Find Your Player 2: So what if being queer is my personality?
As LGBTQ+ people, our relationships and identities often don’t fit in the same mould as the ones we’re surrounded by, and seemingly “easy” questions can be deep and complicated. At the same time, sometimes you just need an impartial ear to ask: If neither of us are doing gender roles, why is nobody doing the dishes either?
Having explored a breadth of questions about love, video games and cookies-via-post, Find Your Player 2 is drawing to a close! It’s been a privilege to be trusted with this, but I’ll still appear on Gayming Magazine in different flavours in the future.
In this final column, we answer questions from two people having very different experiences re: just how publicly queer they want to be!
Do I need to come out? I’m gay and that’s… fine with me. I feel like it’s other people’s problem that they assume I’m straight? I don’t want to have to sit people down (especially my family) and explain that oh actually I’m not the person they thought I was. I’m not ashamed, but coming out seems needlessly weird and uncomfortable. Do I have to?
– A Not Known But Totally Okay With It Gay
You’re right: It is 100% on other people that they assume other people are straight until ‘proven’ otherwise.
Because of this heternormativity, ‘coming out’ is never just a one-and-done thing. You might be thinking of a scenario where you sit everyone down, announce that you’re gay, and never come out again, but unfortunately it isn’t like that. Without actively concealing it, you end up coming out to colleagues, taxi drivers, new friends, door-to-door leafleters… It’s a lot, and I respect the desire to just not want to take part!
If you simply don’t want people to know, they don’t have to know (even if other people do). It’s more than okay for you to refer to any prospective partner in gender neutral terms, wave off the topic, “focus on work” – whatever feels right and comfortable for you in the moment. It’s not lying, it’s your own business. This goes double for people in an unsafe environment: if you need to actively pretend to be straight, even when you know you’re not, it does not make you a bad person. It’s surviving.
If it’s more that you want to avoid ‘the big sit down’, you can do that. It’s possible to just act like you’re already out. The news already broke! Everybody already knows. This is easier to do with friends (and strangers) than it is with family, so you can break the ice there. You use the gay pronouns, gayly participate in conversations about attractive celebrities, share sword lesbian memes in the group chat… people get the hint.
Ultimately, it’s your own business. Other people’s thoughts about you? Their own business. The idea of ‘coming out’ is only made necessary by other people’s assumptions putting us ‘in’. You can handle it when and however you choose – including not at all.
What if being queer IS my personality, actually? I’m queer, all my friends are queer, and everything I do is queer! I deliberately flag with my appearance, and I only really like queer content. My parents are “concerned” that I’ve made being queer my whole personality, but… I am queer, I’m a whole queer person? Am I meant to do that less?
– A Whole Queer Person
The criticism that someone has made being queer their whole personality is bunk, quite honestly. For some people, being any amount of ‘visibly queer’ will always be too much for them, and something they want others to suppress. It’s bunk! As a criticism, it doesn’t stand. You can be your Whole Queer Person self, because there is no objective ‘just queer enough’ amount.
That out of the way, that is not necessarily where your parents are coming from. Their world is (presumably) a very straight one, filled with a culture they know and find familiar. When they see you filling your life with this one specific aspect, it can worryingly look like you’re putting yourself in a very small box. Will you have enough friends, will you know enough history, will you consume enough art and culture? How can you be happy and fulfilled and enriched?
Of course, you and I know this isn’t the case. There is so much queer art and culture out there – both historical and evolving, and more than any one person could exhaust in a lifetime. There are so many more queer people out there than it seems when you only spend time with cishet people.
Hopefully, your parents’ concern is only rooted in one about you being happy. The best way to address this concern is to demonstrate that you are happy. They’ll learn sooner or later that you aren’t limiting yourself – so don’t needlessly limit yourself!
Editor’s Note: Reading through Ruth’s answers, as well as your questions, have been an absolute pleasure ever since we first started the column here on Gayming Magazine. I will sincerely miss seeing Ruth go through these questions, and delving deep into each and every answer to make sure that not only it speaks their personal truth, but is caring and accepting.
It won’t be the last we see of Ruth here on Gayming Magazine, but in the meantime, check out Ruth and their incredible – and very correct – opinions over on their twitter: @velcrocyborg!
About The Author
But there is a problem with making queer your personality whole or otherwise. Because it isn’t you. The same way being straight isn’t you (for people who call themselves that). Identity is an illusion.
Filling your life with it is putting yourself in a small box same as someone else claiming they are X or Y.
It isn’t you.