A Sort of Coming Out
I identify as queer, but I realize that I don’t talk about it much. It’s not like it’s some big secret, and I am certainly not ashamed of it. My husband has always known, most of my friends know, and if asked I would never deny it. I just felt like I didn’t have the right to insert myself into the conversation. I’ve never been actively discriminated against for my sexuality in the workplace or just walking down the street. I am cisgender, and I present as a straight woman and have straight privilege, mostly because I am in a heterosexual marriage. I never wanted to claim oppression when I didn’t experience it. I didn’t want to make it seem like my own voice should be prioritized. I was scared of being rejected, scared of being told I wasn’t “queer” enough to count, and scared of causing harm.
I realize now that the people I was listening to the most are people who are invested in gatekeeping, and gatekeeping seeks to invalidate lived experience. Talking about my life isn’t saying my experience is better or worse or more important, but given what is happening in our country, it is important to me that I openly and without reservation make it absolutely god damn clear that I am a part of the LGBTQ+ community. While I may have been able to mask and obscure this part of me for decades, and give into the idea that it was okay for others to define me, I have no desire to do that anymore. Anyone who has a problem with that isn’t someone I want in my life.
I used to identify as bisexual - an identity that is often maligned and overlooked - but it started to feel too binary to me, as I would be open to dating people of any gender if the emotional connection was there. This quote by bell hooks is what made me decide that the word “queer” suited me best, and what made me feel more comfortable talking about it:
‘Queer' not as being about who you're having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but 'queer' as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.
As a neurodivergent person, I already felt that my self was at odds with the world, before I even hit puberty. I didn’t quite fit in anywhere, and my way of thinking about the world wasn’t the same as other kids my age. I didn’t think I was better, or smarter, or more talented, but I knew that I didn’t belong there. I dreamed myself out, in so many different ways. I found hope and promise in imagining different paths I could walk down, and none of them looked like the cookie cutter existence that I was told I should aspire to. I didn’t want the white picket fence, the 2.5 kids, any of it. I wanted something more than what the world told me I could have. I wanted a place where I would be seen for who I was.
I don’t know the exact moment I knew I also liked girls, but let me tell you - watching Veruca Salt open for Bush when I was 15 made it astonishingly clear that I did. That concert was a true bisexual fantasia, and as much as I loved seeing Gavin Rossdale, Nina and Louise grinding on each other with their guitars in leather pants was the lasting image of that night. What can I say, I’m simple for a chick with a guitar.
I went on to explore a bit, and while it was fun, it was also confusing and my feelings got hurt a lot. I also probably hurt some feelings. Nothing earth shattering, just normal horny teenager stuff. This was also around the time I learned that I could not be casual about, well, anything. If you think I’m A Lot now, you should have met me then. Intensity in ten cities.
When I was sixteen or so, my father found and read my journal, and told my mother about the contents. They confronted me directly about it, and asked me if I was gay. I was horrified, and humiliated, but naively went into the conversation hoping for the best. I decided to go the honesty route and say I was bisexual. My parents were outwardly accepting of my gay friends. My brother’s godfather was openly gay. I thought maybe it would be okay.
That was a miscalculation. My mother - for the first time in her life - didn’t say a lot. My father, usually the quiet one, lost his god damn mind. I don’t recall exactly what was said, but he pushed me up against the wall, screamed in my face, and basically told me that they wouldn’t provide any financial support for my college education if I dated women. I knew that was an empty threat (I was correct, as my college education was paid for mostly by me), and I was not going to take any of this without defending myself and calling out their homophobia. I don’t remember the specifics now, but I do know that it was one of the ugliest conflicts I had with my parents, and believe me, there were a lot of ugly conflicts.
Although this experience was hugely traumatic and shattering, it let me know for sure that I could never be my true self as long as I was living there, which I sort of suspected anyway. My family had made me excellent at keeping secrets. One more wouldn’t hurt. I also stopped writing for a long time. At least about myself.
It occurs to me that maybe this is part of why I was still a little afraid to write about all of this. There are kids who would not have survived this confrontation at all - both then and now. I think like most of the trauma I went through, I thought, “well, other people had it worse”. I never viewed it denying a huge part of who I was. But I did. For a long time.
When I moved to New York City for college in 1999, I got to start over. I was a traumatized young adult who had to grow up really fast, and who also knew in a concrete way that the world was not a safe place. I had thought so long and so hard about getting out that I hadn’t considered how difficult it would be to build a new life. I had no idea who or how to be, not to mention the culture shock of moving from suburban Connecticut to a big city. It took some time to find my bearings.
Fortunately, I found my people, mostly in queer spaces. I felt more at home at a drag show than I did at a regular bar. I lusted after go-go dancers and partied all night at gay clubs and bars. I remember eating breakfast with my friends at the Tiffany Diner in the West Village, watching the sun come up after several ill advised tequila sunrises and a night of dancing, and feeling like I finally belonged somewhere. I was free from my hometown, and all the expectations that came with it. You could be anyone you wanted in New York, as long as you were with your people.
I think part of my confusion and hesitancy about my identity is that my queerness was mostly not expressed through sex. I thought it was because I was in a committed relationship, but I have always been hyper-protective of my body and who I allow access to my sexual self. Realizing that I am demisexual has clarified this for me, and regardless of other circumstances, I don’t think casual hookups would have ever been ideal for me. Instead, I lived vicariously through my friends in the heady early aughts, where hookup culture was king, and I made a most excellent wingman. If you needed someone to get you a phone number, make an introduction that seems accidental, or shut down a gross asshole at a bar, I was your gal.
Still, for a long time, I didn’t feel like I was on the team. Outwardly, I was still the straight girl at the gay bar. Inwardly, I knew that wasn’t the case. Somehow, despite my best efforts, I still managed to not quite fit in. It took a long time for me to realize that while I had gotten away from my upbringing physically, emotionally, a big part of me was still there.
When I first started my deep dive on ADHD, I learned that there is a high percentage of neurodivergence among the LGBTQ+ community:
Research doesn’t yet offer a clear reason to explain the overlap between the communities. One theory suggests that the greater gender-and-sexual diversity within the neurodivergent population results from challenges in navigating sociocultural norms around mainstream notions of gender and sexuality — like gender roles and expressions, and sexual orientation and attraction. That is, due to the differences in the way a neurodivergent person experiences life, they may struggle to conform to these norms, inspiring them to explore beyond traditions and express themselves in newer ways that resonate with them.
There are people who posit that neurodivergence is inherently queer, and that the experience of neurodivergent people isn’t taken into consideration when discussing queer issues (autistic people especially). ADHD diagnoses are also higher among the LGBTQ+ community. I am sure there are people who think that proves that queerness is inherently disordered, because on top of combating homophobia, we have a lot of work to do when it comes to ableism as well. I am still working through my own internalized ableism as I accept and process my own diagnosis, and I am eager to learn more about how neurodivergence and queerness intersect.
It is not a coincidence that the majority of my closest friends are neurodivergent and/or queer. We belong to and understand each other in a way that is hard to explain. Many of my friends find themselves estranged from their families or communities of origin, and I am among them. Chosen family is a part of a lot of queer narratives, and its something I am exploring in my own work. As much sadness and trauma as there can be in these stories, there is also so much love and joy and belonging. In times like these, it’s easy to forget that.
I can’t help but think back to a beautiful night last July, where me and some of my long-time friends sat in the back garden of a Seattle bar, and laughed our asses off, speaking the common language that we’ve developed during more than 20 years of shared history. We are not just friends at this point, we are family. We don’t always agree on everything, and we all have different experiences and perspectives, but we are able to be ourselves when we are together. What a gift it is to have people who not only accept you, but embrace the parts of you that so many others rejected.
I am grateful for my life, and my queerness, and I don’t care what anyone thinks about it. I don’t care if it doesn’t look like what it is supposed to, or if that doesn’t make sense to people. As long as the people who love me see me and accept me, I don’t need validation from anyone else.
I was almost done drafting this post, and then the news about the murder of Nex Benedict came out*. Nex - a non binary teenager in Oklahoma, in a school district being targeted by Chaya Raichik, the psychotic monster behind Libs of TikTok - was brutally beaten in the bathroom at school, and despite their injuries, the adults in charge chose not to call an ambulance or seek medical care. They tragically passed away the next day, likely due to their injuries. It has deeply affected everyone in my circle, especially my trans and non binary friends, for obvious reasons.
*after publishing this post, the news came out that Nex took their own life. I consider this a form of murder regardless. When you bully, attack, and harass a child because of who they are, and they can’t take it anymore, that’s murder as far as I am concerned.
My friends and I were remarking that it reminded us of that terrible day in 1998, when Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in Wyoming. This murder happened around the same time I realized that the best way to keep myself safe was to deny a big part of myself. I still admire the handful of gay kids who were out and proud in my high school. It took a lot of courage. And trust me, there was a lot of talk then about “science” and “biology” when it came to gay people. The same language is being used against trans and non binary people. It astonishes me that people cannot see this.
The parallels between Nex and Matthew’s deaths - just replace the “gay panic” defense with “trans panic” - are chilling. In this weird time we live in, there is an entire cabal of right wing anti-LGBTQ+ grifters on social media, who use their platforms to incite hatred, fear, and violence towards LGBTQ+ folks all around the world. Here in the United States, they not only give outsized influence to people like Raichik, but have the entirety of the GOP on their side, including their leader. It’s not just a few loud and persistent people on social media - this hatred is supported, funded, and legislated by people in power.
If you think you are not susceptible to internalizing this messaging, you are wrong. No one is immune. The people who run these platforms and algorithms are very good at what they do, and if there’s anything I know from the last seven years, human beings are easier to influence than any of us want to admit.
When I see anti-trans rhetoric in the LGBTQ+ community, it enrages and confuses me. These laws are not intended to uphold scientific or medical evidence. They are intended to dehumanize people. To dehumanize children. Full stop. For those of us who grew up knowing we were different, what makes us think that our way of being different was the “correct” way? What makes us think that we have the answers? What makes us think that just because it is not how we identify that their identity is not “real”? Who gets to decide what identities are valid? Just because we don’t understand or relate to every aspect of a person’s lived experience doesn’t mean we have the right to reject it.
Nex Benedict will never get the chance to find their chosen family. They will never get to grow up and experience the life that they so richly deserved. I wish we could have found a way to protect Nex, and I wish we could protect all the other kids like them. The adults assigned to their care should have been protecting them and nurturing them, not advocating for their extinction. For a country that pretends to care so much about the well being of children, we are failing them at every turn. And in failing them, we are failing not only each other, but our younger selves, who somewhere in time are still writing in their journals, figuring out how to survive, and hoping that one day they will be seen, accepted, and loved.
If you are able to donate, there is a GoFundMe to support Nex’s family in this time of need.