Queer Exclusivism and its Impacts
*The views and experiences expressed in this article around queer exclusivism and other topics are solely the experiences and views of the people mentioned in the article. Remember, a community is not a monolith and should not be seen as such.
As a Black, gay man who grew up in the southern United States and then made a move west to Colorado, I have experienced my share of hurtful behavior. From family members who insisted on degrading the queer community in my youth (things have largely changed in that respect, and I think a lot of that is due to me being out and proud in my identity) to people yelling racial slurs at me out of their truck windows as I walked home from the bar in small-town Colorado, I grew up expecting these things from straight folks and wasn’t generally surprised when it happened.
What did surprise me, after my big move west to what I thought was a more enlightened part of the country, was seeing those same problems reflected in the queer community itself. Color me naïve, but, at the time, I was freshly out and had a pair of metaphorical rose-tinted glasses that tinted my perception of queer people. However, upon entering the dating scene … which, let me say, was slim pickings in the small town I moved to, I quickly realized that some folks in the community that I longed to be a part of just weren’t as welcoming as I had hoped they’d be.
Transphobia, racism, ableism, and general community dis-unity have all opened my eyes over the past 12 years to what is not just a localized Colorado issue but an issue that plagues the community as a whole. I am not alone in this perspective and had the opportunity to speak with some Denverites about their experiences. I could go on forever, about the ways in which these issues continue to halt progress on some of the most important political topics, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll talk about how these experiences affect the mental health of those who deal with these issues.
As I hope most of us know by now, racism is one of the founding pillars of the United States, and after 245 years, that pillar stands firm, though there may be cracks in its foundation. In my personal experience, racism has most reared its ugly head in discussion of dating. I have overheard and been told directly, many times, that annoying phrase: “I don’t date Black men.” However, many of these same men can be found fetishizing Black men and men of color in their Grindr messages. Why? Racism. Black men are more than just our skin. We are their lives and our experiences. We are our brains. We are the totality of everything that makes us unique.
After years of being inundated with messages of how I wasn’t enough to date (but still being enough to have some fun with), I began to internalize those messages and truly believed at one point that I was meant to exist solely for the pleasure of others. It took therapy and years of undoing those thinking patterns, but I eventually emerged as a proud, gay, Black man who refused to relegate himself to playing the role of a fun toy for others to use.
Enter: Matt, my husband, a bisexual man of color. We met on a dating app. (How cliché, right?). If we had met at any time other than the time we did, I’m convinced we wouldn’t have worked. At the time, I was in therapy, which forced me to come to terms with some internalized homophobia and self-hate that made me feel like I was wrong and unlovable.
I spoke with Matt about his struggles with mental health and how the queer community has impacted him. He says, “As a mixed-raced individual, I never really felt included in many spaces. In some ways, I was too Brown, and in others, not Brown enough. As I got older, I was able to make my own community, but sometimes those feelings of not fitting in pop-up.”
I was truly lucky to be in a space to feel like I was worthy of love, and in my opinion, feeling worthy of myself is one of the greatest gifts I’ve given myself. This sentiment is something that was echoed as I spoke with Jesica, a trans woman.
She detailed to me not only her experiences in the dating world, but how the cis gaze affects her in her daily life. She says that the external pressures placed upon her by society as a whole makes her feel as if there is some sort of invisible standard that must be met among trans women. She feels as though in order to be validated, she needs to demasculinize so much that she would lose parts of what make her, her.
In her words, “The trans women that you see on TV don’t represent all or even most of the community. Society tries to put my transness into a pretty, ultra-femme box. And it’s not just visual; we are expected to behave in ultra-femme ways as well. There is a trans TikToker I follow who receives so much hate online because she is a handyman, which is generally regarded as a masculine activity.”
This invisible standard has made Jesica feel as if she wasn’t “good enough” to even step outside, let alone accept that she can be loved and accepted into any community. Within the queer community, Jesica has faced discrimination like being barred entry into certain queer spaces because of who she is. Still, Jesica has learned to be proud of herself and sees signs that things are getting better, in the queer community, at least. She has had to work through a lot of her traumas to continue to be authentically her, despite what society at large has to say about who she is.
But what exactly can be done to combat these feelings of inadequacy, exclusion, and self-worthlessness? Personally, the first step for me was enrolling myself in therapy and removing myself from situations that I couldn’t be my full self in. I needed to be able to be goaded into thinking critically not just about myself, but the situations in which I’ve found myself. There are lots of resources available for queer Denverites to use. For example: The Center, Khesed Wellness, and even what you hold in your hands, Envision:You and OFM’s own annual mental health insert which can help you get started in your search for queer-affirming therapy.
As for me and my story, having positive mental health is an ongoing journey. There will never be a time where you have “arrived.” But having found a community of people whom I can truly call friends, and a partner who is patient and kind, have all served to help me get closer to having a truly positive view of myself and my impact on the world.
