(no subject)

[sciatrix]

 I just got out of a really interesting conversation about queerness and community and access to easy entry points of community, and one of the things one of the participants in that conversation said struck me. They said that when they're lonely and looking to make specifically queer friends, they feel like the only way they have to do that is to use Tindr to find people to potentially date, and then maybe see if friendship comes out of that. Or maybe otherwise to go out and be attractive and potentially available, and maybe make friends that way. 

I'm sort of personally horrified by the notion, in part because it's so inaccessible to me and in part because that's some heavy pressure to be available and attractive in exchange for affection and intimacy. And I'm newly really grateful for the people in my life and the set of circumstances that has let them be here for me, both personally and in the aggregate. 

This isn't intended to be a judgement on anyone who feels that way or anyone who that idea would work for or anything. It's just a system that would not work for me, and one I'm glad not to currently find myself in. 

Comments

[lazaefair]

You cannot rely on sex and politics for emotional intimacy, that's not healthy.

I was JUST complaining about this last night. Part of a conversation I was having about how queer people define and present themselves, and why I've never felt like I was part of any LGBTQ community and never made whole-hearted efforts to try. A lot of it is just that I'm not in the market for dating atm, so that avenue's out, and I find queer people who seem to have substituted "being queer" for having an actual personality to be boring. And that seems to be a lot of them.

(To be fair, I find a lot of people boring, and since there's a smaller percentage of queer people in the general population to begin with...yeah.)

[sciatrix]

*thoughtfully* I also do find that I'm not remotely unique among queer people in that the face I present to people is not necessarily the face I put on when I'm 'at home' and can be my true self. (I'm also often very aware of the thing where I am simultaneously out and passing--I tend not to be open about being ace, for example, in my professional life but I am pretty open about being some flavor of queer. This is partly because I'm obvious enough if you know what you're looking for--and most queer people do--that I own a shirt saying "ASEXUALITY: CONFUSING THE FUCK OUT OF YOUR GAYDAR." It was so emblematic of my high school and college experiences that I bought it the moment it became available. I have had quite enough of people coming up to me, leaning in, and telling me that I can tell them anything I want, they're sure to be understanding. Yeah, sure you will.)

Anyway, like--I tuck a lot of myself away until I can be sure it's safe, and I wonder if that isn't part of it. There are so few places to be just present-and-queer without having to have some kind of reason for being yourself, either sexual or political as you say, and like--I dunno. There is so much pushback from straight/cis people, I can see why someone who doesn't have access to anything else would lean very heavily on the sex-or-politics reasons for connecting to other people, and then that comes across as being one-dimensional.

At some point I'm going to write up my theory of detoxing to explain the phenomenon I often observe where people who have been prevented from expressing a part of how they feel about something run into other people who agree and immediately overcorrect enthusiastically in the opposite direction entirely. I think it's a normal part of recalibrating and integrating yourself, but it can definitely be confusing and upsetting if you don't understand the trauma that the person is processing and reacting to--especially if you happen to have the opposite sort of trauma yourself.

[lazaefair]

At some point I'm going to write up my theory of detoxing to explain the phenomenon I often observe where people who have been prevented from expressing a part of how they feel about something run into other people who agree and immediately overcorrect enthusiastically in the opposite direction entirely.

Oh, I have no doubt that accounts for a lot of what I've seen. And it often shades into an almost spiteful "fuck you" defiance. Which I totally understand because I've felt that impulse myself for various aspects of my identity, but it's not great when I'm on the receiving end because they've assumed I'm straight. Doubly not great when it's a rich, cis gay white man who acts like he has the absolute last word on oppression because he's gay. >_>

Anyway, like--I tuck a lot of myself away until I can be sure it's safe, and I wonder if that isn't part of it.

Same. But also, I've increasingly found that I'm more likely to be friends with someone based on personality, thought patterns, conversational styles, intelligence level, etc. rather than a demographic identity or a shared interest. I can't force a connection with a boring or incompatible person just because they're queer (or Asian, or a nerd, or...)

On top of that, rather than feeling free to be myself, sometimes I feel like there's this pressure in Queer-With-A-Capital-Q spaces to perform a certain level of queerness that's more than what I want to do or that would be authentic for myself. Which just compounds the sense of being an impostor.

[wellthisisnice]

Oh my, just the other day i said in a comment on PF that i'm sure some of my school classmates thought i'm some flavor of queer because "i've always been queer coded" xP

And now i really want to read your theory of detoxing in relation to queerness and trauma. Hope you have to time to get to it!

[sciatrix]

I've been claiming I'm "just about to write it up" for like six years now. Oops.

[wellthisisnice]

Mood.