I’m about a week late for #nationalcomingoutday but that’s not really a surprise for me; it sneaks up on me every year. I didn’t come out until two-ish years ago and I have honestly hated more of being Out than I’ve liked. Being queer is this bizarre and constantly evolving process of Being Out and Coming Out over and over ad nauseam, and I can try to spin it as an deeper issue with the ideology of Outness and Closets and how “we shouldn’t even have to come out in the first place why can’t we just stop assuming everyone is straight” but the fact of the matter is I’m exhausted by being Out. That’s it. I’m just tired.
I promise this is going somewhere.
I hate #nationalcomingoutday because as much as it represents liberation and whatever for some (usually white, usually affluent, usually cis-men) queers, it reminds me how far away I am from the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community and it breaks my heart. Every year. Every year I get to see people performing their queerness in some recognizable and marked way and I love that for them, but aside from the rampant biphobia and bi erasure within the queer community (and without, obviously), the issue for me is that there’s nothing for me to perform and if you’re bi you’re expected to prove your credentials in some way and I have nothing to show for my queerness. I might as well just pretend to be straight for the rest of my life, it would be easier I guess, but that’s not my point here.
My point is that I know I have students who feel that same sense of being completely unmoored, isolated from their own community, because I was an undergrad feeling that way. For a huge amount of my adulthood, my specific orientation has felt at best like a novelty, and at worst utterly fraudulent-- imposter syndrome strikes in the strangest places. I knew that adult bisexual (or pan, or whatever) women had to exist but my only models for Adult Femme Bisexuality were like...what...Angelina Jolie? Evan Rachel Wood? Not real people, not people I knew and cared about. Who do my students have as models?
Me? And I’m not great, but I’m trying my best.
So I’m out. And loud. I can’t say I’m proud because there are too many problems with the queer community and the fact of the matter is I’m not proud. There are people in my life that I love and can’t come out to, and there are days when I don’t want to be Out anymore. But #itsfine . I don’t have to perform my queerness any way I don’t want to, #itsfine , and I understand that, but it’s also really really hard. Fish would object to being out to your students but of course he would, he doesn’t have to come out. He doesn’t feel like he has to be a role model for anyone else because White Affluent Straight Dudes are a dime a dozen and any White Affluent Straight Dude can pick any other White Affluent Straight Dude if they have a problem with Fish.
I love all of my students wholeheartedly, and I don’t love the queer ones any more or less, but if they feel a little more secure in my classroom, or in academia, or any other capacity in their lives because they had an Adult Femme Queer to identify with, then they’re doing better than I am and that’s all I could possibly hope for. If Fish doesn’t want his students to feel that secure in his classroom, he can absolutely get fucked.
I’ll see you later this week to talk about Palmer.
