“Queerness has liberated me” by Devin D. Moss

topic: QUEER medium: TEXT

I used to try to deflect the “are you gay?” question. If I said no, I’d be lying to the world and myself. If I said yes, I’d be sentencing myself to a life of oppression. What’s a 15 year old to do? My life has been filled with a series of fortunate and unfortunate events that have allowed me to prepare a general statement on my personal sexuality. In high school I was the kid who everyone speculated was gay. In college I was the kid who everyone knew to be “gay”. In graduate school I was the kid who was confidently gay. My liberation as a gay person who lives in a free, yet oppressive world has allowed me the option to define my own gayness. You see, people tend to lump all self-identified males (SIMs via Mendelson) who have sex with other SIMs as gay. I do like SIMs! However, I love individuals who perform masculinity including transgender individuals and butches/studs. Therefore, I cannot really say I am “gay”. For years I used the title same-gender-loving to describe what I felt. But since I have found that I do not fit within the male and female binary and I am not transgender, then I personally sought out a way to define who I am. I had always heard the term queer, but never analyzed the term. I like the term because it allows an individual to belong to a non-heterosexist group without limited the possibilities of sexuality and gender expression. That’s right. I can be a same-gender-loving individual who does not fit into the male-female binary. Queerness has liberated my being. Now when asked about my sexuality or gender expression, I simply feel most comfortable by responding with, “I am queer.”