Gay

My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow “them” to be more like “us.”

Week 5 meant midterms. I was sitting at my desk in my room, catching up on a bunch of different readings for a multicultural education midterm that I had the next day, when I read the above quote in “White: Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” written by Peggy McIntosh, founder of the National SEED (Seeking Education Equity and Diversity) Project on Inclusive Curriculum.

I immediately drew a parallel to gay rights, particular everyone’s favorite controversy: gay marriage. I wondered, was gay marriage an attempt to make gay people straighter? I concluded that, no, actual marriage itself wasn’t, but yes, the liberal gay marriage “agenda” was, mainly through what I thought was a heavily implied message of No-On-Prop-8 campaigns and the direct messages of individual supporters: “Gay people are normal people too and deserve every right just as much as straight people do!”

Gay people are normal too, but what’s normal? Let’s define it sociologically with regard to the United States. In the case of race, as McIntosh pointed out, it would be being white, which comes with living by Western culture, the dominant culture of this country. In the case of sexuality, it would be being straight. But being “straight” isn’t just about being attracted to the opposite sex; it is also about abiding by the appropriate heteronormative gender role. I’m also going to add that being “normal,” as applied to families, means living the long accepted model of a family: two parents and some kids (this family model is especially pushed by the gay marriage supporters, who like to photograph and show off two dads or two moms with their 2.5 happy children.)

A lot of gay people are fine with being normal. I realize that yes, it is easier if they could just be included. Some just want to make it in the heteronormative society that America is today, and that means conforming to society as much as possible.

But then there are others, others in the diverse LGBTQ community that, by the sociological definition of “normal,” are not normal. And they are proud of it. They don’t want to have to be normal or assimilated into heteronormative culture in order to be accepted by society and to get the rights they deserve.

There are those who reject heteronormativity, those who refuse to conform to their gender roles, the things considered “normal” in Western society. There are guys who wear make-up, guys who cross-dress but still identify as male, guys who will give you a z-snap with extra sass and strut away. (The latter might seem normal if you’re a fag hag who constantly hangs out with your gay friends, but I’ve only had nothing but straight guy friends for the last couple of years and I can affirm that “feminine” gay guys aren’t always considered normal or respectable.) And then there are those with “queer” families.

I recalled an article I read about a year ago, “Resist the Gay Marriage Agenda!” Sounds like some kind of conservative right-wing piece of propaganda shit, right? Well, I thought that it was shit—that was for sure. But it was actually written by “Queer Kids of Queer Parents” (QKQP), people that you’d expect to support gay marriage because they were gay (or “queer;” the word was still very vague to me), but they didn’t. I had very quickly dismissed the article because it was a bunch of sophist rhetoric, and being the logic-seeking left-brain guy (and proposition 8 opponent) I had always been, I didn’t let myself get convinced by artistically arranged words that some angry cocksucking kids painted.

Now, a year later, with more of an understanding and an open mind, I read the article again. I still thought it was shit because it argued one rhetorical fallacy after another, but I at least tried to pick out some of the points I understood (and the ones that were relevant to this entry). The writer mentioned untraditional family structures, such as families raised by three parents or by non-monogamous but and loving couples. These were the things that the writer had to say about them: “The queer families and communities we are proud to have been raised in are nothing like the ones transformed by marriage equality...We think long-term monogamous partnerships are valid and beautiful ways of structuring and experiencing family, but we don’t see them as any more inherently valuable or legitimate than the many other family structures.”

I had to admit, it was hard for me to stomach these examples of “queer families,” and I knew in the long run, I would adopt the normative model of a family for my own family. And I wasn’t going to deny anyone’s right to marry.

The problem is that when gay marriage supporters say, “Gay people deserve to marry because they are normal just like everyone else,” they probably don’t realize that they are leaving out a huge chunk of the LGBTQ community. These unaware supporters’ lives are still heavily socialized and defined by ingrained heteronormative gender roles and traditional family models, so when they’re confronted with members of the LGBTQ community who defy all these norms, they get uncomfortable. They don’t know anymore how to support their position on gay marriage. They’d rather pretend that controversial chunk of the community doesn’t exist.

To the queer families and those to say “fuck you” to gender roles, I’m choosing to stand in solidarity and to not pretend that you guys don’t exist in the LGBTQ community. I’m done insulting you guys, and I’m done standing back when my friends say anything along the lines of, “Gay guys are cool as long as they aren’t too ‘femmy.’” Why should gay people deserve equal rights and treatment? It’s not because they’re normal like all other people. It’s because all other people need to realize that their own societies are fucked up.

Before I went back to studying for my midterm, I wanted to research one more thing, what it meant to be “queer.” I read the Wikipedia page and a few other pages, but I wasn’t too sure what to make of them. I just found a lot of wordy and conflicting definitions. I thought back to a dinner I had with Trung at Red Robin in Redondo Beach. It was August, last year, the same month that Proposition 8 was overturned. I taunted him about it because I knew that his beliefs about gay marriage aligned somewhat with those of the “Queer Kids of Queer Parents” (but he still supported gay marriage). And then I asked Trung what it meant to be queer, because I knew he identified as queer. I was taunting him again because I didn’t give a shit about what it meant to be queer, but he answered anyway, telling me, “It means whatever it means to you.”

Six months later, I knew what it meant to me. I knew that I was queer too.

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“Being gay was, as I had always known it to be, nothing more than some social implications and history all based around a dictionary definition: ‘Being attracted to members of the same sex.’ Sex, not gender. Same sex meant to me other people with the X and Y chromosome. On the other hand, the definition of being queer, as I understood it, meant absolute bullshit.”

- XY Attraction, June 15, 2010.

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“I just wanna punch all the cocksucking faggots in this world, right now. Life to them is nothing more than an excuse to be loud and obnoxious...The first three [letters of the acronym ‘LGBTIQQAP2S’] describe only the gender I’d like to do, while the rest is too different. What’s so similar between a guy who likes to fuck guys and a guy who wishes he had a vagina and boobies? Just because we’re all a sexual minority doesn’t mean we should all be grouped together...I wanna leave, separate myself from them...When I think of being gay, I only think of it in terms of all that I’ve lost, or will lose...I’ve learned that there are such things as uniquely gay experiences, but, they’re not brought on by a heteronormative society, they’re brought on by the male dicksucking community itself. That’s also where I see the parts of me that I don’t want to be.”

- Transcendence, December 20, 2009