a question of outness.

well, hi, there. it’s been awhile.

the subject of queer identity has been on my mind for awhile, and i just remembered this blog this morning. it seems like a good time for an entry and some processing. since the last time i wrote, i’ve found myself more involved in a local queer scene. i was really excited to find it at first, but the more involved i get, the more it grates on my nerves and feels kind of bad to me.

i should clarify here that i’m not out as trans really anymore. well. i am to valued friends and family of course, but although i’ve recently found a lot of new friends, they don’t know about my trans history. at least, not as far as i know. these are people who are queer in varying forms, people for whom queer identity is an essential component of their lives and work, people who i have been craving to know for awhile now. but somehow it just isn’t working for me, at least not in the way that i thought i wanted it to.

when i transitioned, i thought i wanted to be relatively stealth, for my trans history to be just that…a history. part of my past experience but not all that relevant to my present. and for awhile, this worked for me. i really enjoyed being able to blend into the scenery, to have that sort of invisibility cloak to pull on when i needed it. definitely this was a welcome shift from the days when i couldn’t even walk down the street without being leered at, or use the bathroom in public without sneaking around…those days when i avoided busy times at the store because i felt like a sitting duck while standing in line, or when i felt like i had to buy a month worth of groceries at once so i wouldn’t have to ride the bus any more than i had to.

but, and maybe it’s just because of who i find myself around these days, sometimes i kind of miss that visibility. maybe. i can’t deny that my queer/gender-variant visibility worked like a social lubricant for me, helping me to find my people and weed out the idiots. it allowed me to speak my mind, to put my kinks out there, to be comfortable, to be seen, to find love. and maybe if i opened up that part of my life again, maybe those things would come back to me and fill out my life in new and awesome ways. maybe the time is here to integrate the past and present.

then i remember why i chose to put that stuff on the back burner….remembering non-trans queer people who felt like they were entitled to prod at and appropriate my identity, who made assumptions about my life based on the pretentious queer theory books they read in their college classes, who dropped my name and gender to make themselves look more queer and radical. i remember feeling like i had to identify a certain way in order to be acceptably queer and edgy. and so then i think, why would i want to go back to that, since it’s really just trading one set of rules and constraints for another? would i be happier? would i have more friends? would it get me laid more? would it make me cooler?

what it really boils down to is this: if there’s one thing i have been consistently good at, across all areas of my life, it’s quietly doing things on my own terms and finding my own path. making cool out of my own uncool. maybe it’s time to integrate and step into the next version of my whole self.

 

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