Tag: queer

Straight people and the word “partner”

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I had a chat with ChatGPT and had it write this post.

In recent years, the use of the word “partner” to describe romantic relationships has become more common. This gender-neutral term can be used to refer to a significant other, spouse, or life partner, regardless of their sexual orientation. It’s a term that promotes inclusivity and respect for all types of relationships. However, there are differing opinions on the use of the word “partner” among straight individuals.

Some people believe that “partner” should only be used by members of the LGBTQ+ community to describe their romantic relationships. This is because the LGBTQ+ community has historically faced discrimination and has often had to find alternative terms to describe their relationships due to the lack of recognition and legal protections. They may feel that using the word “partner” by straight individuals erases the historical significance and cultural appropriation of the term.

However, others argue that language is constantly evolving and that using the word “partner” as a more inclusive and gender-neutral term is a positive step towards creating a more equal and accepting society. The decision to use the word “partner” or not is a personal one, and it’s important to respect different opinions on the matter.

In some cases, straight women in relationships with homophobic men may use the word “partner” in queer spaces to create a sense of ambiguity around their relationship. This could be seen as an attempt to conceal the fact that they are in relationships with men who hold homophobic beliefs and to create the assumption that they could be queer to give their voices more authority in queer spaces than they may really deserve.

However, in this scenario, the use of the word “partner” to conceal one’s heterosexual identity could be perceived as dishonest or misleading. It could also be seen as an attempt to appropriate LGBTQ+ culture and exploit the privileges and safety that come with being perceived as part of that community. It’s important to be transparent and authentic about one’s identity and relationships, and to respect the norms and values of the communities and spaces one participates in.

In conclusion, the use of the word “partner” to describe romantic relationships is a personal decision, and it’s important to respect different opinions on the matter. However, it’s also important to be transparent and authentic about one’s identity and relationships, and to engage in open and honest discussions about the challenges one faces. Additionally, it’s important to acknowledge and reject any form of discrimination or prejudice, including homophobia, and to actively work towards creating a more inclusive and accepting society.

A celebration of queer rights in Australia

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In Australia we’re in the middle of a campaign for a government survey on whether the law should be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry. The going is really tough, and a lot of us are feeling really shitty: the attacks are coming strong from the No campaign.

But: some positivity. Despite marriage equality not yet having arrived in Australia, we do have a lot of rights, and rights that are worth celebrating. And importantly rights that prove that our equality does not have terrible consequences for society.

Let’s celebrate these rights, and use their existence to argue for further extension of our civil and human rights.

The right to exist

Fundamentally, in Australia, we have the right to exist. The law doesn’t prohibit our existence. For all the hatred we face, the abuse, the violence, our right to exist is protected. Around the world, not all LGBT people have that right protected.

The right to fuck

Sexuality and sex is a core part of [most of] our existence. In Australia we have the right to fuck anyone who can and does consent. Some people engage in sexual violence against people asserting that right. Some put acid in lube dispensers in gay saunas. But none of that removes the right we have to fuck anyone who can and does consent. Around the world, not all LGBT people have that right protected.

The right to form domestic partnerships

Australia is pretty good when it comes to recognizing de facto partnerships — including those between same-sex couples. We’ve established over the pervious weeks that they are not identical to marriages but even so, de facto couples are afforded most of the rights and benefits that married couples are. It’s not perfect, but we do have some of the most progressive de facto rights and protections in the world.

The right to migrate

Spousal migration to Australia is easy. I know: I’ve done it. Admittedly as a white man, but the right to migrate to Australia as the spouse (de jure or de facto) of an Australian citizen or permanent resident is protected, and dependent on (almost) nothing except the status of the relationship. Migration law recognizes the status of de facto relationships where cohabitation hasn’t occurred because of the illegality of the relationship where the couple previously lived.

In practice it can be hard, expensive, and complicated, but the right to migrate with our spouses exists. Few other countries offer this.

The right to employment

Discrimination against a person on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, or marital relationship status is against the law in Australia. Employers are not allowed to discriminate against us.

They do, of course. But they don’t have the right to do so. And our right is to be protected by law against such discrimination.

The right to transition

Unlike in many places in the world, trans people in Australia have the right to transition. Socially, medically, and administratively. This is not to suggest it is straightforward or that the process of transition isn’t riddled with gatekeeping bullshit, but trans people have the right to live in whatever gender role(s) suit, according to each person’s own determination.

Trans people have the right to receive support to transition, the right to a name change on official documentation, the right to change gender markers on official documentation (including to X if neither male nor female is appropriate). Around the world not all trans people have these rights.

The right to celebrate

These — and other — rights come along with the right to exist openly and freely. The right to celebrate. We have bars and clubs that are not hideaways, but open and public venues that SCREAM queer. We have Mardi Gras in Sydney every year, and politicians incessantly turn up for photo opportunities. There are plenty of problems in the queer party scene, including racism, sexism, and transphobia, and we need to work on that. But we have the right to work on it because we have the right to celebrate.

The right to marry

Coming soon.

The right to marry is an addition to our existing rights, wide-ranging rights that in Australia are surprisingly progressive. It’s right and good that we demand access to marriage, but let’s do so in the context of celebration of our existing rights, and how much these rights add to society.

2000px-LGBT_flag_map_of_Australia.svg

Why straight people should say Yes to gay marriage

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For most queer people, same-sex marriage, gay marriage, marriage equality, call it what you will is about equal access to a legal institution, and for us equality is important.

For a large part of mainstream society, equality honestly just isn’t that important, and inequality doesn’t affect your day -to-day lives. I know you don’t really care about queer people’s mental health or about queer teens’ suicide rates. Yes, it’s sad, but it doesn’t really affect you, and you’d rather it all just went away.

I know that to a large number of you, the gays are an irritation, an inconvenience. Of course it gives me the shits that you see my existence as an inconvenience, but I won’t pretend it isn’t so, and try to sell you same-sex marriage on a platform of equality, benefit to queers, and #loveveislove.

I know that since we are an inconvenience, you’d rather we just went away, but unfortunately (or otherwise) we are here to stay. Society has tried for centuries to reduce the inconvenience we cause by making us go away, but I think we all realize that we are not going anywhere.

So aside from the equality that we care about, I’d like to share with you how same-sex marriage can help solve some of the inconvenience that you care about.

Admin is a mess

In most states and territories in Australia, there is some kind or relationship register or civil partnership register that unmarried couples can use to register their relationships. Same-sex couples are required to use these registers if they wish to register their relationships. It’s a mess: each state or territory that uses such a scheme has to administer this scheme, as well as administering the recognition of similar interstate schemes and administering the recognition of marriage, which itself is looked after by the Commonwealth. All this jumble, all these intertwined systems could be streamlined and simplified simply by opening up marriage to all couples who want to register their relationships.

Think of all the taxpayers’ money that could be saved. Think of all the red tape that could be done away with. Think of all the extra time, money, and resources that could be put into roads, schools, and hospitals instead of managing half a dozen mostly-equivalent systems that could all be consolidated into the one institution that already exists and is universal: marriage.

Determining next of kin is a mess

When people in same-sex relationships die or fall ill, how much time, money, and effort is spent trying to ascertain who their next of kin is? Lots. Doctors and medical staff spend time and taxpayers’ money trying to find out who should make decisions on a person’s care, when they could be taking care of patients. Taxpayers’ money and administration time is spent in courts trying to determine who a dead person’s next of kin is, who has rights over their affairs. And all of this could be solved by opening up marriage to couples who want to use marriage to manage this.

Barring same-sex couples from marrying costs us all money, and reduces the quality of our healthcare. It’s such a simple fix.

Children are important

Same-sex couples have children. The debate on whether they should or not is a different one, but the fact is: they do. And children of same-sex couples are important. Their lives are important, their childhoods are important, and their education is important.

Children’s lives are easier when the administration of their lives and their education is simple. And that involves recognizing their parents. Marriage makes this super, super simple. It instantly recognizes co-parents, and reduces time and money spent by education systems and other systems administering children’s lives and arrangements. This doesn’t just improve life and education for the children of same-sex couples; it improves life and education for all children. Streamlined education systems with simple admin benefit everyone. Opposition to same-sex marriage is very literally holding your child back.

And aside, if you really do believe that children need a mother and a father, that children of same-sex couples are necessarily at a disadvantage, surely you wouldn’t support putting these kids at more of a disadvantage. Surely you would want to do everything possible to mitigate the effects of that inherent disadvantage. Same-sex marriage does that.

So #VoteYes for you

So straight people, even if you don’t really care all that much about equality, put your support behind same-sex marriage because it benefits you. Even if you actually oppose rights for queer people, put your support behind same-sex marriage because it benefits you. Even if you think queers are a scourge on society, put your support behind same-sex marriage because it benefits society as a whole.

Even if you won’t do it for us, do it for you.

Enough already with #loveislove

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A lot of same-sex marriage advocates really like the hashtag #loveislove. I don’t. It’s harmful.

Today deputy leader of the opposition, Tanya Plibersek, tweeted this in support of same-sex marriage in Australia:

It irritated me quite intensely. Partly because that’s not what same-sex marriage (or marriage equality, call it what you will) is; and partly because of the harmful message it sends.

Amending the law to allow same-sex couples to marry is simply a question of giving same-sex couples equal access to a legal institution. Nothing more, and nothing less. Amending the law is not about recognizing love: weddings (well, most) do that; the legal institution of marriage does not. We are not asking that the government recognizes the love involved in many of our relationships, or that the government supports the love involved in many of our relationships, we are simply asking that the government provides us with equal access to the legal institution for formalizing our relationships.

I feel like I am repeating myself too much, but it irks me that something so simple seems to be so widely misunderstood.

Facts aside, #loveislove seems like pretty good rhetoric to convince people to support same-sex marriage. And oh, how harmful that rhetoric is.

#loveislove says that we should be given equal access to a legal institution because we deserve it. Not that all legal institutions should be equally available to all, but that equal rights are for those who deserve them.

#loveislove invites people to base their willingness to allow us equal access to a legal institution on their opinion of the validity of of our relationships. It invites them to judge that our love isn’t real love in their eyes and deny us equal rights based on that.

#loveislove sets conditions on our equal access to a legal institution. It says our marriages should be based on love – when the law does not (the law says they must be genuine, for life, and exclusive – all of which I disagree with, but that’s another matter).

Worst of all #loveislove erases the queerness of our relationships. #loveislove demands our relationships be based on a heteronormative model of two people who love each other forming a monogamous life-long relationship, when a very large number of queer relationships are just not like that. #loveislove sets up gatekeepers of equal access to a legal institution, and gives the respectable gays the keys, keeping the scandalous queers out. It sets whatever exists of the queer community up against itself, and can only ever make our demands for equal access to a legal institution weaker.

So can we kill off #loveislove? Can we give up asking for permission? Can we demand equal access to a legal institution based simply on the fact that we are people, and without placing conditions on ourselves?

I hope so.

Conflicts on same-sex marriage

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I just found this in my drafts on my Google Drive from August 2014. I probably meant it to be the bones of a piece with sentences and paragraphs and everything, but looks like I could never be bothered to actually write it. (I think the original question was on Q&A). Here it is in its unedited form.

Note the question used “gay people”, so I used the same in the response. I’d normally use “queer people”. See an earlier post for my thoughts on the term for marriage that includes queer people that I refer to here as “gay marriage”.

Why do so many gay people want to be assimilated into the heteronormative-archaic-patriarchal construct that is marriage?

 

  • We don’t
    • Rich vocal minority with means and funding to campaign loudly on this issue make it seem like more gay people see this as a major issue than actually do.
    • Well-meaning straight people with influence see this as an easy cause to get behind.
    • Actual major issues affecting gay people are where the less-vocal majority of gay people actually want to see change:
      • Homelessness, particularly for young gay people
      • Employment
      • Education
      • Access to relevant health services – including sexual and mental health, and especially aged care.
      • Societal, rather than legal change
      • Protection of our culture/subcultures
      • Not being called a poofter on national television or being told by boss to move to New Zealand
    • Underground gay culture is still strong – most gay people really do reject heteronormativity.
  • We do, but we shouldn’t
    • Marriage is a form of social control – government regulating our relationships
    • Gay marriage means more discrimination; not less
      • Immigration (ref UK Home Office guidelines)
      • Treatment of trans people
      • Treatment of poly people
      • Adoption rights
      • Increased stigma to unmarried people – including unmarried couples (of all orientations), single parents
      • Creation of a ‘gold standard’
    • Gay marriage is an attempt to stifle our liberation – by regulating our relationships, our oppressors make us less free; not more free.
    • Marriage is promoted as a right, but in reality it is a civic duty – our responsibility to ensure our relationships follow the approved format
    • Gay marriage creates a public register of gay people that can be used against us by those who would harm us.
    • The whole fucking system is bollocks
  • We do, and we should
    • The law shouldn’t discriminate
      • BUT it still does, indirectly.
      • BUT just because it doesn’t discriminate against us doesn’t mean it doesn’t discriminate against anyone.
    • Family is universal – our desire to form family units that fit within our wider culture is not assimilation – it’s an expression of our relationships being a valid and important part of society
    • Our relationships are normal, not subcultural, and society should recognise that
    • We actually just want the legal rights afforded by marriage, and we reject the archaic patriarchal nature of traditional marriage
    • We can’t completely eliminate societal discrimination if we don’t eliminate legal discrimination
      • Gay marriage, while not perfect, is a definite step in the right direction.
    • We shouldn’t ignore the inequality of discriminatory marriage laws just because there are also worse issues affecting gay people
    • We like the idea of having a wedding and all the cultural tradition that comes with it
    • It’s also just, at it’s most basic element, a certificate and official recognition that two (or more) people  love each other.
    • Some of us want to get married, and that should be reason enough

Versions of gay marriage I have knowledge of and oppose

    • The UK version. Oh god so awful.
      • Spousal veto in particular
      • Really heavily gender-defining
    • The (thankfully overturned) Canberra version (even fucking worse than the UK)
      • Set us apart as different
      • Completely excluded trans and genderless people
  • Versions of marriage including gay people I could support:
    • Any marriage that didn’t exclude any consenting adult. At all. Under any circumstance.
    • None, really. The whole system is fucked

A response to Tom Ballard – LGBT isn’t inclusive enough, but GSD is no solution

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I read this piece by Aussie comedian Tom Ballard on SBS Sexuality, and I was not impressed. I’ll start by saying his intent was certainly positive, but I think he got a few things quite seriously wrong.

In the piece he makes the case for abandoning the acronym LGBT and its extensions, in favor of catch-all acronyms like “GSRM” (“Gender, Sexuality and Romantic Minorities”) or “GSD” (“Gender and Sexual Diversities”). I see his point, LGBT, LGBTI, LGBTQIA etc are both cumbersome and they fail to be fully inclusive, and they always start with LGBT, leaving these four identities as ‘the main ones’, and leaving others as optional and supplementary. So he did make some good points.

However, Tom is a comedian, and the piece was intended as a comedy piece. It was fluffy and came across dismissive. And when discussing people’s identities, jokes are not the best way to do it. At least jokes that mock and ridicule the identities of people we are ignoring and excluding. And especially in a piece about inclusion. He used the too-often used tactic of fictitiously creating an absurdly long acronym to suggest that including identities we should be including is leading to the acronym becoming unwieldy, an (as he puts it) too long to fit on a T-shirt.

But (even ignoring the tired old joke) – who cares? Being inclusive sometimes is cumbersome. Sometimes it is inconvenient. They are some of the features of inclusivity – but the inconvenience is worth it. The identities we embrace by adding letters to our acronym are not to be mocked they’re to be celebrated (and as much as the L, and the G which, incidentally, there is always room for).

Tom’s point about it being impossible to be fully inclusive, though, is a good one. But I don’t think that favoring GSD or GSRM fixes this; I think it makes it worse. In our effort to be inclusive, we risk erasing identities. On paper, GSD works as a catch all – in practice it becomes the new LGB, a shorthand that really doesn’t include everyone it claims to. It becomes an easy way for people to claim allyship to the GSD community, when really they mean they gay men, and would never offer the same support to trans people, or asexual people, or polyamorous people. It’s a way of easily excluding identities while claiming to include them.

GSD and GSRM make me prickle as well because they seem to me a little sterile. A little respectable. They’re just not, well, just not queer enough. They’re acronyms that smack of gay men seeking assimilation. We know that gay men assimilate pretty well, but the rest of GSD/GSRM is left behind.

But more importantly, it extends this idea that we are one single community, when we are not. We are a collection of communities, often with a common cause, often with common enemies, often able to stand together and fight together as allies, but ultimately we are many, not just one. There is no single GSD community, and it’s harmful to pretend that there is. Rich gay men drinking champagne on a rooftop in London are not (always) the same community as, say, black trans women in the USA. Sometimes we have the same battle, often the same enemies, and we really can come together, but very often our communities are distinct and we should recognize and respect that. LGBT, LGBTI, LGBTIQ, LGBTIQA, LGBTQQIPPA, all give each identity and each community their own place in our common cause. They give us strength, not by saying that we are one, but that we are together.

All of this, however is worthless coming just from me, as I write from the same position as Tom Ballard. His piece, and perhaps mine, are examples of gay men wanting to lead the discourse on LGBT issues. It seems hypocritical to say this at the end of what I’ve written, but we need to let that go. It’s a privilege we have come to expect, and one we are so desperate to hold onto, but we have to let it go. We can’t be the gatekeepers of inclusivity. It’s not for us to be leaders, to decide how we brand our inclusivity. It is now simply our job to embrace diversity in our wide-ranging communities, and to celebrate each individual letter in whatever unwieldy glorious behemoth of an acronym LGBT+ becomes.

Note: all responses are welcome and encouraged. I anticipate that I may need to alter some of this based on others’ responses.

That ‘straight queer’ bullshit

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I added some thoughts to Sonya’s. Apologies for ugly formatting, Sonya’s words don’t deserve careful attention to things like aesthetics. John.

A friend recently used the term “straight queer” to describe someone who is very involved in LGBTQ activism but identifies as straight.Sounds like a double-barreled insult to me; ally is the usual term, and even then, we’re very careful how we use it.I fell in love with this term immediately.I bet you did. It allowed you to completely invade our space.

Although I dislike the word “queer” itself (I don’t agree with reclamation) just a thought – you don’t get to decide what words we use to describe ourselves, and why we use them I absolutely love what it stands for. I bet you don’t know what it stands for. It shows that sexuality is not something we can pin down, nor that we should be trying to. That’s not what it stands for.

The ever-growing LGBTQQA alphabet soup wow, “alphabet soup” is a term used by people who aim to mock inclusivity, so way to show that you’re one of them is a testament to the fact that sexuality and gender identity are very complex things specific to the individual. I personally identify as queer because I don’t want to categorize my sexuality in a society that is obsessed with clearly labeling it. Actually our society is obsessed with labeling genders and sexualities that are not cishet. Your identity is the default, so even when you remove all labels, you are still not queer. Sorry to burst your bubble.

The term “queer” disrupts how we think about sexuality it doesn’t, it’s been used for decades to other us and we’re now using it to strengthen our own identity. The only disruption it caused was to our cause. and “straight queer” builds upon this disruption in the sense that it tries to destroy our identities, yes, you are right. It destabilizes what we believe about the LGBTQ community well, it destabalizes the LGBTQ community, but maybe not what you believe about it; most notably that LGBTQ and straight are mutually exclusive you’re talking about heterosexual trans people here, right?. Queer includes straight it doesn’t . Straight is queer too. It isn’t . Sexuality is a big melting pot that doesn’t need, nor functions well with labels. We need labels because they give meaning and reality to our identity. Shoving us in your melting pot labeled “OTHER” is not helpful. At all.

Some might argue that it’s not fair to allow people with all the societal privilege of straightness to identify under the LGBTQ umbrella and thereby enter LGBTQ space. You can identify however you want, but stay the fuck out of our safe spaces with this attitude. I disagree. You don’t get to disagree. We are living in a time when “the closet” is becoming more and more obsolete frankly, it’s feeling more and more necessary right now and the LGBTQ community is slowly becoming a part of “mainstream” society but only because of people like you invading our spaces and trying to destroy our sense of community from within. There is less of a need for exclusively LGBTQ space there is ALWAYS a need for safe spaces. Additionally, queer activism is at a point where we are working to normalize a variety of sexualities you basically know zero about queer activism. Calling in to question the normalcy of “heterosexuality”, the way the term “straight queer” inevitably does, is a surefire way to destabilize the association between heterosexuality and normalcy. It doesn’t though, it just allows you to believe that you have removed yourself from the group that oppresses us, and allows you to believe that the acts of oppression you are carrying out are actually you being oppressed. With this attitude, I repeat: stay the fuck out of our spaces.

Although I believe “straight” can be a part of “queer”, I don’t believe every single person now falls under the LGBTQ umbrella. Correct I wouldn’t feel comfortable calling people like Paul Ryan or Glenn Beck “straight queer”. Good. On the other side of the spectrum, I also don’t believe that one needs to engage in LGBTQ activism in order to “prove” themselves to the LGBTQ community. Correct. But really, I shouldn’t be picking and choosing who is “straight queer”. Including yourself, tbh. No identity label – gay, queer, straight – should be slapped onto any person. Correct. People should be able to embrace the term “straight queer” themselves – whatever their reasons may be. Stay. The. Fuck. Out. Of. Our. Safe. Spaces.

-Sonya

–John

Tamal is gay and our response is harmful

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In an interview with Radio Times magazine this week, Great British Bake Off contestant Tamal Ray was asked about his relationship status and responded “I wouldn’t have a girlfriend; I would have a boyfriend, but I’m single at the moment”. It’s been described as him “coming out” (Attitude, Passport), or a “revelation” (Daily Mail, Digital Spy) – but it’s neither of these things, and it has been met with a response of dismay and disappointment from the straight women of twitter, contrasted nicely with a good deal of excitement from The Gays Of Twitter.

It’s all got me rather irritated.

All of the response – from the reporting of the interview, to the tweets from, well, everybody is indicative of a society that views heterosexuality as a default. We’re assumed straight until we specify otherwise [I’ve written about this before and how I’m not putting up with it any longer] and even our friends who otherwise oppose homophobia still view sexuality not established as meaning heterosexual. Heterosexual is default, so unknown means straight, not specified means straight, anything other than a widely announced public coming out means straight. We have to stop doing this.

We also have to stop referring to incidents of people making comments that indicate that they are not straight as “coming out” or “revelations”. In the case of Tamal, this appears to be him simply correcting an interviewer who mistakenly assumed he was straight, but it happens all the time – people correcting lazy interviewers or making comments to colleagues are referred to as coming out. This sucks because it puts the onus on us to be clear about our sexualities and to comply with society’s rule of Straight As Default. But even worse, because it shames us. It furthers the idea that when society doesn’t know details about us (mostly that we’re queer), it means we’ve been hiding it – but this is usually just not the case. With Tamal, but also with almost every other celebrity who is known to be queer, we haven’t seen a change of status (despite how it’s reported); we just have some new information. And we have to stop believing that we are entitled to this information. We are not entitled to this information.

But we are also not entitled to other people’s bodies, their affection, their love, and their attention – and that’s what I say to the straight women of Twitter who have expressed disappointment or heartbreak over finding out that Tamal is not straight.

Firstly, he was never available to you anyway. Same with Ricky Martin, Lance Bass, Neil Patrick Harris, the list goes on. They were never available to you – not just because of their celebrity status, but because they were gay before you knew. You haven’t “lost” anything except, perhaps, your sense of entitlement. And because your sense of entitlement instills within you an expectation for us to disclose our availability (or lack of) at our earliest opportunity, you feel disappointment when that entitlement is taken away.

Secondly, please stop making public announcements of your disappointment. What you are saying is that being gay is a bad thing. Maybe you don’t hold this belief more generally, but even when you express disappointment about a specific person being gay for a specific personal reason, you are coming from a position of regarding being gay as being a bad thing. So please stop that.

But think also about the people who read and hear your announcements of disappointment. Young queer people who are establishing their identities and how they want to present themselves. Do they care about your own personal celebrity crushes? No. But what they do hear is that you value people less if they’re not straight. That you cannot celebrate their lives unless they are straight. That their being queer will be regarded by some – maybe including you – as a disappointment. So please stop doing this.

There has been mentioned a contrast with gay and bisexual men expressing excitement or joy each time they discover a beloved celebrity is gay or bi or anything other than straight – but it really isn’t the same thing. Part of the excitement comes from the pleasure representation brings. Seeing ourselves represented in the world of celebrity brings validation and a sense of positivity. (It’s true for other underrepresented groups, but I’m not in a position to speak for those.) Having role models to in positions we can aspire to really does bring excitement.

But I shouldn’t shy away from the fact that some of this excitement does come from a sense of entitlement. We see celebrities who are known publicly to be gay or bisexual as (newly) sexually available to us, and we now feel entitled to their bodies and their affection. It seems odd that we appear to be contributing to the very system that tries to keep us down, but we must remember that we grew up in the same heteronormative society that everybody else did. We are not removed from that and our responses are influenced by that. We have homophobia built into us the same as everybody else does. It’s no different because we’re queer.

I suppose personal responses to finding out high-profile people are queer may seem little things that are mostly inconsequential, but they’re not. They come from, and further society’s insistence that heterosexuality is default. They come from and cement heteronormativity, and that is so much more harmful than we realize.

The Thought of a Plebiscite is Truly Scary

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As I say at the start of most of these posts, I’m not really a huge advocate of gay marriage, but on balance, I slightly support it. I have written previously about the reasons, and this post is not an argument for or against marriage, rather some musings on the process.

I think it should be fairly clear to everybody that same-sex marriage in Australia is an inevitability. There is no “if”; it’s all about “when”. With large parts of Europe (including most recently Ireland), most of North America, South Africa, Israel and New Zealand all recognizing same-sex marriage, it is inconceivable that Australia will not see it sometime in the near future, despite resistance.

What is now happening is fairly tedious discussion of the process of bringing this about, with the main options being a parliamentary vote and a public vote. And the prospect of a public vote is frightening and offensive.

Frightening because we will be subjected to months of a hurtful and damaging campaign against same-sex marriage. We won’t, of course, hear from queer people for whom marriage represents further oppression and control; rather we’ll hear homophobes attacking our lives, our families and our right to exist. We see this already when there isn’t a vote looming; we will see it tenfold if any plebiscite goes ahead. And these campaigns won’t just be upsetting to us; they won’t just be hugely damaging to our mental health; they’ll rile up homophobes and recruit undecideds, risking our physical safety. We can avoid this and weshould avoid this, but it seems to be government policy that we be subjected to this.

Offensive because we’re being told that we require consent from mainstream society to live our lives how we choose, and to express ourselves the way we choose. Because we’re being told that an administrative change to three words in a piece of legislation is a major upheaval of society, and that we’re to blame. Because our very dignity is deemed suitable to be decided on by the largely disinterested electorate.

Federal MPs will have an opportunity to end this, to protect us from the harm we face by this ongoing campaign – even if they disagree. Will they put our health, our safety, and our dignity before their own careers? Our fight will never end until we win – even if parliament says no; even if the public says no – so I beg them: end this swiftly. End this now.

I’m Not Coming Out Any More

SuperCroup2 Comments

Note: this piece discusses my experiences. I’m making a huge assumption that some of those experiences might also apply to other people. Any references to LGB people (as opposed to LGBT+)are deliberately limited.

An ask.fm correspondent asks:

How old were you when you ‘came out’ to family/friends? Were you scared?

I’m pretty sure anyone who is openly gay or bisexual is on the receiving end of this question – or a variant thereof – from time to time. On the face of it it’s a fairly innocent question: “when did you first tell your family you were gay?”, and I actually don’t mind answering usually. Although I’m not going to do that here.

Innocent though it is, it’s also a very misguided question. It assumes that we have one grand “coming out”, that there are two states of being: secretly gay/bi and publically gay/bi, but also that we have some sort of duty to tell people details of our sexualities before actually living our lives in the open.

I often speak about “everyday” coming outs. Little events that happen almost daily where we reveal that we are not heterosexual – often when speaking about a partner (“what does she do?”). They are usually very mundane, and certainly not the grand events that the original question wants to know about. Because we don’t only come out once. We come out every single time we meet someone new, and we have to reveal our sexuality.

The more I think about it, the more I dislike it. And I’m not doing it any more.

The Closet is a wonderful invention designed by mainstream society to keep us in our place. We are deemed to be “in the closet” until or unless we announce our sexualities to the world. And always a focus on the announcement part. It’s not just a place for people who choose (for whatever reason) to hide their sexualities, it is for everyone who is gay or bisexual and who has not done mainstream society the courtesy of making clear their sexualities.

Grand or everyday or otherwise, I’m not making announcements any longer. I’m just living my life the way I want to live it, and people can work out for themselves what category they want to put me in. I wish I’d done that from the start, if I’m honest. Wish I’d just told my parents about my first boyfriend, instead of feeling like I had to pre-warn them by making it clear that I was gay first. I wish I had realised that The Closet doesn’t exist, that I didn’t have to come out of anything before I started living my life the way I wanted to.

It’s how society works: they won’t acknowledge you unless they have full disclosure from you first.

I’m not complying any more.

And to my ask.fm correspondent, I was 18, it was damned scary, and it needn’t have been.

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