What and who is included in the lgbt/queer/gay(general) communities arenāt always super clear cut actually and like... thatās fine.
Like a cishet man that likes doing drag likely doesnāt consider himself queer and neither would any of his queer/lgbt friends but he might still be super active in the community and mostly hang out with gay guys and bring his girlfriend to pride and maybe even perform at pride. And maybe the queer community is where he feels most at home because heās kind of feminine, and doing drag is a big part of his life.
Irl probably almost nobody would kick this guy out. A lot of internet discourse would. But that kind of makes no sense.
I grew up in the theatre community, and after I learned what being gay was I discovered that gay people were everywhere in theatre. But so were straight people that just kind of fell outside of societal norms a bit. Straight people that often just felt more comfortable around gay people because they could just be themselves.
And yeah thatās an obvious example of people that arenāt queer hanging out in queer spaces but thereās also a ton of gray area. Straight polyamorous people for example. People that identify as cis that ācrossdressā or even do some things that might be considered to be part of ātransitioningā. Or some intersex people that donāt id with the lgbt community. Or people that id as non binary but not as trans.
At some point you need to stop trying to figure out who definitively belongs in the club because like... there is no club. Irl queer spaces tend to cover huge swaths of people. Thereās a lot of gray area. And also youāll also tend to find a lot of cishet gender conforming people in these spaces too. Because their significant other or a family member or a good friend is lgbt+ or because theyāre poly or because they just feel more comfortable around queer people or they just feel like fighting for gay rights is something that theyāre supposed to be doing. And if theyāre respectful and the space isnāt explicitly āno cishet right nowā then like, them being there isnāt that much of an issue usually.
All of this internet discourse that tries to exclude or bully people just isnāt grounded in reality.
