They'll Always Hate You Because You're Queer.

I spend a lot of time on Twitter. It’s a noisy place. This week, a straight guy from TV had some very stupid shit he wrote last summer come back to haunt him, and the discourse was hot. Spots of it were nuanced and thoughtful (this piece was my favorite), but I saw a type of comment over and over again that’s, in recent years, given me pause.

“I’m so disappointed. I just don’t feel like this community accepts me. I no longer feel like I belong in this community.” Variations on that, but you get the gist.

And look — I think these feelings are totally valid. I understand where they come from. I understand why it hurts. But lately, I’ve wondered if these feelings sometimes come from not reading the room.

We like to think we’re living in this Golden Age of Queerness (we can marry! we’re on TV! we’re in the movies! famous people are queer, too!). And yeah, it’s the best time in history to be a big ole queer. I’m doing okay with it. A lot of my queer friends are hanging in there. And ten, twenty, fifty years ago it would be a different story.

But honestly — it’s stiil fucking dangerous to be queer. You can be fired for it in most of the country. You can be murdered just for being trans. You can get services refused. You can get called a “faggot” randomly when you’re just going about your day. Your parents can disown you and force you into homelessness. You can be so miserable that you choose suicide instead of life. And this is everywhere. On the daily. Right now, as you’re reading this, queer people are being treated like subhuman pieces of shit. They’re being treated like they shouldn’t even exist.

Golden fucking Age.

We’re enamored with the illusion of progress. Of Pride commercials from Oreos. Of that one LGBT slot in for a queer playwright in the theatre season. Of that one book from a queer horror writer. Of the shoutouts during June that evaporate when July comes. Of communities that say, love is love everybody welcome here come on in we’re all one, sista! — until the shit hits the fan.

It’s why I believe it’s important to understand the mechanics and dynamics of other systems of oppression. When you start to understand our racial history, our history of oppressing women, our history of oppressing the disabled, on and on and on, how those oppressions exist structurally as well as interpersonally, you realize: we’re all fucked. If you’re not a straight white heterosexual American, you are fucked. End of story.

This country wasn’t built for us. And that DNA filters down into every smaller community we’re a part of. It’s your neighborhood. It’s your office. It’s your book club. It’s your extended family. It’s the fandom you’re a part of. It’s everything. Every system we walk through is built to mirror our history, so the less you look like the default, the harder time you’ll have getting ahead in it.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t be mad about it. I love anger. I think anger is a big ole hammer. It can get shit done. Being mad about it is the spark of action. Be mad. Stay mad. Spread the mad where you can.

But we shouldn’t ever accept the illusion of progress when it’s handed to us, in any community, ever. So they feature a queer on their cover. So what? So they have a diversity statement that includes queer people. So fucking what? So they made it constitutionally legal for queers to marry other queers? So what, mary? It’s an illusion. It’s a James Charles beat. It’s fiction.

We’re allowed to exist alongside everyone else when our existence doesn’t question or disrupt the structure, when it doesn’t question or refute the history. The moment there’s pressure, the moment there’s friction, the illusion fades, and we’re put in our place. Every time. Without fail.

(There’s probably a conversation to have about whether or not we should even want to be embraced by mainstream communities, whether the cost of it is a smoothing out of the rough edges of queerness, whether we give up something authentic in the process.)

Yes, we can expect and even demand to feel safe in the communities we participate in. We can expect and demand to be treated with respect. We can demand access. We can demand visibility. We can demand opportunity. Yell for it. Scream for it. Punch a fucker in the mouth for it.

But I’m tired of being disappointed. I’m tired of being let down.

I’ve spent enough fucking time in my life feeling bad about my queerness. I’m tired. I want my queerness to fundamentally mean something else to me.

I want it to be what I make from. I want it to be joyful. I want it to be what it fucking wants to be without disclaimers or addendums or adjustments.

For me, that starts with giving up the illusion of progress.

The world isn’t safe. Not for people like me. Okay. Cool. I got you. You showed me who you are. I’m believing you.

The next thing — who the fuck knows? But we try something. We make something. We raise up a voice. We make space for someone who doesn’t have it. We construct, in small, the world we want to see at large.

And see what comes of it.