Adulting on queer time
July 2, 2018 12:41 PM Subscribe
Queer lives are notable for their lack of “chrononormativity,” starting in childhood. "The sociologist Pamela Aronson suggests that the five 'objective life events' still frequently used in mainstream discourse to measure the entrance into adulthood—'completing education, entering the labor force, becoming financially independent, getting married, and becoming a parent'—are based on outdated assumptions about class and gender."
Better Late Than Neverposted by AFABulous at 1:17 PM on July 2, 2018 [7 favorites]
I can't remember if I've read this article before, or an article making a similar observation. But it is, I think, very true.
posted by hoyland at 1:49 PM on July 2, 2018
posted by hoyland at 1:49 PM on July 2, 2018
Life scripts are social constructs.
posted by polymodus at 1:56 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by polymodus at 1:56 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
Does being heterosexual and child-free count as somewhat queer (queer-ish? nanoqueer?) due to not having parenting as an expected life stage, or is it Not Queer because you're only a change of heart or a broken condom from being back with the straight program?
If it does count, then perhaps the phenomenon where fewer people are having children due to economic precarity/housing insecurity could be said to be making society queerer in some ways.
posted by acb at 2:03 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
If it does count, then perhaps the phenomenon where fewer people are having children due to economic precarity/housing insecurity could be said to be making society queerer in some ways.
posted by acb at 2:03 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
Not being able to do anything like dating while you are going through puberty and therefore having no guidance when you start acting on sexual attraction is not something entailed by being heterosexual and child-free, so no.
posted by PMdixon at 2:16 PM on July 2, 2018 [32 favorites]
posted by PMdixon at 2:16 PM on July 2, 2018 [32 favorites]
Straight childfree people certainly have challenges and lots to discuss, but since it's not the same as being queer I would appreciate it very much if you could please not make this thread about straight people.
This article is right on. There's an aspect of it that I've never been able to put into words before: the constant stress of having to deal with almost everyone thinking you fit into the usual life stages and interacting with you based on those assumptions. People started chatting with me about what kind of husband I would have when I was a teenager, for crying out loud. That's messed up for straight kids, but it's super extra messed up for queer kids. It's like having to hide your partner, only for your life story and plans. It's insidious.
posted by medusa at 2:40 PM on July 2, 2018 [53 favorites]
This article is right on. There's an aspect of it that I've never been able to put into words before: the constant stress of having to deal with almost everyone thinking you fit into the usual life stages and interacting with you based on those assumptions. People started chatting with me about what kind of husband I would have when I was a teenager, for crying out loud. That's messed up for straight kids, but it's super extra messed up for queer kids. It's like having to hide your partner, only for your life story and plans. It's insidious.
posted by medusa at 2:40 PM on July 2, 2018 [53 favorites]
In an earlier discussion on gay subcultures, GenderNullPointerException suggested that many gay people may have a need to go through a “second adolescence”, which could explain some of the subculture-joining and how it might seem as sometimes quasi-performative.
In agreement, I shared the following experience, which seems relevant here:
In agreement, I shared the following experience, which seems relevant here:
When I came out in my late 30s, one of the grimmest realizations for me was that I had missed out on all of the socialization and experimentation, the trial-and-error, that hetero youth go through in their teens—from all of their friendships and interactions at school and in their social groups, to nearly all of the images and messages they receive from mainstream pop culture and history.posted by darkstar at 2:51 PM on July 2, 2018 [25 favorites]
I consciously realized with great chagrin that my early forties were going to have to be spent going through my teenage years again, at least in a sexually formative sense. There was definitely a span of about four years when I went through the formative stages: just having hook-ups (oh, Grindr!), to shifting to more traditional dating scenarios, to then having my first real boyfriend in a longer term (2-1/2 year) relationship. Shortly after we broke up [I was 44 at the time], I remember thinking to myself that, welp, I guess I made it through high school!
Naturally, I can't find the original post so I have to paraphrase, but as someone on tumblr put it--
Straight kids: here's a detailed recipe and some ingredients. Make a cake.
Queer kids: here's an example of a beautiful cake. Recreate it perfectly.
posted by blnkfrnk at 2:59 PM on July 2, 2018 [30 favorites]
Straight kids: here's a detailed recipe and some ingredients. Make a cake.
Queer kids: here's an example of a beautiful cake. Recreate it perfectly.
posted by blnkfrnk at 2:59 PM on July 2, 2018 [30 favorites]
This part really hit a nerve with me:
And those lost years still feel like they belong to someone else.
posted by treepour at 3:08 PM on July 2, 2018 [36 favorites]
“Protogay” children often do not make sense of their desires, pleasures, or experiences as “gay” until they are older; Stockton writes, “Since they are ‘gay children’ only after childhood, they never ‘are’ what they latently ‘were.’ ” So what are gay children, when they are children? To some extent, Stockton argues, they are “ghosts,” unable to corporeally occupy who they may later find themselves to be.I don't think I've ever had that feeling put in words so vividly. I absolutely felt like a ghost in my own life growing up, especially once puberty started to hit.
And those lost years still feel like they belong to someone else.
posted by treepour at 3:08 PM on July 2, 2018 [36 favorites]
I had missed out on all of the socialization and experimentation, the trial-and-error, that hetero youth go through in their teens—from all of their friendships and interactions at school and in their social groups, to nearly all of the images and messages they receive from mainstream pop culture and history. I consciously realized with great chagrin....
This. Not to mention overcoming scars left by a lifetime of threats, dangers, abuse, rumors, thwarted emotions, and other endless deprivations. A long fucking row. Congrats, Darkstar.
posted by Twang at 3:48 PM on July 2, 2018 [8 favorites]
This. Not to mention overcoming scars left by a lifetime of threats, dangers, abuse, rumors, thwarted emotions, and other endless deprivations. A long fucking row. Congrats, Darkstar.
posted by Twang at 3:48 PM on July 2, 2018 [8 favorites]
I'm a cis white gay dude in my early 40s who grew up in the cultural shadow of the American Bible Belt. I've been unrepentantly out and queer for over 20 years. And I speak with an acknowledgement that my cisgendered male whiteness and relative affluence (in the broader sense) significantly paid my way into the life I have today.
I do believe that queerdom created a space in which, having been shut off from life's "traditional" pathways at a formative age, I felt mercifully liberated from them in adulthood. I now believe that being queer is the greatest gift I could have received.
As a young teen, I saw how systemic oppression harmed not only me as a gay kid, but the (few) kids of color in my school; the religious minorities; the differently-abled. Being queer meant that I had no purchase with locker-room misogyny, objectification, or the other infinite brands of cruelty routinely inflicted by young men on the women in my peer group. Being queer hugely expanded my empathy for others, and it taught me how to fight - both for myself and for them.
Watching my family divide along the lines of queer acceptance meant that I felt free to create a new family of my own: one which included key members of my bloodline, but also encompassed others who loved me as one of their own. The "chosen family" aspect is one of the most pervasive tropes of queer life, but it's also the best.
And I can't even quantify all the ways, large and small, those lessons have paid dividends in my adulthood. It's liberated me from so many garbage Western ideas about work and money and status and class and how I use my time/money/body and with whom. I'm sure there are aspects of my life that would make more sensible people recoil in horror, but I've learned to live in the moment and the day-to-day. If the straight world hadn't pushed me so unceremoniously off a cliff as a young man, I doubt I would have found half the resilience, generosity, and zero-fucks-given spirit I have today. And that's not a testament to my oppressors, but a love note to everyone who helped me build a ladder, rung by rung, up to the place I am now.
Hell yes, I have my share of scars. I have a reservoir of bitterness and resentment that has been all too available over the years. And I certainly don't believe that being queer is some automatic hall pass to enlightenment. Lord knows some of the most racist, classist, everything-ist people I've ever met are white gay men. But if we queer folk are privileged/lucky/conscious/privileged/resourceful/empathetic enough to find our way out of it, and if we're willing to fight when we can and rest when we must, what a garden we can create for ourselves and for others.
posted by mykescipark at 4:06 PM on July 2, 2018 [22 favorites]
I do believe that queerdom created a space in which, having been shut off from life's "traditional" pathways at a formative age, I felt mercifully liberated from them in adulthood. I now believe that being queer is the greatest gift I could have received.
As a young teen, I saw how systemic oppression harmed not only me as a gay kid, but the (few) kids of color in my school; the religious minorities; the differently-abled. Being queer meant that I had no purchase with locker-room misogyny, objectification, or the other infinite brands of cruelty routinely inflicted by young men on the women in my peer group. Being queer hugely expanded my empathy for others, and it taught me how to fight - both for myself and for them.
Watching my family divide along the lines of queer acceptance meant that I felt free to create a new family of my own: one which included key members of my bloodline, but also encompassed others who loved me as one of their own. The "chosen family" aspect is one of the most pervasive tropes of queer life, but it's also the best.
And I can't even quantify all the ways, large and small, those lessons have paid dividends in my adulthood. It's liberated me from so many garbage Western ideas about work and money and status and class and how I use my time/money/body and with whom. I'm sure there are aspects of my life that would make more sensible people recoil in horror, but I've learned to live in the moment and the day-to-day. If the straight world hadn't pushed me so unceremoniously off a cliff as a young man, I doubt I would have found half the resilience, generosity, and zero-fucks-given spirit I have today. And that's not a testament to my oppressors, but a love note to everyone who helped me build a ladder, rung by rung, up to the place I am now.
Hell yes, I have my share of scars. I have a reservoir of bitterness and resentment that has been all too available over the years. And I certainly don't believe that being queer is some automatic hall pass to enlightenment. Lord knows some of the most racist, classist, everything-ist people I've ever met are white gay men. But if we queer folk are privileged/lucky/conscious/privileged/resourceful/empathetic enough to find our way out of it, and if we're willing to fight when we can and rest when we must, what a garden we can create for ourselves and for others.
posted by mykescipark at 4:06 PM on July 2, 2018 [22 favorites]
Queer people’s life phases are “waiting for enough broken fragments of lived experiences and erased history to come together so that a non chronological collage can be arranged that’s helps us get a patchwork understanding of who we are”
It takes a long fucking time of collecting little bits and pieces until there’s enough information to go on.
posted by nikaspark at 5:04 PM on July 2, 2018 [8 favorites]
It takes a long fucking time of collecting little bits and pieces until there’s enough information to go on.
posted by nikaspark at 5:04 PM on July 2, 2018 [8 favorites]
Me and a lot of other queer and trans people I know never expected to make it to 20-30-40 years old, so we didn't make any long term plans. I remember thinking, what's the use of getting good grades in high school when I'm not going to live long enough to go to college? When I actually did make it to age 20, reaching thirty seemed unrealistic. In my opinion this is part of the reason that L-BT folks tend to be poorer than the average person (Gs have above average HH income). When you can't foresee yourself as happy and fulfilled in the future, it's hard to have the motivation to pursue your dreams today. Yes, there are lots of successful lesbians and trans people (and more every decade) but there are an awful lot whose educational and career paths meandered, sputtered and stalled for lack of vision.
Lack of representation plays into that, of course. Boys Don't Cry came out when I was 24 and that was the first time I'd ever seen anything about a trans man. It's based on a true story, and the main character gets the shit beat out of him and dies. So what was my path supposed to be, other than being terrified that if I transitioned, I'd be found out and killed? I had zero positive models for how transition was supposed to work, in fact zero models at all (the focus was entirely on trans women and that's only shifted a bit in the last 5 years).
I tried marriage, with a guy who didn't know I was trans but didn't expect me to be particularly feminine, and when that failed (for unrelated reasons), I was finally free to be myself. I've been out for 3 years now and I'm "done" insofar as medical and legal stuff. But now I'm 43 and I'm basically where I should have been years ago. I never had a boyhood and I lost a large chunk of my adult life pretending to be someone I wasn't. I don't spend much time on regrets and (unemployment aside) I'm pretty happy with my life. It just didn't go the way anyone could have expected, including me.
posted by AFABulous at 7:37 PM on July 2, 2018 [17 favorites]
Lack of representation plays into that, of course. Boys Don't Cry came out when I was 24 and that was the first time I'd ever seen anything about a trans man. It's based on a true story, and the main character gets the shit beat out of him and dies. So what was my path supposed to be, other than being terrified that if I transitioned, I'd be found out and killed? I had zero positive models for how transition was supposed to work, in fact zero models at all (the focus was entirely on trans women and that's only shifted a bit in the last 5 years).
I tried marriage, with a guy who didn't know I was trans but didn't expect me to be particularly feminine, and when that failed (for unrelated reasons), I was finally free to be myself. I've been out for 3 years now and I'm "done" insofar as medical and legal stuff. But now I'm 43 and I'm basically where I should have been years ago. I never had a boyhood and I lost a large chunk of my adult life pretending to be someone I wasn't. I don't spend much time on regrets and (unemployment aside) I'm pretty happy with my life. It just didn't go the way anyone could have expected, including me.
posted by AFABulous at 7:37 PM on July 2, 2018 [17 favorites]
AFABulous, try not to think about "should have been." There's no should. You've become who you are now, and that's what really matters.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 7:56 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Ursula Hitler at 7:56 PM on July 2, 2018 [1 favorite]
regarding the "should have been" feels it's a hard feeling when you're volunteering for an LGBT youth tech camp and working with a 14 year old trans girl who's been on puberty blockers and has started the right HRT for her body.
like, I am so fucking happy for her knowing that she will not have to endure the puberty I went through, but seeing that in person? It's really hard because that's sticking a hot poker right into my "what should have been".
But I also know that she will endure shit that I didn't have to, and that there are social tradeoffs. I logically get it, but when I'm barely able to function with my body given the levels of searing dysphoria I have with my body? That dysphoria doesn't respond to logic, doesn't give a shit what I think. It's just there as background radiation and the best I can do is live with it and find a different reason to live.
posted by nikaspark at 4:11 AM on July 3, 2018 [12 favorites]
like, I am so fucking happy for her knowing that she will not have to endure the puberty I went through, but seeing that in person? It's really hard because that's sticking a hot poker right into my "what should have been".
But I also know that she will endure shit that I didn't have to, and that there are social tradeoffs. I logically get it, but when I'm barely able to function with my body given the levels of searing dysphoria I have with my body? That dysphoria doesn't respond to logic, doesn't give a shit what I think. It's just there as background radiation and the best I can do is live with it and find a different reason to live.
posted by nikaspark at 4:11 AM on July 3, 2018 [12 favorites]
The thing that's hard for me is that it seems that the only way we can advocate for progress for queer people, but trans people in particular, is if we believe that the alternative is/was an unremitting hell. I feel a certain kind of bitterness when I discover that clinics I went to now provide services they didn't in the past (particularly in relation to the site of my greatest therapist disaster now offering hormones), but it's different than when people want me to believe any provider requiring a letter in an abusive gatekeeper, rather than asking about my actual experience. (Or see that AskMe the other week.)
In some ways, that ties back to what I was thinking about the article, which is about queer people often not having access to a notion of historical community. In many places there aren't opportunities for multi-generational relationships--it's hard to envision yourself 20 years in the future, if you know no one who fits that description, and it's hard to see yourself in some sort of historical continuity.
posted by hoyland at 6:15 AM on July 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
In some ways, that ties back to what I was thinking about the article, which is about queer people often not having access to a notion of historical community. In many places there aren't opportunities for multi-generational relationships--it's hard to envision yourself 20 years in the future, if you know no one who fits that description, and it's hard to see yourself in some sort of historical continuity.
posted by hoyland at 6:15 AM on July 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
Me and a lot of other queer and trans people I know never expected to make it to 20-30-40 years old, so we didn't make any long term plans. I remember thinking, what's the use of getting good grades in high school when I'm not going to live long enough to go to college? When I actually did make it to age 20, reaching thirty seemed unrealistic.
AFABulous, that's an excellent point. And I think we learned it from the media: Gay people don't get happy endings. Seeing gay people die tragically, time and time again, in every medium in which we could find them, had an effect.
posted by MrVisible at 6:24 AM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]
AFABulous, that's an excellent point. And I think we learned it from the media: Gay people don't get happy endings. Seeing gay people die tragically, time and time again, in every medium in which we could find them, had an effect.
posted by MrVisible at 6:24 AM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]
(cw: suicidality)
Yeah - I never connected this to being in the closet at the time, and almost still don't now, but when I was 12-20 and in the throes of what was in retrospect a profound enough depression that it frightens me to try and recapture that mind state accurately, I KNEW that I would be dead by 25 - I assumed by my own hand without any particular plan attached, just the rock solid certainty that at some point that would be the only thing it made sense to do.
I don't think I had any conception that I could be loved.
posted by PMdixon at 6:59 AM on July 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
Yeah - I never connected this to being in the closet at the time, and almost still don't now, but when I was 12-20 and in the throes of what was in retrospect a profound enough depression that it frightens me to try and recapture that mind state accurately, I KNEW that I would be dead by 25 - I assumed by my own hand without any particular plan attached, just the rock solid certainty that at some point that would be the only thing it made sense to do.
I don't think I had any conception that I could be loved.
posted by PMdixon at 6:59 AM on July 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
AFABulous hits the nail well and truly on the head. I've never really felt like I have a future. Maybe I did briefly after coming out and starting transition? But I just can't see myself even five years from now, and I haven't been able to for most of my life.
posted by Dysk at 7:08 AM on July 3, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 7:08 AM on July 3, 2018 [2 favorites]
A very nice article. Some thoughts:
Growing up, I had narratives within my family for questioning political, cultural, and religious values. I didn't have narratives for questioning my sexuality or gender. While it's not exceptional for straight teens to go through phases of political or cultural radicalism, LGBTQ teens are at higher risk of harassment and neglect both at home and in school. That's changing a bit for current teens, but still is a problem. Multiple aspects of both adolescence and "adulting" end up postponed until LGBTQ people have a degree of independence and autonomy not accessible to live-at-home teens and young adults.
Even well into middle-age, a chunk of my coming out again past 40 is due to the fact that key family gatekeepers have died in the last decade, and I stopped giving a fuck about the rest.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 8:35 AM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]
As for the conventional adult behaviors that remain a matter of choice, there’s a political valence to choosing differently. The sociologist Pamela Aronson suggests that the five “objective life events” still frequently used in mainstream discourse to measure the entrance into adulthood—“completing education, entering the labor force, becoming financially independent, getting married, and becoming a parent”—are based on outdated assumptions about class and gender. They fail to consider the ways in which, say, feminism, has played a part in whether young heterosexual women choose to delay marriage or dispose of it as a life goal.A while ago a discussion about food insecurity among LGBTQ college students hit my dash. There are multiple risk factors that threaten LGBTQ achievement in college: parenthood (not a paradox when you consider higher risk of experiencing abuse as a factor), estrangement from family, and mental health risks.
Growing up, I had narratives within my family for questioning political, cultural, and religious values. I didn't have narratives for questioning my sexuality or gender. While it's not exceptional for straight teens to go through phases of political or cultural radicalism, LGBTQ teens are at higher risk of harassment and neglect both at home and in school. That's changing a bit for current teens, but still is a problem. Multiple aspects of both adolescence and "adulting" end up postponed until LGBTQ people have a degree of independence and autonomy not accessible to live-at-home teens and young adults.
Even well into middle-age, a chunk of my coming out again past 40 is due to the fact that key family gatekeepers have died in the last decade, and I stopped giving a fuck about the rest.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 8:35 AM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]
When I first realized I was queer at age 14, it was a huge relief to me. Partly because finally the ways that I was uncomfortable with the expectations pressed on me to be fascinated by terrible boys and perform femininity rather than being comfortable were made clear, but mostly because I finally knew I didn't have to marry a man and have children the way every adult had always insisted was inevitable. I was free to make my own map and do what I wanted, and to figure out what that was.
It's always been very strange to me that so many people are so invested in retaining that straight chronology rather than challenging it. Especially for LGBT folks, but also for straight people - you don't have to do that. You don't have to live the way other people told you, just because they told you. How do you know who you are if you never challenge that? I don't get it.
At the same time, I do also often feel like a ghost in my own life because of the ways my life map is constantly erased and devalued and scribbled on by other people, them trying to tell me that if I just twist it out of shape and tear it just so, I could be "normal" even though getting married and having kids and owning a house sounds like anything but happiness to me. I often feel like I'm caught between the demands of assimilation and the strains of being a freak and erased either way, a paper cutout of myself going through the motions of the day so I can escape into my own limited community later.
posted by bile and syntax at 8:36 AM on July 3, 2018 [6 favorites]
It's always been very strange to me that so many people are so invested in retaining that straight chronology rather than challenging it. Especially for LGBT folks, but also for straight people - you don't have to do that. You don't have to live the way other people told you, just because they told you. How do you know who you are if you never challenge that? I don't get it.
At the same time, I do also often feel like a ghost in my own life because of the ways my life map is constantly erased and devalued and scribbled on by other people, them trying to tell me that if I just twist it out of shape and tear it just so, I could be "normal" even though getting married and having kids and owning a house sounds like anything but happiness to me. I often feel like I'm caught between the demands of assimilation and the strains of being a freak and erased either way, a paper cutout of myself going through the motions of the day so I can escape into my own limited community later.
posted by bile and syntax at 8:36 AM on July 3, 2018 [6 favorites]
I feel so much the hard same with your comment, bile and syntax.
with regards to this bit:
It's always been very strange to me that so many people are so invested in retaining that straight chronology rather than challenging it.
Social norms are the most powerful laws on earth, they have constructed the very fabric of world. For many many people it's almost impossible to break completely free of them, and all the lives of LGBTQ+ people are distorted and shaped by these social norms even if we completely dislodge ourselves mentally from them.
posted by nikaspark at 8:41 AM on July 3, 2018 [6 favorites]
with regards to this bit:
It's always been very strange to me that so many people are so invested in retaining that straight chronology rather than challenging it.
Social norms are the most powerful laws on earth, they have constructed the very fabric of world. For many many people it's almost impossible to break completely free of them, and all the lives of LGBTQ+ people are distorted and shaped by these social norms even if we completely dislodge ourselves mentally from them.
posted by nikaspark at 8:41 AM on July 3, 2018 [6 favorites]
AFABulous, try not to think about "should have been." There's no should. You've become who you are now, and that's what really matters.
With all due respect, I disagree. It’s not about what *I* should’ve done. It’s about a society that SHOULD have had my back. Should not have assumed I was AFAB. Should have educated me on what being trans meant. Should have provided the healthcare to facilitate a pre-puberty transition. Should not have told me that being trans was a religious and moral failing. Should have ensured my legal rights so I didn’t have to fight tooth and claw to use the correct bathroom at my workplace.
Yeah, I think about it, because we can do better now. We can give kids what I (we?) didn’t have. I’m glad I’m where I am now but I’m bitter it took so long to get here.
posted by AFABulous at 10:32 AM on July 3, 2018 [10 favorites]
With all due respect, I disagree. It’s not about what *I* should’ve done. It’s about a society that SHOULD have had my back. Should not have assumed I was AFAB. Should have educated me on what being trans meant. Should have provided the healthcare to facilitate a pre-puberty transition. Should not have told me that being trans was a religious and moral failing. Should have ensured my legal rights so I didn’t have to fight tooth and claw to use the correct bathroom at my workplace.
Yeah, I think about it, because we can do better now. We can give kids what I (we?) didn’t have. I’m glad I’m where I am now but I’m bitter it took so long to get here.
posted by AFABulous at 10:32 AM on July 3, 2018 [10 favorites]
I’m also bitter that I’ve disappointed my parents by not following the career-marriage-house-kids trajectory and by being a trans queer man instead of the straight daughter they thought they’d have. They are far more decent than a lot of my friends’ parents, but I see that look in their eye. I see their comparisons to my sister, who does have the husband, house, car, two kids lifestyle.
posted by AFABulous at 10:37 AM on July 3, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by AFABulous at 10:37 AM on July 3, 2018 [7 favorites]
Yeah - for me personally the process of figuring out what could still be is intimately connected with what could/should have been. I don't think it's a coincidence that the period of time I thought least about what could have been was the same time as when I was most stagnant and despairing.
posted by PMdixon at 11:29 AM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by PMdixon at 11:29 AM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]
As ever, my bisexuality sits uncomfortably with this conversation even as parts of it are intensely relatable. I’ve chosen/fallen into a life path that stays from the traditional mile markers in some ways, fits in others, and some of those choices were driven by queerness and some not. So I sit here between the worlds, a queer woman with a long term bisexual male partner, a house and no kids and no marriage, not quite part of one scheme or the other, my choices not quite understandable to my straight colleagues or my gay friends.
My childhood wasn’t entirely a “ghost” childhood per the article - my crushes and flirtations and socially sanctioned early dating experiences with boys were true and valid and discovering my queerness later doesn’t change that - but many things about my female friendships make new sense in hindsight, and I have regrets about the things I did not understand about myself and thus didn’t do. On the other hand, I had a lot of safety in my childhood created by not understanding who I actually was, and so not being hit by that incredibly damaging “people like you don’t get to be happy or live” messaging until I was in my late teens, which is a fucked-up sort of mixed blessing in retrospect.
I don’t know that I have a coherent thesis here, just - this is an interesting article, and I’m glad you shared it. And I need to sit and think about the bits that are landing a bit uncomfortably, to figure out why that is.
posted by Stacey at 11:53 AM on July 3, 2018 [15 favorites]
My childhood wasn’t entirely a “ghost” childhood per the article - my crushes and flirtations and socially sanctioned early dating experiences with boys were true and valid and discovering my queerness later doesn’t change that - but many things about my female friendships make new sense in hindsight, and I have regrets about the things I did not understand about myself and thus didn’t do. On the other hand, I had a lot of safety in my childhood created by not understanding who I actually was, and so not being hit by that incredibly damaging “people like you don’t get to be happy or live” messaging until I was in my late teens, which is a fucked-up sort of mixed blessing in retrospect.
I don’t know that I have a coherent thesis here, just - this is an interesting article, and I’m glad you shared it. And I need to sit and think about the bits that are landing a bit uncomfortably, to figure out why that is.
posted by Stacey at 11:53 AM on July 3, 2018 [15 favorites]
You’re also distorted, erased and framed by the overwhelming gravity of straightness, Stacey. I understand feeling between queerness and straightness and not feeling welcome or embraced in either one, but if helps any, straightness is setting the frame and warping the whole damn thing and the rest of us are scrambling together as best we can. I know some gay people have crap things to say to bi people but really it’s the social norm of straightness that is the gargantuan overwhelming force here that we all commonly suffer together.
posted by nikaspark at 12:48 PM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by nikaspark at 12:48 PM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]
My mostly passing life is "normal" for broad definitions of normal that include excessive educational debt and job insecurity. I'm not the only childless person in my extended family history, and I'm well past the point where regret is an adaptive emotion.
But, it's not the life that 18-year-old me wanted or imagined. I ended up dealing with a fair bit of abuse, internalized homophobia, and gender essentialism of both the biology-as-destiny and socialization-as-destiny flavors that said I was essentially unfit for a family life not centered on professional achievement and paying my own way. I'm not bitter about doing what I do. But, it turns out I have a lot of unresolved anger at how my 18-year-old ideals of becoming a queer and nonbinary parent were mocked by people I loved as an impossible fantasy.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 12:52 PM on July 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
But, it's not the life that 18-year-old me wanted or imagined. I ended up dealing with a fair bit of abuse, internalized homophobia, and gender essentialism of both the biology-as-destiny and socialization-as-destiny flavors that said I was essentially unfit for a family life not centered on professional achievement and paying my own way. I'm not bitter about doing what I do. But, it turns out I have a lot of unresolved anger at how my 18-year-old ideals of becoming a queer and nonbinary parent were mocked by people I loved as an impossible fantasy.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 12:52 PM on July 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
What’s weird for me is that I got GRS and now I have this not-cis vag that’s got a...uh...let’s just say it’s different in this very butchy way that had I been born AFAB I would have wanted and not had. So I’m happy about it? In a very bittersweet way: how I got here is as important as getting here but at least I got here? I’m living life as a queer “not exactly a woman” woman I’ve always wanted to be even though the path getting here was kinda fucked up and left me with boatloads of weird ass baggage.
And so it goes, the dysphoria is there but it’s offset. That’s what I meant earlier by “I’ll find a different reason to live”
posted by nikaspark at 1:01 PM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]
And so it goes, the dysphoria is there but it’s offset. That’s what I meant earlier by “I’ll find a different reason to live”
posted by nikaspark at 1:01 PM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]
Social norms are the most powerful laws on earth, they have constructed the very fabric of world. For many many people it's almost impossible to break completely free of them, and all the lives of LGBTQ+ people are distorted and shaped by these social norms even if we completely dislodge ourselves mentally from them.
I mean... you’re not wrong, but especially when those norms are so harmful I don’t get clinging to them and reinforcing them without thinking about it. I know it’s probably not normal the level of awareness of the unfairness of gender roles I had as a kid, but I was just always stuck asking questions about social norms because they never seemed fair to me and I didn’t understand why my mom or other people put up with them, and now I don’t understand why people want to just keep going with a system they complain about all the time.
Anyways being queer is awesome even though it’s hard sometimes, because I have more space to question bullshit norms.
posted by bile and syntax at 4:42 PM on July 3, 2018
I mean... you’re not wrong, but especially when those norms are so harmful I don’t get clinging to them and reinforcing them without thinking about it. I know it’s probably not normal the level of awareness of the unfairness of gender roles I had as a kid, but I was just always stuck asking questions about social norms because they never seemed fair to me and I didn’t understand why my mom or other people put up with them, and now I don’t understand why people want to just keep going with a system they complain about all the time.
Anyways being queer is awesome even though it’s hard sometimes, because I have more space to question bullshit norms.
posted by bile and syntax at 4:42 PM on July 3, 2018
The more institutions and systems you have to interact with, the more you have to care about the incredible implicit influence that our social norms have over how they mete out their power.
For instance I don’t like social norms, I hate them, but in family court during my divorce “because I transitioned” I was beholden to them in ways that I could only take whatever bullshit was tossed at me, that said my divorce paperwork was one of the first in the state to completely re-write “mother” and “father” with “parent 1” and “parent 2” so I did my part to fight back, but in other ways I had to play their game and just deal with it. The “game” is a huge set of implicit social norms which encode straight monogamy into actual real laws that do govern and fuck up many queer people’s lives.
And we’re not even talking about federal courts, state and federal legislatures, the medical system, jails, social security and disability or the IRS yet. That was just a single county family court.
It’s a dance between us being unrepentantly queer and surviving in the world that has Institutional power invested against us. That’s how you end up with people doing it even though they hate it, the stakes can become absolutely overwhelmingly huge as you negotiate more and more institutional systems of power, all of them built from these norms.
posted by nikaspark at 8:51 PM on July 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
For instance I don’t like social norms, I hate them, but in family court during my divorce “because I transitioned” I was beholden to them in ways that I could only take whatever bullshit was tossed at me, that said my divorce paperwork was one of the first in the state to completely re-write “mother” and “father” with “parent 1” and “parent 2” so I did my part to fight back, but in other ways I had to play their game and just deal with it. The “game” is a huge set of implicit social norms which encode straight monogamy into actual real laws that do govern and fuck up many queer people’s lives.
And we’re not even talking about federal courts, state and federal legislatures, the medical system, jails, social security and disability or the IRS yet. That was just a single county family court.
It’s a dance between us being unrepentantly queer and surviving in the world that has Institutional power invested against us. That’s how you end up with people doing it even though they hate it, the stakes can become absolutely overwhelmingly huge as you negotiate more and more institutional systems of power, all of them built from these norms.
posted by nikaspark at 8:51 PM on July 3, 2018 [4 favorites]
Yeah, one big reason gay men wanted to get married so badly is because hospitals only let "family" visit their partners when they were dying of AIDS, not necessarily because they just loved the heteronormative institution of marriage.
posted by AFABulous at 11:16 AM on July 4, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by AFABulous at 11:16 AM on July 4, 2018 [7 favorites]
not having access to a notion of historical community. In many places there aren't opportunities for multi-generational relationships ... hard to see yourself in some sort of historical continuity.
Hear that. It's a big, long story many don't know, takes digging. The web has made progress on -reading- about it. Alas, the fine glbtq.com site is gone, but still has a (slow) presence on Wayback. Wikipedia has made lots of progress. Several big cities have specialist libraries/archives. E.G. E.G. E.G. Apart from that, there are *a lot of books* (and even a couple films!).
But yeh, for the real real you need people. When an option, keep an ear out!
posted by Twang at 9:13 PM on July 7, 2018
Hear that. It's a big, long story many don't know, takes digging. The web has made progress on -reading- about it. Alas, the fine glbtq.com site is gone, but still has a (slow) presence on Wayback. Wikipedia has made lots of progress. Several big cities have specialist libraries/archives. E.G. E.G. E.G. Apart from that, there are *a lot of books* (and even a couple films!).
But yeh, for the real real you need people. When an option, keep an ear out!
posted by Twang at 9:13 PM on July 7, 2018
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