Being part of the queer community has been something extremely important to me since I was in high school, though I came out in middle school. I have always been queer in one way or another. I was the fat kid growing up, always the largest in my class, always the one made fun of. I was the outcast. I embraced my queerness, my freakhood, by difference. I wanted to be different, it made me special. I enjoyed it, and I still do.
It was easier to be queer when I didn’t have a partner, or when I had a female partner. Now that I’m with a male, and specifically living with a male and being submissive to a male it is very difficult for me, and difficult to maintain my queerness when in many ways I look very heterosexual. This isn’t necessarily a negative thing, but for me it kind of is. I feel washed over, I feel like my queerness isn’t as easily recognized as I’d like it to be.
Sometimes even those who know my orientation do not credit it because of my current partner. I am forgotten about as queer, and it’s really something that hurts me when it comes from those close to me. I may be with a man, but that doesn’t mean I’m still not queer.
What comes into my queer identity? What makes it up? Kink and poly definitely inform my queerness, because they inform my sexuality and no aspect of my sexuality can be analyzed without the addition of all the other aspects. Really, no aspect of my sexuality can be analyzed without all other aspects of my identity taken into account, including gender and size, which is part of the reason why all those identities are subtitles to this blog, because it’s nearly impossible to understand me without understanding all those identities first.
It’s difficult to be femme gendered and partnered with a biologically male and masculine person and to still be labeled as queer. I can embrace the label all I want, and I can try to make that label known to the rest of the world, but that doesn’t always mean I will come off that way.
I can view the plus side of it, as it means I can walk in the heterosexual world and use terms like “partner” which is the primary way I refer to Master as to new people I meet, and which confuses people or makes people assume that my partner is female. This allows me to get into a dialogue about the term partner, about bi/pan/queer sexualities if I so choose.
Now, this is all well and good, and I do try to use it to my advantage as much as possible. I try to sneak in comments like “Just because I’m with a man doesn’t mean I’m straight” or “doesn’t mean I’m not queer.” There are ways that I can subtly influence those around me, but I often wonder if it is enough. If I constantly have to assert my identity, is it really worth it? But, then again, I have the same issue with my gender identity. Perhaps my identity fetish is just too advanced for easy identification.
I’ve read about similar experiences with other bi/pan/omni-sexuals and queers, and people with FtM lovers, and I know that I am not alone in this, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. I know that this problem will not change any time soon, but maybe I can figure out a better way to deal with it.
