tryingtospeaktryingtospeaktryingtospeak the pain

Sometimes, I hate being queer.

((Harriet there was always somebody calling us crazy
or mean or stuck-up or evil or black
or black))

I hate that we must first prove our existence before we can petition for rights, and that we've yet to prove our existence.

((and we were))

I hate that we must first accept that others do not accept us before they will begin to accept us.

((nappy girls quick as cuttlefish
scurrying for cover))

I hate that our parents tell us that they did not raise us to be gay, that conservatives tell us that it is an abnormal abomination, and that society tells us that it is a crime.

((trying to speak trying to speak
trying to speak
the pain in each other's mouths))

I hate that people are killed for being gay, lesbian, transgender, transsexual, intersex, or a member of any prescribed category of Other, and that there will be protestors at their funeral.

((until we learned
on the edge of a lash
or a tongue
on the edge of the other's betrayal))

I hate that sixty percent of teen suicides are by queer people.

((that respect
meant keeping our distance
in silence))

I hate that when someone finds out that I'm gay, and then leaves shortly thereafter, I wonder if it is because I am gay.

((averting our eyes
from each other's face in the street))

I hate that I am expected to be proud of people who support my existence, to appreciate their awareness of my sexuality.

((from the beautiful dark mouth
and cautious familiar eyes
passing alone.))

I hate that, when I am honest about who I am, people tell me that they would be okay with homosexuals if only we wouldn't make such a big deal out of it. In the meantime, I am consistently bombarded with the icons and idols of heterosexuality.

((I remember you Harriet))

I hate that when I attend a reunion for veterans to support my grandpa, even though I practice a different set of values, the veterans will speak for three consecutive days about the freedom of this country but make gay jokes about fairies and closets as if they have the right to degrade us, as if patronizing us is their territory. I hate that I silence myself for their comfort with a scathing awareness that if they knew that I am gay, they would not speak to me.

((before we were broken apart))

I hate the blithe advice I receive on marriage, when it is not in fact an option for me.

((we dreamed the crossed swords
of warrior queens))

I hate the way that some men will stare at me, as if I exist for their enjoyment, as if I might submissively participate in whatever sexual fantasy they have concocted.

((while we avoided each other's eyes))

I hate that my friends are afraid to acknowledge their sexual identities to the point that they deny it even to themselves, because it is just too hard to be gay.

((and we learned to know lonely
as the earth learns to know dead))

I hate the information management that I experience every time I meet someone or talk with someone—the anxiety of indecision: to reveal or not to reveal? To correct someone asking about all of my suitors, or to smilingly let it slide in the demure fashion typical of my socialized gender role?

((Harriet Harriet))

I hate that I feel a surge of relief when my ex-boyfriend writes to me to tell me that he wants to meet my "girl," and that every time I have a message on facebook from someone with whom I don't usually speak, I worry that they are writing to ask if I'm gay (yes, it happens).

((what name shall we call our selves now
our mother is gone?))

I hate that when I talk about my friends, people will ask me if these friends are gay or straight (already assuming both a gender binary and dichotomized sexuality), but that they do not ask this of my heterosexual peers.




An ethical query emerges in light of such an analysis: how might we encounter the difference that calls our grids of intelligibility into question without trying to foreclose the challenge that the difference delivers? What might it mean to learn to live in the anxiety of that challenge, to feel the surety of one's epistemological and ontological anchor go, but to be willing, in the name of the human, to allow the human to become something other than what it is traditionally assumed to be? This means that we must learn to live and to embrace the destruction and rearticulation of the human in the name of a more capacious and, finally, less violent world, not knowing in advance what precise form our humanness does and will take.

--Judith Butler, from Undoing Gender