I’m bi and primarily date people of a gender different than my own.
Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I’m queer enough for Pride.
What are your thoughts?
So, this is super common among people who are bisexual, pansexual, polysexual in some way that if you don’t have a certain like quota of similar gender partners or if you haven’t had a similar gender partner yet but you’re somehow not queer enough, then you’re going to be like taking up space in the queer community that is not yours.
I am happy to tell you that that’s a lie.
You are queer enough. If you’ve never had sex with anybody, you can still know that you’re queer.
Someone can know that they’re straight without having ever had sex.
So why is it that a bisexual person has to have had sex with people of both genders in certain proportions in order to qualify as queer?
Another way that sometimes comes up is people saying that like if it’s a queer-centered space, they don’t want to see bi people who are interacting romantically or sensually or sexually with people of a gender different than their own because that’s like too straight and first of all, you never know what someone’s gender is.
You have no idea how queer the sex that they’re having is and secondly, I feel like a lot of that critique is usually about people’s internalized biphobia rather than about any ways that those people being present actually changes the space.
Is it true that some bi folks have shitty partners who are not particularly queer-affirming or in with the queer community?
Yeah, sure.
Lots of monosexual queers also have shitty partners who are deep in respectability politics.
There are plenty of trans people who are happy to throw other queers under the bus to try to like make sure that they themselves are safe or that their way of life gets to continue.
Someone having a shitty partner does not mean that that kind of sex needs to be completely absent from your party.
People who are of two different genders can have very queer sex.
People of the same gender can have very heteronormative sex.
Trying to find ways to like box people out is almost always going to be a problem.
Our labels work best when they are descriptors that we choose to apply to ourselves rather than narrow boxes that we try to define people out of or limit admission to.
The queer umbrella in my mind is big enough for all of the people who feel that they are queer and if you feel like someone is like faking their queerness or lying about it, mind your own business.
Maybe you need to get a hobby, right?
Find something else to do, right?
How are they harming you?
How are they affecting you?
I think that there is this unfortunate way that because queer communities have been under threat for a long time, there’s this desire to like police who gets to come in to some extent.
And I get where it comes from in terms of not wanting to invite in people who will cause harm or who will be a problem for our communities and at the same time, when we spend so much of our energy trying to make sure that we keep people out who might not 100 percent belong, what we end up doing is keeping out a ton of people who do belong but who haven’t met our standards in some weird way.
So instead, like mind your own damn business, right?
Unless they are directly doing something that harms you or causes a problem for you, who fucking cares?
Leave them alone.
If they are doing something that directly harms you, address that with them purposely.
You don’t need to change the policies of your entire thing just because one person did something you don’t like, right?
And you might also just not like a person and that’s OK.
You might be like, “I don’t like this person. I don’t like how they are in this space,” and that doesn’t mean that they are a bad person or they’re doing something wrong or that’s like less morally pure or that you need to kick them out forever.
Sometimes you can just not like a person, not like how they are in a space and you could still both go to that space and live.
So, again, you’re queer enough.
I promise.
You are queer enough.
Anyone who’s trying to police you out is a jerk and you should not pay any attention to them.
If you think that you are queer, if you are worried that you’re queer, if you’re questioning whether you’re queer, you belong in queer spaces.
You belong here.
We want you here and anybody who doesn’t again is a jerk.
Don’t listen to them.
Don’t care about their opinion.
Their opinions matter way less than your opinion of you being queer.
