Can I call myself queer?
Yes Yes Advice Column
Things of note :
🪟 TOMORROW is Echoes of Self : Collecting research for personal essays and non fiction projects Sunday September 8 at 12pm EST - RECORDED! LIFETIME ACCESS!
We’re going to have a lot of fun playing with sticky notes and index cards and google drive and Notion and visioning all the ways to map out our projects
🪞 Today at 11am EST in Landscapes :
is hosting the BIPOC writers circle and next Saturday September 14 our guest writing teacher isLandscapes is sliding scales and no one is turned away for lack of funds. Both events are recorded if you can’t make it live :)
Welcome to Yes Yes - my advice column tucked into the Monday Monday newsletter.
The air is starting to get colder and I fear my hot swim days are lingering. I have spent more time at the beach this summer than the last two and it feels like a huge accomplishment that I prioritized rest, swimming, and community. My obsession with productivity, my hermit house mode, and my anxiety often keep me away from the things I love. Not this summer! I have prevailed.
My cosmos and zinnias are coming up and even some sunflowers I planted on the side of the house. Nothing is exactly thriving but, I love to see the flowers. I still need someone to come here and teach me to be a flower farmer. Teaching myself is proving unfruitful.
I love today’s question so much. I love exploring queerness outside of who we’re having sex with, and asking what it means to be a queer person who is having sex and being in a relationship with a straight person.
I am not a therapist and I have no training in advice giving. I am an artist, a writer, and a teacher of creative practice with a devotion to how we live. These are my opinions, my best shot at hope, and what I know from 36 years on the planet. As always, may you hold a gentle spirit while reading, take what you like, and leave the rest. Let’s dive in!
Hi Cody!
It’s my first time asking a question to a friendly stranger on the internet so it feels scary, but the nature of what I want to ask is calling me to do it, and you’re the only friendly stranger I feel can provide an answer regarding what’s on my mind. What’s on my mind is queerness, and how to practice it when you’re in a het relationship.
I grew up in a gossipy town and I guess because of this I never really pursued what I can felt was a clear and strong attraction to girls/non binary folks. I liked men and I was a woman so I thought I had to be straight because being bisexual just wasn’t an option that was considered in the discourse. When I moved to a bigger city I gave myself permission to pursue my interest for some people I met who didn’t fall into the cis straight men category and even though it was fun nothing came to fruition. I had many crushes and no action it’s how I’d explain it. I’m not the most sexually active person anyway so I didn’t see the point in forcing myself to lose my queer V-card with just anyone.
Cut to now, some years later, where I find myself in a relationship with a great cis straight guy. I’ve had relationships in the past but none of them compare to what I have now, and I do think he’s the one which is 99% of the time something that makes me so happy but, and I guess my question is whether you’d consider this a big or a small but, I am kind of sad over the possibility of never having a relationship with someone who’s not a man.
For extra context I don’t see myself ever having an open relationship and I am excited to spend my life with him. My question is not “should I leave the first person I have ever truly loved so I can have a hypothetical rendezvous with a hot girl/they when I’ve already tried it and I didn’t make it past the crush stage”.
It’s more: how can I practice my queerness, something I kept inside all my life, while prioritising a heterosexual relationship? Is it possible? Can I even call myself queer?
Yours, Confused
Dearest Confused,
The thing about being queer is we don’t get to choose it. We just … are it. It is a feeling that happens from the inside out. So yes dear reader, you do get to call yourself queer. Who you have sex with does not define your level of queerness.
‘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.
bell hooks
Another question I am often asked is - is it a queer relationship if one person is queer? Does that inherently shape the relationship as a queer relationship? Otherwise it’s what - a half queer half straight relationship. Queerness wins, it’s queer!
Or … is it?