With summer Pride events winding down—Edmonton and Calgary are still slated for August—I wonder how much a parade or a dance broadens minds. I’m not thinking about straight people. Our allies have shown they love a party as much as we do. Their attendance does seem to create more of a connection just from being there. My wondering concerns all the letters that comprise that alpha-numeric combo that sometimes represents us: LGBTQQIP2SAA (or something like that—there are various versions).
Is the rainbow flag sufficient or are more lines, colours and shapes required? What is it about queer that fails to encompass all?
A passage comes to mind from Jeremy Atherton Lin’s Gay Bar (Back Bay Books, 2021):
We hear the word community all the time. Often it
sounds like wishful thinking. Queer community is just
as vague—just piling a confusing identity onto an
elusive concept. Maybe community…excludes inherently…
Imagining London, I saw not one big queer coterie, but
different people moving in different directions, entropic.
I thought of amiable moments I shared with nurses or
people who worked in local shops. They came to mind
clearly. A queer community I couldn’t picture.
Community arises from coming together and wanting to belong. Hello, Pride. But I agree with Lin that, once you define it, there will always be outsiders. Even allies don’t quite have an in. They can support queers, but as heterosexuals, they are still technically apart rather than a part. I hear some queer people bemoan how bachelorette parties have taken over drag brunch venues. I also hear disdain in their voices when they say words like heteronormative and breeders, as if all things straight people do should be shunned. There are differences between heterosexual and queer lifestyles and mentalities but, as someone who deeply felt rejected growing up, I’ve never wanted to reject in turn. I don’t twist the golden rule into, “Do unto others as they do unto you.” Hate breeding hate just feels exhausting.
The exclusions that get my back up even more are based on resentments and dissociations within our alpha-numeric gobbledygook designation. When I was coming out, I’d hear of gays hating lesbians and vice versa, while both groups dissed bisexuals. In the 2020s, there are people in the “community” seeking to separate themselves from trans, binary and gender-fluid identities. In turn, I’ve been dismissed by a couple of trans people who vilify my gayness and lump me in with The Patriarchy. My queerness, my outsider-ness is not outsider enough. I cannot be trans; I am just an ally. I must not take up trans space.
I do get the importance of having times and places that are just for people like you. Sometimes “community” can be defined broadly as with the grander Pride events but sometimes, even during Pride Week or Month, there are gatherings just for lesbians or trans or people who identify as asexual or aromantic. People perk up when what they have in common is more specifically in common. When I meet another vegetarian (not a vegan), I literally bounce. A vegetarian? Like me! The conversation can go deeper, the connections greater. Same, no doubt when two people who are bisexual or pansexual have an opportunity to chat.
Sometimes I focus too much on the divisions and all the easy ways there are to pick apart any notion of a queer community. With a glass-half-empty lens, I am brought down by the othering that pops up within and by the disdain I hear as people protect and distinguish their more specific identities.
Yes, the queer “community” has its own fractures and divisions. But then what community doesn’t? Unity is so hard to achieve when we’re all independent thinkers.
I was away at the family cottage when Vancouver had its Pride events but maybe a big ol’ “everybody’s welcome” Pride parade might have done me some good this year. Maybe I need to zoom out more often instead of zooming in.
