i read an anecdote ages and ages ago from a gay person who grew up with gay parents, and struggled to find any kind of belonging in the gay community because everyone else there was bonding over having homophobic parents. everyone else was defining themselves by their suffering and oppression rather than by their sexuality, leaving this gay person to feel like they weren't really gay because they didn't have the right experiences. they wondered whether more gay people would feel this way as more children grew up with gay parents, if the gay community would leave them behind for not having suffered enough. i think about that anecdote a lot.
a lot of the current rhetoric around gender reminds me of that anecdote. a lot of people are willing to go "transgender people are oppressed for their gender presentation, therefore if you're not oppressed for your gender presentation, you're not trans." but i don't think we should be defining ourselves by our suffering and oppression. what will we do, in a few years, in a few decades, as there start to be, say, adults who were supported in their transition as children? what will we do when a stereotypical trans person can genuinely say they didn't suffer hardship for being trans?
i'm afraid i know the answer. i'm afraid that people are going to close ranks as they've already started closing ranks against intersex people, against nonbinary people, against double binary people, against closeted people. as some people have started closing ranks against people who transitioned in the opposite direction from them. as many people have closed ranks against people with edge case gender experiences. "i don't consider you to be oppressed, therefore you are not welcome to share in this community you might otherwise belong in."
i wish people would understand that we shouldn't do this. i wish people would understand that we benefit from a broader, more inclusive community more than we benefit from whatever purity testing oppression olympics it is that i keep running into.
This is such a valuable and important sentiment. I didn’t know of this anecdote, and above it’s being applied to transgender people, but I believe it’s still valuable for the entire queer spectrum. Cause what if it’s easy for us to exist one day?
I grew up with very supportive parents. I knew that gay people existed before I knew I was bi. My mother was the one who told me at a young age that the song “last christmas” intentionally features gender neutral pronouns cause it was a song dedicated to a man, from a man, and that wasn’t as acceptable then as it is now. That moment shaped and tbh still shapes how I view almost everything regarding being queer.
i also do believe that at this point in time, even the people who, like me, have it easy, still aren’t ‘not opressed’. Even though I don’t face homophobia in my daily life I worry about not being able to marry the one I love due to Politics and the recent shift to the political right in the population. This alone makes me know just how Easy it is to define yourself by your oppression, and just like the person above elaborates, we should define ourselves by who we are and not by other people telling us what we can’t be.