I have mixed feelings every June.
And at every pride parade I’ve ever attended.
Because I don’t fit neatly into one of the first four letters.
I can fit myself approximately into pre-existing microlabels — the ones that many people roll their eyes at (I’m approximately agender/aromantic/asexual, but not exactly, because I’m sort of pansexual in some ways not related to attraction, and sometimes I think gender is more how other people see you rather than how you see yourself)— but even those distinctions, those nuances, aren’t entirely helpful to me. There are a lot of ways to exist in relation to others and in social categories like gender, but I don’t feel fully comfortable with any label except “queer.”
Of course, a lot of people also take issue with the “Q” and with those of us who use the word to describe ourselves. Because “queer” is not well-defined enough for people who like to discriminate or for people who like to gatekeep. It makes people uncomfortable when they can’t immediately file something into a clear category with specific and well-known boundaries (which isn’t to say, of course, that the well-defined categories don’t also make people uncomfortable).
You can’t hate me as easily if you can’t point to why you hate me. You can’t exclude me as easily if you can’t point to why…
