The Queer Collective

"Where you involved with the Queer Collective?"

A colleague and I were trying to figure out where we'd met each other before. We both had a sense that this wasn't the first time we'd crossed paths, but couldn't remember meeting previously. We'd worked out that we'd both been at the same university at the same time for a couple of years, but in different years of different degrees, so we wouldn't have shared any classes. She was trying to think of some sort of extra-curricular activity we might both have attended.

"Where you involved with the Queer Collective?" she asked, and I had to keep a straight face as I said, "Um, no."

I had to keep a straight face (pardon the pun) because, at the time I didn't even know the Queer Collective existed, and if I had I would have been praying against it. Because if you don't offer support for "queerness" the people who sadly, mistakenly, think they're queer will realise how mistaken they were and see that they were straight all along. Right? That's how it works, isn't it?

I was not an ally back then.

These days I'd like to think I am one (an ally), but I struggle with that idea because I probably should think I'm queer. I'm asexual... and bisexual (which seems incompatible, but isn't - you could say I'm Ace with a Bi shading, or Bi in theory but Ace in practice), and that's two whole letters in the LGBTQIA+ thingy. 

But I've never been part of the "culture", and I've never thought of myself as queer, so even though I know on one level that I'm not straight, I don't think of myself as queer either.

Culturally speaking, I'm straight. I've come around to accepting "God's beautiful rainbow" slowly, but never from the perspective that it's about my gender expression or sexual orientation.

And yet, my gender expression isn't exactly "standard", either. I've come to realise it's more than a bit genderfluid. I'm more feminine now than I was as a child (if you know me, that probably gives you a huge idea of how "non-feminine", if not exactly "masc", I was as a child), but I'm still happy to take and use things "for men" and shun things "for women" because I honestly believe that functionality trumps social expectations of gender normativity. Growing up and well into my 30s, always felt like gender was a test that I was regularly failing; now I just don't give a rats.

And I think being Asexual, Bisexual and Genderfluid** probably does qualify me to think of myself as queer, if I want to. But it's like someone saying "this shoe will fit you", and you look at it and say "but it's not really my style".

I've always been genderfluid (without knowing there was a word for it), but it took me a while to realise that Asexuality was a) a genuine option and not some form of failure, and b) the camp I fell into. And it took me even longer than that to realise that Bisexuality was also on the cards.* It's weird, but it just never occurred to me that it was an option.† I thought you had to be, well, queer.

You know that flavour of gelato that actually isn't a flavour at all - it's basically just "cream" and then the other flavours get added to it to make it interesting? I think it's called "fior di latte", and it's not even vanilla. That's how I see myself in terms of sexuality. Maybe it's an Ace thing, but I've just never really been anything in particular, so for most of my life I just assumed that meant I was straight.

Now I know better, but I can't think of myself as a queer person or a member of the queer community because I'm not. It's like if someone said to me "oh, by the way, you're a New Zealander". I am not and have never been a member of the New Zealand community and I would feel very uncomfortable presenting myself as a Kiwi (even though I am actually eligible for a New Zealand passport). I've never identified as a Kiwi, and I don't feel like I can start doing so now. Just like I've never identified as being queer, and I don't feel like I can start doing so now.

This has been weirdly obvious to me lately, when things have popped up in my workplace that a queer person might be a stakeholder in. Whenever something even remotely LGBTQIA+ comes around, I don't say "oh, by the way, I'm Ace, Bi and Genderfluid,** so I could be your token queer person on this matter". Nope, I point to the lesbian chick like everyone else. Colleagues who are genuinely straight feel more inclined to speak up on behalf of queer matters than I do.‡

On IDAHOBIT day this year, the university opened a "rainbow room" for LGBTQIA+ people to go and feel like they're in a safe space. There was a question as to who should go and represent my workplace at the opening, and I stood there thinking "I'm in the acronym twice over, but I don't feel like I belong there". 

I don't feel apart from, threatened by or unsafe in the mainstream straight culture. I've assumed I was straight for so long, that I see myself as one of the white cis-het people, while spaces for queer people are havens for those who are oppressed by white cis-het culture.

It's not that I'm closeted, exactly, it's just that I don't feel that my voice is a queer voice, so I shouldn't have a say in matters concerning the queer community. I still wouldn't be in a Queer Collective.

I oddly feel like I shouldn't qualify as an ally because I'm not straight, but I don't qualify as queer because I don't belong to that culture.

I'm... gelato al fior di latte.

*For years I thought I wasn't interested in women - turns out I am, I just have a type, and they weren't particularly visible (to me) until more recent years

† Although it's probably not weird. I think there's a whole body of "women in midlife discovering their sexuality is fluid" - something that people who figured themselves out as teenagers probably don't get... if anyone really does figure themselves out as a teenager

‡ Actually, part of me doesn't want to be particularly known for my not-straightness in case I have to put up with the support from the allies on staff.

**Edit: I'm not Genderfluid, really, as it's not my gender that floats around (I'm a Cis woman, and haven't wanted to be anything else since I was a child, when I wanted to be a boy because they had better toys and more comfortable clothes), but rather my gender expression. I just don't have a better word for this right now.