queerness

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questioning faith/questions of faith

Understand and explain how different forms of embodiment are produced and shaped by narratives. That’s the course learning objective for this unit. The further explanation notes how oral history is produced by selves and produce selves in their telling.

While I was reflecting on how my topic was going to connect to the course objective, I reflected on my recent experience watching the production of “Call Me By Any Other Name…Just As Sweet”. The piece was very impactful, and while I watched the production I was struck with the familiar thought when I am witness to an impactful piece of art- ‘I wish everyone I’d ever loved or know was here next to me to see this too’. Thinking about it more, I think its a thing of I see my human experiences mirrored back to me in media/art and I crave that visibility in my loved ones. Like.. I wish I was understood in THIS way. It’s like when you watch an impactful movie with your family or friend and you want them to get it in the same way you did.

That’s what ‘Questions of Faith’ from Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender Identity felt like for me. Like I wished people in my life would read and understand my feelings about it. It’s a memoir produced by selves and it produces selves (recognition and validation of my own experience).

  1. Complicated hometown church/small town feelings. Growing up in a small town, being active in church activities, being known as one image of a person and feeling very different. I avoid spaces where I might be known in my hometown to avoid seeing people that know my family, or dress differently in my church to uphold the image. I am very selective with who I’m out to, and to which family friends and people know I am dating my girlfriend.
  2. The feeling of looking for faith communities that fit me. Beyond the feeling of ‘fun’, I struggle with connecting with individuals in faith communities when I leave big parts of me at the door. I have felt like individuals in faith spaces I have been in the past lack a lot of nuance and say a lot of things that make me cringe internally.
  3. Having faith questioned in queer spaces. This one is like when queer spaces are exclusive of religion because of their experience of church hurt/other reasons. Being ridiculed by queer people for being religious. ‘You are still brainwashed and an idiot if you are queer and religious’.
  4. The biggest factor to drive me away from religion is the intense pressure from Christians to conform to a very specific image of a religious person. My family, Christians that I know and Christians in politics drive me away from being religious more than the world/ or sin does.
  5. Cycles of faith. Practicing faith because I was forced to but continuing to practice even though I don’t need to anymore. Leaving and coming back to faith, feeling anchored and simultaneously held down and restricted by it.

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Queer Brokenness: Intersection with Mental Illness

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Image Source: http://trauma.blog.yorku.ca/2015/12/south-asian-queer-community-lacks-visibility/  (Artist – Jinesh Patel)

(Content and Trigger Warning: Self Harm, Suicide, Substance Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Intimate Partner Violence, Bullying)

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I often find that mental illness and queerness aren’t addressed properly or constructively when talked about together. So often the public at large would have us believe that queerness is a result of mental illness or that mental illness is the result of queerness exclusively. With this in mind, the queer community will often push back on society’s behavior by talking about the two exclusively from each other, frequently ignoring all the ways mental illness intersect. That’s does not go to say that queerness is the result of mental illness or vice versa at all, but rather it shouldn’t be ignored that many people in the queer community go through both because of the way society has constructed and reacted towards queerness. For example, queerness has often been perceived as a deviant thing, it has historically been punished and worked against in a variety of ways. Continue reading →

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Queer Identity Discovery: The Domino Effect and Queer Time

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Image Source: http://www.avclub.com/article/theres-mash-rainbow-road-themes-all-8-mario-karts-206528

I’ll focus on my own experience here but I know there are going to be things about my experience that many other queer people can relate to in this regard.

My experience with queerness has never been linear, it has indeed been very queered. It has consistently involved not knowing about a way of being queer and then being introduced to the concept, a moment of reflection and then realizing “oh shit that’s me.” But I’ve also consistently struggled with coming to terms with these new labels and seeing how they fit me.

From the age of 12 to about a month away from turning 21 I had been on a journey of denial, internalization, grief over myself changing and growing, complete secrecy, exploration, etc. etc. about me being bi. I had come out after years of being afraid of myself, but in that time I also developed a yearning for community. When I came back to UMBC after two years of community college I knew that I’d want to seek out my community. Since then my reality as a queer person has shifted so greatly. I feel so liberated. Yet I grieve. I grieve for the ways I have been, not knowing if they are different than who I am now. My sense of self has been questioned. I don’t know if my new state of existing is just blurrier, or if things have just been just out of my sight this entire time and it constantly feels like both. I don’t know how consistent this person who is me is. Continue reading →

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QUEERIES: My Love for Eli Clare’s Exile and Pride and Why You Should Go Ahead and Read It, Okay?

I haven’t connected to any other class’s readings as I have connected with Eli Clare’s Exile & Pride. I’m trying to figure out why, and I still don’t rightly know, but I needed to share.

It seems obvious to say, “Well, I like the subject matter,” but really. I do. And it is all very different but so intrinsically connected, that I feel bad that I ever doubted the meshing of these worlds into one book. The environment, queerness, and disability (to narrow it down to a main triad) are all sides of the same coin. The environment–the one he have created and the one that has always been–often dictates disability. Disability provokes a queer understanding of identity. Being queer in different environments–rural and urban–is like being a polar bear or a house cat,  a bird or a lost lizard in a sewer. The criticism that Clare invokes when talking about these topics is also critical of race and ethnicity and of privilege and gender. Who was the first to claim land as an inexhaustible resource? Who dictates the gender and sexual norms? Who creates the urban space that perpetuates disability? Clare touches on all of these linked together identities and sites, and it feels so right. I learned so much from Clare’s writing, but I also picked up his sense of criticism; that calm, assertive, compassionate voice that questions why and kicks out with fervor. Clare’s criticism is beatifically formed and so god damn smart, but it’s not the only thing that keeps me in the book.

Continue reading →