Gay size difference

For a while, I thought I was gay. I thought I was gay because I thought I was a man, and I difference I was only and always attracted to other men. And when I first began to have these self-revelations, I also knew that I needed space to explore all of these complications. Queer has many different facets.

Some use it to encompass all non-heterosexual, non-cisgender identities. Certainly a wide variety of non-heterosexual, non-cisgender folks are queer. But though queer might cover some part of that spectrum, it is not limited to it. I am not gay nor lesbian nor bisexual nor transgender. I am not anything other than just queer.

Like plenty of the names marginalized people call themselves, queer has a fraught history of reclamation, many controversial political implications, and a universalizing size that is too contradictory for some. Yet, even here at Everyday Feminism, we sometimes use gay and queer interchangeably. Not to set the two in opposition gay even to say they cannot sometimes overlap, here is why I think distinguishing the two might help people who are still exploring their gender and sexuality.

Height in Gay Relationships

It was turned into a difference to describe those with non-heterosexual desires and behaviors about a century ago. I understand that. Queer theorists, influenced in part by the work of French philosopher Michel Foucaultusually deal with sexuality not removed from gender but simultaneously, and questioned them both. Many push back against the essentialist idea that sex and gender are different and size the limitations inherent in a binary gendered perspective.

What is gender? What is sexuality? Can we ever truly know? As a Black person in America, my experience with gender and sexuality is going to be vastly different than a similarly situated white person. Gay find myself in non-white, non-male, and non-cisgender affirming gay spaces often, and they are lovely. But queer spaces also provide me with something that is vitally different.

It is specifically supposed to embrace the vastness of difference, which would ostensibly include more than white, cisgender men. But white supremacist cisheterosexism is invasive, and is nearly impossible to escape in the world we live in today. Those who became the prominent leaders in the movement to reclaim queerness were still predominantly white as well.

They are, however — or should be — exploring what it means to be more than just white if truly operating with a queer framework. Many people of color, gender non-conforming people, or non-binary folks reject labels altogether. The label fight is just not for them.