THE PHENONMENON OF NOT FEELING "QUEER ENOUGH"

Guest written by Dusty Howard, a trans-masc boxer, poet, and cultural alchemist. He is a writer & a fighter who builds worlds with words. He is following his dreams in Los Angeles, making perfume, and writing his first novel filled with lies and magic. You can follow his thirst traps @transsexualdreamboat or find more of his writing at his website.

Not feeling queer enough is a common phenomenon that has sprung up alongside the rise in identity politics. Here are some words of wisdom for anyone who has newly come out of the closet or thinks they might be LGBTQ+.

Let’s be honest. Everybody is a bit gay. Just ask my dad or your dad or your boyfriend or your best friend or yourself, and I’m sure you will find that more than one of us has had same-sex desire or sexual acts with someone of the same gender. Human sexuality is diverse, complex, and has included all types of desire and affection from the beginning of time. There is evidence of same-sex desire in every documented culture in the world, and the concept of sexual orientation didn’t even exist until 150 years ago. 

While it’s true that the majority of the global population identifies exclusively as heterosexual, this is more representative of homophobia and anti-gay bias than it is about actual human desire. Sexuality is fluid and limitless, and the clear-cut labels we use to describe it are the result of a relatively modern urge to try to make sense of something that defies categorization. 

While strict definitions of “homosexual” and “heterosexual” are socially constructed, the ways that LGBTQ+ people are treated in this world are very much real. If you’re reading this, you likely don’t need any statistics to convince you that the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender people are under attack. And this is exactly where the trickiness of identity politics comes into play. On one hand, violence against marginalized identities differentiates us from each other, while on the other hand identity is nuanced, fluid, and not so black and white. So how do we hold both?

QUICK LINKS:

1. Why You May Not Always Feel "Queer Enough"
2. There is No Such Thing as "Queer Enough"
3. Queer Visibility
4. Taking Risks & Finding Community

Why You May Not Always Feel Queer Enough

This is the crux of the classic predicament and relatively new phenomenon of not feeling queer enough. If you are someone for whom this resonates, chances are that your journey to understanding your own queerness hasn’t been linear. Coming out is always complicated, but can be even more so if you feel as if your sexuality is more complex than “gay” or “straight” or if you come to these realizations later in life. The question isn’t whether you are queer enough. The question is, can you get out of your own way enough to embody your queerness in a way that feels good?

Here are some words of advice for how to navigate the experience of not feeling queer enough and what you can do about it.

There is No Such Thing as Being "Queer Enough"

There is no such thing as being queer enough. This concept is built from a scarcity model in which there is only enough space in a community for a select number of people, and that if one person identifies as queer, then that somehow creates less space, options, or resources for others. Although LGBTQ+ people do face both micro and macro violences in our daily lives, suffering should not be a prerequisite for queerness nor should queerness be defined solely by the oppression or discrimination we face. There are plenty of people who come out later in life, who don’t realize that not being straight is an option, who have never found a partner who was accepting of their sexuality, who have always been attracted to people of the same-sex but too afraid to come out or accept those feelings.

The reality is LGBTQ+ people are more diverse than any of us know or care to admit. While we often speak of the LGBTQ+ community as one group of people, the reality is that we all have vastly different politics, lifestyles, religious beliefs, world views, and relationships to our sexuality. There is no one way or right way to be queer, and people rigorously policing the boundaries of queerness as to who does and doesn’t count isn’t going to bring us any closer to liberation. This way of thinking both erases the messiness in the etymology of the word queer itself and ignores the reality of just how complex human sexuality is. The word queer is an active verb rather than a stagnant noun. It queers whatever is deemed as normal, mainstream, or assumed. In the words of Eve Sedgwick, “it is the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning.”

Invisibility Can be Painful, but Visibility Can be Fatal

This begs the question, is it okay to identify as queer if you’ve never experienced the stigma that comes along with it? The answer to this question is more complicated than a simple yes or no. Whether or not you self-identify as queer is a deeply personal decision for each person. You know yourself and your sexuality the best. We are the authors of our own lives, and we get to decide ultimately who we are and how our story is told. 

If queer, pansexual, bisexual (or any other word for that matter) feels like the right way to describe your sexuality, then there is nothing wrong with claiming that identity. But it’s important to hold the layers of visibility, lived experience, and community while we figure out our relationships to queerness. In this way, understanding your place within the LGBTQ+ community at large is key to figuring out your own relationship to your sexual orientation and how it manifests in our lives. 

This question of visibility is often the most difficult part for newly out queer people who are either single or in straight-passing relationships. It can be hard to feel a part of something that you do not have access to, in the sense that you might be living in a very straight world where the majority of people around you are heterosexual. But even those who have close LGBTQ+ friends and loved ones can still struggle to figure out their place in the community.

Maybe you don’t have people in your life that will support your sexuality, or maybe you fear coming out for a myriad of reasons. Maybe you have told a few close loved ones that you are queer, but everyone seems more comfortable seeing you as straight anyway. The lack of being seen for one's true self can be a painful, isolating, and confusing experience. However, it’s important to understand that the invisibility that comes alongside privilege is not the same thing as oppression. 

For example, I am a trans masculine person who walks through the world most days being read as a cis man. My experience in the world now that I am 7+ years on testosterone is vastly different from the other 23 years of my life. While I feel sadness at not being seen for who I truly am and frustration when my queer relationship is viewed as straight, I still directly benefit from the safety of passing as a cisgender man in an assumed heterosexual couple. My partner and I get to choose who we do and don’t come out to, which comes with a new set of contradictory emotions.

The invisibility that comes alongside privilege is not the same thing as oppression. 

You can always identify as queer regardless of the particular relationship you are in, but if you aren’t in a visibly queer relationship, you will benefit from the structural privilege that comes along with assumed heterosexuality. Understanding this is key to queerness itself, because queerness is also defined by a community—the shared kinship through which we speak, laugh, cry, struggle, and fight back together. 

Community is about both understanding what unites us and honoring the differences between us. The queer community is about understanding the platforms that you privilege allows you and using those to lift up the voices of people more marginalized than you. As long as you are doing the work to understand the privileges that you have compared to others as well as the solidarity we all share, there is more than enough space for you.

Being Queer is About Taking Risks & Finding Community

Ultimately, being queer isn’t about whom you have or haven’t slept with. It isn’t even about who you are currently in a relationship with, what their gender is, or what’s up with their genitals. Being queer is about making a commitment to unlearn everything you know about the rigid definitions of gender and sexuality. If you can work through the internalized homophobia that we were all socialized to buy into, then the expansive relationship of your dreams is right around the corner. 

Everyone comes out on their own timeline. Some people choose to never tell their families, coworkers, or friends. I can’t tell you if you should come out or to whom. But I can tell you that being queer does require you to give up the comfort, power, and safety that comes with heterosexuality; it requires taking risks to know ourselves more fully and on a deeper level. 

Being queer requires finding a community of people whose life experiences you can relate to. It might feel challenging to put yourself out there at first, but you can always start small: make a Lex post, reach out to LGBTQ+ people in your life, go on a Tinder date, or find a support group or a local queer event in your area. There is only so much you can learn from books and from the internet. I guarantee that there are people out there who feel the exact same way that you do, who are also desperate for connection and belonging. 

There is a lot of fear behind trying to figure your sexuality, especially if you are coming out as queer later in life. You might worry that you are going to be bad at sex, not know what you’re doing, or make someone feel like they are an experiment. As long as you are honest with where you are at and meet yourself and the other person with compassion, I promise you’re already halfway there. Just remember that every queer person, at some point in their life, wondered if they were enough. You are. I am. We are. 

Further Readings:
What Does It Really Mean to Be Queer: Shape
Confessions of a Baby Gay: HerKind
Combating Imposter Syndrome, Coming Out as an Adult: Mental Health National

WITH PLEASURE, 

LOVERS