Opting out of queerness

Posted on 16 August 2024

Sometimes an identity you chose in the past no longer accurately describes an aspect of yourself. Sometimes an identity was never a good fit, and was only picked because of a lack of better options, insufficient knowledge, or even pressure to fit in with a certain group. And sometimes an identity is so actively hostile to your own wellbeing that it must be abandoned for the sake of your own health.

Those last two sentences pretty accurately describe my own relationship to my former queer identity. I didn't really ever feel comfortable in or connected to any queer community. It was an identity I felt like I had to claim, not something I wanted for myself or felt excited about. So after years and years of trying to find a queer community I felt at home in, failing repeatedly, and feeling like an alien, I stopped identifying as queer.

And you know what? Essentially overnight, I felt a lot better. I no longer had to pressure myself into claiming an identity that I never actually wanted in the first place. In hindsight, it's pretty ridiculous that I felt like I had to do this, but I think that's what happens when you're told by a community that you're part of it because you share some quality with them. I never actually got to decide whether I wanted to be queer or not. It was decided for me.

I don’t have to be queer. I don’t have to be anything, actually.

I've been trying to write some form of this post for almost six years. I've scrapped so many different drafts. In some, I went into detail about my former identities and the specific issues I had with them. I considered never writing it at all and keeping this solely to myself. But I'll never know if I'm unique or not in feeling this way if I keep it to myself, so...here it is.

The problem of validity

Posted on 2 August 2024

There's this whole idea about things being valid. Feelings, emotions, identities. You have a valid gender, or a valid mental illness, or a valid reason to feel a certain way about something. I can't say I understand why anyone would want to be or feel valid, but I have some quite negative thoughts on the entire concept to begin with.

Validity cannot exist in a vacuum; it must be measured against something else. In order for a "valid" category to exist, there must also exist an "invalid" category. If there are valid genders, mental illnesses, emotions, personality disorders, etc., then there must also be invalid ones.

I don't think that the people saying that some aspect of themselves or others is valid believe this or intend for their words to be received in such a manner. In fact, I don't think they're thinking about the implications of their own words, which is the worst part of it.

Authorities use validity as a weapon to separate minority groups into palatable and unpalatable, (socially) acceptable and (socially) unacceptable. How many times have you heard someone say they support a minority group so long as it behaves in a way that doesn’t threaten the majority? I.e. they support gay people existing, but only if they live essentially heterosexual lives, with no challenging of gender roles. That would threaten the heterosexual class's control of gender and sexuality. And we all know how well a power-holding class deals with threats to its own power – not at all.

There's also something I'm going to call institutional validity, for lack of any better terms. It's a form of acknowledgement granted through institutions – the state, a church, a corporation, etc – in order to access some kind of social, political, or financial benefit. You get married to legitimize your relationship and access benefits that are not available to unmarried people. You go through the medical system and receive a diagnosis in order for insurance to pay for the cost of medication or treatment. You earn certificates, degrees, awards, etc. in order to have a legal way to monetize your knowledge.

I'm not sure there's a form of validity that doesn't ultimately require an authority to exist. And if there's no structure in place to determine whether something is valid or not, there's simply no use in the concept existing at all. There are other, more useful concepts and practices out there, anyway – like self-acceptance, which is what I image those validationists are actually looking for.

Examining and choosing identity

Posted on 19 July 2024

The identities a person starts life with are not chosen freely by the person in question, but chosen instead by an authority. A parent decides its child's religion (or lack thereof), gender, sexual orientation, culture, and ethnicity. The autonomy of the child is not taken into question, because it is property rather than a person, and property is not sapient and cannot make its own decisions. The parent may or may not realize it is engaging in authoritarian practices, but, of course, ignorance is no excuse for harm or violence – it's only ever an explanation.

As one ages, identities are called into question. Why practice a religion simply because your parents or extended family do so? Why conform to a culture simply because you were raised in it? Why continue doing anythingsimply because it was chosen for you when you were too young to remember?

You may end up choosing a different gender or religion than the one that was decided for you. Or you might not. Late on, you may also decide to change that previously chosen gender or religion because you find you do not currently have anything in common with it. Or, again, you might not.

Like periodically examining your beliefs, you should also periodically examine your identities – not just once or twice in your life. No, the requisite quarter-life crisis and mid-life crisis aren’t enough, in my opinion. You should be having crises every couple year or so. Or perhaps not – if you're critically examining yourself every other year, you're probably cutting short anything that isn’t worthwhile before you buy into the sunk-cost fallacy too much.

This practice is...well, I can't say I've seen it be well-accepted by identitarian groups. They tend to cling quite tightly to their people and do not like to let them go. Both majority and minority identity groups do this, and for what I suspect are different reasons. Majority groups are typically the power-holding class, and every person who leaves that group weakens its ability to continue holding power and delegitimizes it as an authority. Meanwhile, minority groups typically do not hold power, and every person who leaves that minority group lessens their ability to defend themselves from and delegitimizes their existence in the eye of the majority.

Your relationships to authority and power via your own identities is something you ought to keep in mind. How do or don't you benefit from them? What communities or resources are you allowed access to that others are not? Are you allowed a particular social status due to the identity? Don't pick an identity because it allows you certain privileges (whether they be social, economic, or political), but don't do it because you want to feel like an underdog, either.

On examining the beliefs you hold

Posted on 12 July 2024

Just like everything else, I exist in a state of flux, or impermanence, or anitya - whatever you want to call it. Priorities change, situations change, values change. What may have been useful in the past may no longer be useful now or in the future.

Every so often, I examine the beliefs I hold. Then, I'll choose whether to keep them, discard them, or adopt new beliefs altogether. I'm past the part of my life where I want to be attached to any belief – or anything, really – so this is a fairly simple, almost unconscious process.

I lean very anarchist, so I focus on certain things that others may not. Here are some of them:

• What use do I derive from the belief? How does it benefit me? Why should it benefit me?
• Does it benefit others? Is the benefit for a particular class of people? If so, is that class a power-holding class?
• Does it allow me access to a community? Why should I want access to that community to begin with? Will it allow me certain privileges or access to certain things I did not have before?
• Do I hold this belief in order to gain superficial acceptance from a power-holder, ruling class, or majority population?
• Is the belief used to enable a hierarchy? Does it serve a power structure?

Personally, I think this keeps me grounded and focused on the things that matter, rather than the things that are inconsequential. Perhaps it may be useful to others as well.