At the ‘town meeting’ on campus, Ohio State University president Brit Kirwin seemed to me to labor with the term ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered’. While in attendance at the meeting, it seems that I was quick to judge that his apparent awkwardness with the term showed that he was reluctant to address the issues of the ‘town meeting’.
Similarly, my first impression of Sila Singleton’s usage of the term ‘queer’, instead of ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered’ was that she was a fanatic, giving a bad name to those of us I deemed to be respectable gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons.
At some point in time after attending the ‘town meeting’, and after some degree of reflection I questioned the assumptions I had made about Kirwin’s sincerity and about whether I thought I could relate to Singleton’s usage of the term ‘queer’.
I don’t know why Ms. Singleton chose to use the term ‘queer’ instead of ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered ’, but, to me, when I wrote these notes in autumn of 1999, the term ‘queer’ seemed better than ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered.’
The hand-written notes that I am word- processing are the results of what was my attempt to write an opinion article for the Ohio State University Lantern. An aspect of these notes was an intention to promise to readers of the article that I would attend my classes in drag during one day of the academic quarter that fall of 1999.
I make the point in the notes that dressing in drag would be an aspect of my demonstration of my renunciation of sexism. I wrote in those notes that I would not attend classes dressed in a white sheet and hood due to the likelihood of such an act being taken as me showing support for the racist ideas of Ku Klux Klan members; and that, likewise, I would not travel about on campus dressed in what was the uniform of Nazi officials of the Third Reich. Conversely, I would have no shame in being in drag, due to me deeming that there is to me no insult to myself in the act of doing what I deem to be ‘presenting myself as a woman.’
I have yet to determine what it would mean to ‘present myself as a woman’. It seems to me that the various aspects of what I would do to be in drag involve doing things associated with what seems to me to be a socially constructed femininity.
For example, wearing high heeled shoes or thickening one’s eyelashes or wearing lipstick or using other forms of make-up, to say the least, does not necessarily comprise the essence of what it means to be a woman, as distinguished from being a man.
But to get back to what I think about using the term ‘queer’, I wrote in the notes that using it keeps my mind focused on what I then deemed to be the heart of the controversy regarding sexuality-related issues: whether anatomical and physiological sex traits, per se, tell us about our individual worth.
At the time of writing the notes in 1999, I conceived of sexism as an unsound basis for the process by which a person judges the worth of herself or himself or the worth of another person. I want to qualify that statement by saying that what I mean by writing about determining someone’s worth, is a matter of determining the viability of forming various types of affiliations with other people.
My thoughts concerning sexuality-based prejudice are framed in reference to my thoughts about prejudice in general, one of the thoughts being that my prejudices detract from the effectiveness of the process by which I chose my affiliations with others, as I go about seeking to meet my wants; and thereby conflict with my own best interests.
In my notes I write that I understand Kirwin’s awkwardness with the term gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered’. I have sought to find better terms. ‘Sexual minority’ is one term I have resorted to in some of my attempts at getting published or at clarifying my thoughts.
I have misgivings about the term ‘sexual non-conformist’ because sexual activities which are likely, if not certainly, intrinsically harmful such as pedophilia, rape, bestiality, or incest are also non-conformist sexual behaviors.
I wrote in the notes that my attempts to find alternatives to the term ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered’ indicate that it may be worthwhile for me to continue to attempt to determine what my sexuality means to me in relation to all other aspects of my life.
Also, I wrote in those notes that the awkwardness with terms such as ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered’ (GLBT) may be an indication that ideas such terms represent in various people’s minds are yet alien to them.
The fact that the acronym exists in the first place indicates that many deem there to be some commonality of concerns among people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered. Such commonality of concerns may stem from the aspect of deviating from a set of ideas concerning how human societies, generally, have defined sexuality and sex roles.
For the past few weeks I have had the idea that I am being more down to earth, so to speak, and avoiding taking myself too seriously, or reducing the extent to which I take myself too seriously, if I refer to my sexuality as ‘queer’ instead of as gay. As I write this, I dislike having said to two of my coworkers at my grocery job that I like to work there because I get to “wait on other homos”.
At the time, I thought that by that choice of words, I was being down- to- earth, so to speak, by not taking myself too seriously. As I think about that statement now in the solitude of my apartment as I write, it seems that perhaps there was an aspect of self-deprecation to that remark, and perhaps also an aspect of seeking from people who are not ‘queer’, acceptance via derogatorily referring to other ‘queer people’.
It seems that in terms of seeking acceptance from people who are not ‘queer’, it may be the case that I have a tendency to seek to do one of two things or a combination of them: seek to distinguish myself from other ‘queer’ people such as by claiming or trying to demonstrate that I don’t have certain frowned- upon features which some or many people who are not ‘queer’ mentally associate with ‘queer’ people; and two, by seeking, either consciously or subconsciously, to act in agreement with the belief that being queer is intrinsically discreditable.
In the latter scenario, I may seek acceptance from people who are not ‘queer’ by seeking to not challenge what I deem to be the sexuality-based prejudices of such people, deeming that their partial, begrudging, unreliable, and exceptionally conditional acceptance of me is better than having no acceptance at all.
It seems that, implicit in the previous sentence, is something inaccurately negative about my conception of human beings. Perhaps, it is the case that no human being gives to or receives from other human beings, completely unconditional acceptance. Further, it may be the case that there are various bases by which prejudice shapes how and the degree to which human beings accept one another.
In some situations, in my dealings with certain people who are queer, the fact that I myself am queer may be a factor by which a person favorably prejudges me. With this same person, other factors in terms of how human beings categorize one another may come into play, in terms of that person’s choice and subconscious inclination towards affiliating or not affiliating with me. He or she and I may have in common our sexuality but have differences in terms of , for example, our age, or our income-level or our nationality, and so on, which may add to or detract from our attraction to or repulsion from, one another.
It may be the case that my ‘queerness’ is a factor in terms of my dealings with people who are not ‘queer’ such that such persons who are not ‘queer’, will, generally, be less inclined to affiliate themselves with me. However, my sexuality is not the only factor which comes into play in terms of my dealings with people who are not ‘queer’. A person who is not ‘queer’ may deem that my sexuality is a disincentive for him or her to build social ties with me, or may subconsciously be repelled because of my sexuality; however, other factors to who I am may motive her or him to build stronger social ties with me.
It seems to be the case that a person categorizes her or his experiences and also categorizes herself or himself and other people. A person then, through some combination of choosing and subconscious inclination, establishes and maintains her or his social ties according these categorizations. This process of having a sense of one’s ties to others through companionship and community involves a virtually infinite variety of bases for one’s social decision-making processes, though there are general patterns in societies such as those involving conceptions such as race, sex, class, ethnicity, and so on.
At one point in my life, I thought that in order to be true to myself I should not value the acceptance that others offer to me unless they completely demonstrated their support for me as a queer person. Off and on again, I have felt inclined towards taking an all-or- nothing approach with people who are not queer, thinking that they are either for me or against me.
One thought that I have is that there is virtually an infinite variety of modes by which human beings determine how to go about associating with others and how to go about prioritizing such social ties.
Regarding my dealings with people who I deem to not be ‘queer’ and whom I deem to not share my ideas about ‘queerness’ not being an intrinsic disincentive for affiliating with someone, it seems to me that even if a person believes that my ‘queerness’, in and of itself, makes her or his affiliation less viable in terms of her or him taking care of her or his interests, such a person may deem that there are other aspects to who I am which make building some degree of a social tie with me worthwhile.
Sometimes, I have thought that seeking to be on good terms with various people was not a good idea due to suspecting that such persons would betray me in various situations, due to them valuing their tie with me to a lesser degree because of my sexuality.
My current perspective is such that I deem that, in the case of all human beings, the bases upon which social ties are built, are, ultimately, conditional. Moreover, my current perspective is such that I deem that every human being, in some form or another, has prejudices.
Regarding my own case, it seems that my own experience of being different from the mainstream in terms of my sexuality has been a factor in terms of me thinking about the phenomena involved in prejudging others.
However, no matter how much I delve into my own thought processes through writing, there always seems to remain some degree of dissonance between the ideas I may express by speaking or writing, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, the ideas that I express through my social interactions .
My approach to my social ties to people who are not ‘queer’ is related to my approach to having social ties with people in general, in that I seek such ties in order to achieve my objectives. I do not deem that being offended by someone’s awkwardness towards me or me being offended by people seeming to distance themselves from me because of my queerness is in my best interests.
Perhaps if I use the term ‘queer’ I am being more honest with myself than I would be if I used the term ‘GLBT’, because it accounts for the quality of unusualness that people who are not queer, and also that some or many people who are queer, may deem there to be, for example, when thinking about same-sex marriages or same-sex unions, or gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered people rearing children, leading churches, and so on.
Homosexual behavior in human beings is a phenomenon which seems to have existed for millennia. However, the incorporation of it into social institutions such as marriage and child-rearing and rites of passage such as proms is new, and thus, may seem strange to many people, including some or many ‘queer’ folk.
Having stated that, one of the questions I pose is whether it is necessarily the case that what is unusual is bad. Perhaps, the strangeness of for example, two teenage boys going to a prom together as each others’ dates or of two women who, as a romantic couple, are rearing a child, may exist only so long as a person has not inquired into the matter.
It seems to me that what queer people do in terms of romantic or sexual relationships and in terms of rearing children, relates to themes common to the human experience in general. It seems to be the case that people who are queer are seeking to attend to what are, in essence, the same human wants that people who are not queer are not attending to. The only differences are anatomical, and they are, in my opinion, ultimately, inconsequential, all else being the same.
There are various human needs and wants to be addressed; and perhaps the incorporation of ‘queerness’ into the institutions of societies will make such societies, overall, more effective at addressing its current needs, via diversifying the modes by which such needs are met.
Though the modes of meeting various needs can be diversified through the incorporation of ‘queerness’ into societies’ institutions, various needs are, generally, common to all human beings.
For example, infants and children need to be nurtured by various adults in the society through some sort of family structure and also through other structures in the society. All else being the same, a queer couple can attend to a child’s needs and create a family as well as couple that is not queer.
Some may deem that social institutions such as family and marriage are vital to the overall well-being of a society; and that the current status of families and heterosexual marriages in our society is such that there needs to be a return to values which were formerly dominant in our society, in order to avoid a greater crisis.
Such persons may deem that the efforts of queer people to marry and rear children threatens to further damage the institution of marriage and child rearing. I think that the current undoing of traditional ideas about marriage and family indicates that such traditional values need to be modified in order to better suit situations that human beings currently face.
I agree that child rearing and marriage or some form of coupling process between adults are the building blocks of society, but I think that because child rearing and other aspects of family are so important, I want to do my best to think about what those institutions mean, instead of unthinkingly assuming that the way things have been done so far is necessarily the best way to meet the current needs of society.
Creating our societies so as to better address the situations that human beings currently face or seem likely to face in the future, involves incorporating into our social institutions ‘queerness’.
I am not saying that heterosexual marriage or families headed by a heterosexual couple are no longer viable means for meeting various human needs. Instead, I am suggesting that queer people offer additional means to meeting those needs. Queer families and non-queer families can coexist and co-thrive. I encounter few, if any queer people who want to abolish heterosexual marriage and heterosexual child-rearing. Yet some heterosexual people oppose queer marriage and queer families.
There is an additional reason why I prefer the term ‘queer’ over ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered’. I cannot pretend that ‘queerness’ is no big deal. Perhaps, some people who are not ‘queer’ have intended to do what they have deemed to be being supportive of ‘queer’ friends, coworkers, family members, or ‘queer’ people in general, by trying to act as if, for example, a family comprised of two gay men and two small children were nothing more out of the ordinary or noteworthy than yet another inaccurate weather report.
The newness to that, or, in other words, the queerness about that, shouldn’t be ignored. Let’s face it honestly. Doing that involves people genuinely considering the viability of queer romance and queer family life. Long established tradition is not necessarily correct.
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