humanconditioned

Do you have to be Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex or Asexual to care about LGBTQIA issues?

Answer: No!

Now here’s a blog on how to be a queer ally, however straight you are.

But first the word ‘queer’. Why am I using it? Many might know it as a term of offense used to denigrate LGBTQIA people and this is certainly true. As a word it simply means ‘strange, peculiar or eccentric’ from the Old High German twerh ‘oblique’ itself coming from the Proto-Indo-European root *terkw ‘to turn, twist, wind’. By the late 19th century it was being used to describe homosexual people in a pejorative fashion. Fortunately, by the 1980s the word was being reclaimed by queer activists and scholars. And now queer is used as an umbrella term for people who don’t identify as heterosexual and are not cisgender (i.e. do not identify with the sex they were designated at birth). Interestingly, if I tell you I’m queer I’m not actually telling you that I fancy people of the same gender, or of both genders, or identify as the opposite sex. No, those exceptionally personal issues (what I do in my bedroom and how I relate to my own body is my business, not yours!) are not revealed instead I am saying I challenge the binary nature of gender (i.e. male or female) and any essentialisation of people for their sexuality. Of course, the queer community is a large and diverse one and even though I use the term to refer to the LGBTQIA community in general many might not. Many will prefer LGBTQIA and many will use queer to mean something else. However, for the sake of this blog I am using it as the umbrella term described above.

Anyways, in case you missed it, that was lesson one on being a queer ally – understanding the lingo, very important. Lesson two is about using it and this will vary from person to person. I’ll use myself as an example. I’ve often had people try to define my sexuality for me – people would label me with terms I never used to describe myself sometimes because they wanted to understand me, pigeonhole me and/or bully me. When it comes to politics I consider myself queer – I challenge gender and sexuality norms and I advocate for the equality and rights of the LGBTQIA community  – but when it comes to my personal life, am I gay, bi-sexual, queer or something else? None of your business! So please don’t assume you know what my sexuality is because you don’t and don’t ask me either unless you feel it’s appropriate to. If you’re straight the likelihood is you won’t be asked to defend your sexual preferences on a regular basis or even reveal them so please stop asking me what I like to do with my sexual organs! Just be happy with the knowledge that I am Robert and I’m a queer activist. However, I’m just one example, and many people are bisexual, transgender, gay etc and want to be recognised as such – it’s your job to find out what that means to them and to use the appropriate terminology.

Lesson three is about stereotypes. We’ve all got a bunch of them in our heads be they the mincing queen, the butch lesbian, the greedy bisexual, the weird old gay guy etc, and without even thinking about it we project them at other people. One I often get is when I ask to be introduced to other queer men and people immediately assume it’s for sex, I must be one of those “promiscuous gays.” Unfortunately, much of the time I’m just wanting to meet more people from a community I consider myself part of, yet people are still quick to pigeonhole me. Even worse is that if I do ask to be introduced to a man because I’m attracted to him I then conform to the “promiscuous gay” stereotype and just confirm everyone’s prejudices. So I’m screwed either way (although, ironically, maybe not screwed in the way I might want to be!). So those stereotypes you’ve got, whatever they are, just drop them. Even if you think you see someone conforming to a stereotype, they really aren’t because they’re a human and they come with a rich and varied story of their own. It won’t help you or them if you reduce them to a few tokenistic gestures and even if they do like to gesture in that way that doesn’t make them the stereotype. And remember, the more we stereotype minority groups the easier it is to pigeonhole them, to margininalise them, to dehumanise them, to ignore them and to hurt them. So it’s hashtag time, #humansnotstereotypes.

There are so many more lessons to be learned, for all of us, but for now I’ll sign off this post with an ace song from gay twins Tegan and Sara because, surely, even if it’s for sex or just friendship we all would benefit from getting a little closer. And just in case you find the concept of learning lessons about queer people a little patronising then please just see this as a chance to learn more about an awesome bunch of people who can make awesome friends and allies, and who throw pretty epic house parties (oh, and one other thing, never use ‘gay’ as a pejorative adjective. Nope. Don’t want to hear it. Just never. Thanks).