The use of imaginative language, metaphors and similes in writing, particularly for minority communities, is one of the most prevalent forms. But, why? Why do the experiences of a queer person have to be compared a fictitious creature or an inanimate object at an attempt to be heard? And more importantly, why are the only people allowed to speak directly in the first person and still be understood white men?

Oftentimes, as a minority, you are told either indirectly or directly that your experiences extremely and explicitly different than those who society deems to be at the top. Because of this, it is expected that people who do not experience discrimination because of things out of their control, they will simply never understand it and you have to accept that. This has led to people challenging the levels of understanding that people can have, using figurative language and specific choices of words to craft or alter a story to help explain what they may experience in a way that may be deemed more “understandable”. For example, in part one chapter five of Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity, it talks about a person who has a “genderqueer backpack”. Even though it is obviously a metaphor in terms of pieces of their identity that shape them being genderqueer, referring to key parts of their identity as items in a backpack seems, juvenile. Why must this type of language need to be used, especially when heterosexual white men talk about the struggles they have, they rarely use such figurative language, and instead say directly what their opinions are and/or how they feel about something. Where is the disconnect? Why is it expected that we can all understand the struggles they face, even though we are not like them, but the opposite cannot be done?