently homosexual back at my lovable gay big date. My stompy shoes, my beanie, my leather-jacket — these were all products we cherished and believed possib my self in. This thought even worse than becoming erased; it felt like being actively and manipulatively misread.

My existing crush characterizes these unusual remarks as ”

I was gay before it had gotten very big and played Coachella.

” each time, this has been a jarring and disheartening means of creating our shared marginalization as queer men and women into a competition, decreasing the variegation of one’s knowledge to distorted and patronizing scorekeeping. I’m sure loads of other folks have had this knowledge across several identities, therefore sucks every time in almost every path. Individuals use this design of behavior in biphobic means, in butch- and femme-phobic techniques and also in methods reveal disdain either for monogamy (insufficiently radical) or polyamory (insufficiently dedicated). For my situation, it’s been weirdest when it comes from some one whose demonstration is fairly just like my own personal — like, personally as a Carhartt Dyke, exactly how is actually some body trying to move rank as soon as we are unable to also inform whose overalls are whoever? Although the reality is this particular pattern isn’t about any genuine huge difference or difference. The point is that the goalposts always go, never ever during my favor. If the demonstration is comparable, it’s about that’s had even more lovers. When we’ve had comparable quantities of associates, after that just what truly matters is actually just how long they have been out. Any angles that would rely in my support never ever rely after all.

There were reasons why we appreciated these individuals, even when they didn’t treat me kindly or pleasantly, and I nonetheless feel safety ones as I imagine the methods they have to have now been punished of these elements of themselves. Whenever they flex their own experience, I want to imagine that it really is a defense regarding younger, prone queer home. They can be wanting to change a website of injury into a supply of power. Whenever they pull rank over myself regarding their butchness, their particular femmeness or whatever, they truly are trembling a fist at a world that told all of them they need ton’t be proud of who they really are.

Except, within this context, it is like they may be moving that fist at myself alternatively. The regrettable real life with this maladaptive impulse is that they change their particular punishment around; they resolve their particular dilemma of too-muchness by turning it into

my personal

problem of not-enoughness. As my friend Gus says, this is simply not about shitty queers or even dating shitty individuals. “Occasionally we talk like we’re the ‘only’ even if we’re literally talking with ‘another,'” Gus informs me. This residual damage, this processor chip on neck, this one thing to prove — they’re proving it for the wrong individual. They truly are gay-tekeeping.

The counterintuitive and counterproductive methods these spirits of homophobic damage infiltrate queer love are hard and painful. I could not be vulnerable with my presentation or with how I date, but it stings to find out that a partner or crush perceives me personally as somehow deficient. It stings extra, We’ll acquire, coming especially from some body i enjoy and care about, whoever affirmation will have designed a great deal to me. I have spent plenty time imagining the harms that precipitated this on their behalf, but I’ve spent precious little time obtaining these factor the patterns this friendly fire might unintentionally perpetuate for my situation. While I feel mislabeled in manners that do not reflect my presentation or experience, I’ve found myself personally overcorrecting or overemphasizing certain matters in a desperate bid to be noticed when I have always been. As a result to those kinds of opinions, i have rearranged my shelf to produce my understanding of queer literary works, principle and history unmistakable. I have become uncomfortable regarding unmanageable pitch of my personal vocals and considered some questionable-at-best haircuts. There’s nothing incorrect with getting femme or with being newly-out, including — it is simply perhaps not where I’m personally at, so when some body misrepresents me personally, we find yourself exaggerating my very own androgyny or focusing my past experience past what seems correct, just to make certain they are recognize it at all.

There is solution to win, obviously, because for making their own dilemma of too-muchness into my problem of not-enoughness, they elide that as another queer individual, we already have my dilemma of too-muchness. “maybe not queer adequate” on their behalf is already “as well queer” by far for world most importantly, and so I’m caught. The truth is, regardless if I’m not the main one inviting this insecurity within membrane your relationship, the onus to digest it however lands on me personally. Because it’s from someone I adore, I find yourself wanting to prove myself in eventually worthless approaches to meet their particular vision of my queerness in order to appease the one person I shouldn’t have to. I am a dyke trying to maintain queer really love and do enjoyable gay crap with another queer individual, as well as these to concern my credentials will be matter my personal credibility in this field.

Identification politics are fraught, and it is difficult untangle it in many ways that however feel reasonable. But I’ve learned the hard method in which if someone attempts this odd queer negging on me personally, I surely got to get. Diffusion merely stops once the gradient is actually evened away. I do not desire the dynamic within our cell to be influenced by events away from it.