In general, relating to people and characters is hard, for me. In fact, making a character who can’t relate to others is a good way of making me relate to that character (thanks, robots).
Like a stray puppy who has inexplicably bonded with me, the question keeps coming back. Recently, however, I’ve been making a little progress - but the progress in understanding the why’s and how’s is a much bigger topic, so if I ever write about it expect something more substantial than whimsical Tumblr post.
That said, here are a few of my thoughts. I just uncovered an example of where relating is so hard. Watching Queer✨ on Philosophy Tube, Oliver Thorn comes out as bisexual, and talks the long process he took in re-understanding himself as a “bisexual man”. He mentions:
1. Feeling validated when a friend, someone he could see himself in, came out as bi, having mostly seen bi women
2. Once out, having an urge to change the way he dresses. To appear bisexual, to participate in the fashion games
3. Feeling liberated from the straight timeline of educate/train -> marry -> kids
and ... it just seems a little bizarre to me. All three points independently.
For the first, and this goes into a wider issue of how I don’t understand why people need representation*, I don’t get how something as internal as one’s sexuality can be influenced that way by something external.
For the second, I absolutely do not see how one can look gay or straight other than by branding by flags or symbols. Fashion as signalling of sexuality? What? How do you even keep up with that?
For the third, I don’t get how sexuality can be bound up with life plans. I have neither wanted to have kids nor get married for as long as I can remember and it has been in no relation to by sexuality at all. Of course, maybe there is a relationship between these things typically but I can’t see it.
It seems bizarre someone would give this so much thought. It seems bizarre to me to have all these things bound up with sexuality. I never associated bisexuality with anything other than “great I’m attracted to these people”. It wasn’t a revelation, I didn’t start seeing men differently, or have to consider any other part of myself. I simply acknowledged “there’s no particular reason I wouldn’t date a man” and then moved onto the other parts of my life. Sure it was a little exciting since I was then able to consider new possibilities, engage in new fantasies, ect, but soon the novelty faded, and it had zero impact on any other area of my life. A similar thing happened when I learnt of the word “agender.” I was just, “Okay, cool, gender doesn’t matter to me, I’m that,” and then proceeded not to think about it for a while (I do have more thoughts on gender now but that’s a massive new topic)
I don’t get why Queer Theory is a thing in particular, or why it’s a big theory, when queerness appear to be such a small part of the world. Maybe it’s big, but it’s a small part of me, a simple descriptor, and I can only see it that way in the wider world. And this is my issue with many more things: I cannot get why certain things matter to people the way they do - their priorities are all misaligned with my own. Even people who I might be expected to relate more to, other queer people, I cannot.
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