queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2002-09-17 10:20 am
queerbychoice) wrote2002-09-17 10:20 am
Because I Feel Like Asking
[Poll #60817]
Essay Question for Bonus Points:
Was there anything particularly interesting or unusual about the order in which you experienced these events?
Example: I first heard of the theoretical existence of queer people when I was seven years old, but since I'd never heard of any specific queer people I just treated it as a kind of urban myth, and I didn't actually give much serious consideration to the notion of "What if there really are actual queer people?" until the day I turned queer myself, the spring of 1992, when I was 15, at which point my thought process proceeded all at once in the span of about five minutes along lines something like this: "What if there really are actual queer people? But if people are really capable of same-sex attraction, why would only some of them be capable of it and not others? How horrible it would be if you could fall in love with someone and they'd be physically incapable of falling in love with you too, even if they really liked you and really wanted to! How horrible if love could be limited by something so superficial as body types! Wait a minute, that's what it would mean if everybody were heterosexual too . . . I don't believe love should work that way. I resolve to love anybody whose mind is worthy of me, no matter what body type they have."
And then I didn't meet an actual queer person other than me until nearly two years later, March 3, 1994, when I was 17. So in the intervening time I had nothing but a cheap local public access queer TV show for queer company, and after August 1993 when I discovered David Bowie I had him for company (though I was rather traumatized at the end of high school when my best friend Christine informed me that David Bowie had changed his mind about his queerness and been calling himself hetero since 1983 . . . but that was later, I'd met other queer people in person by that time). I didn't have access to queer books (lack of privacy) nor to the internet (I didn't get internet access until my second semester of college). So I grew up very isolated in a way that probably no middle-class queer teenager in the Western world ever will be again, now that internet access is so much more widely available.
Essay Question for Bonus Points:
Was there anything particularly interesting or unusual about the order in which you experienced these events?
Example: I first heard of the theoretical existence of queer people when I was seven years old, but since I'd never heard of any specific queer people I just treated it as a kind of urban myth, and I didn't actually give much serious consideration to the notion of "What if there really are actual queer people?" until the day I turned queer myself, the spring of 1992, when I was 15, at which point my thought process proceeded all at once in the span of about five minutes along lines something like this: "What if there really are actual queer people? But if people are really capable of same-sex attraction, why would only some of them be capable of it and not others? How horrible it would be if you could fall in love with someone and they'd be physically incapable of falling in love with you too, even if they really liked you and really wanted to! How horrible if love could be limited by something so superficial as body types! Wait a minute, that's what it would mean if everybody were heterosexual too . . . I don't believe love should work that way. I resolve to love anybody whose mind is worthy of me, no matter what body type they have."
And then I didn't meet an actual queer person other than me until nearly two years later, March 3, 1994, when I was 17. So in the intervening time I had nothing but a cheap local public access queer TV show for queer company, and after August 1993 when I discovered David Bowie I had him for company (though I was rather traumatized at the end of high school when my best friend Christine informed me that David Bowie had changed his mind about his queerness and been calling himself hetero since 1983 . . . but that was later, I'd met other queer people in person by that time). I didn't have access to queer books (lack of privacy) nor to the internet (I didn't get internet access until my second semester of college). So I grew up very isolated in a way that probably no middle-class queer teenager in the Western world ever will be again, now that internet access is so much more widely available.
no subject
My family was having a barbeque one summer. I must have been 11 or 12. I remember my cousin (yeah...I finally got one) asking where his wife was. I remember stopping dead in my tracks to pay attention - being the nosy little kid I was. My uncle replied that he didn't have a wife and my cousin retaliated with "Yeah you do! He's inside!" I think I stood there with my mouth open, shocked at my what my cousin had said. I remember thinking, hey, you shouldn't say that!
I never thought about being gay myself when I was younger. I had random crushes on boys, never liked any girls. I questioned myself when I was around 16 for about a second, but decided I wasn't gay. I thought it was weird and I couldn't stand ANY girls so I didn't think it was possible. I didn't really know any kids my age that were gay or questioning until I got to high school. I didn't like many of the kids I went to school with...supposed "gay" ones as well. The personalities of the kids really turned me off and I think that helped to perpetuate the stereotype of gay kids around my age that I was developing. I'm not a sexual person and I sure wasn't a sexual kid. A lot of the gay kids at school were extremely sexual and I was turned off by it all.
Finally, much more recently, I met a girl at work that was gay. We developed a close working relationship that quickly turned into a friendship. She introduced me to the gay community in an entirely new light. She wasn't your typical socially defined, feminine girl. She opened up this entirely new perspective for me. I was able to deconstruct the ideals formed by society concerning gender and sexuality. I realized there were a lot of people out there that didn't fall into rigid categories. But yeah...to make a much longer story short, I moved through 20 years of my life with little more than a fleeting thought of being gay...but it turns out I'm completely queer.
Sometimes I think about the fact that it took me so long to realize I was queer. I think about that and the relatively short time it's been since coming to that realization. I feel weird telling people about it...like I have no room to speak about it because I have no experience...but that's a tangent.
no subject