Less than a week ago, I was going through a painful breakup with the label "queer." I had tried to make it work between us, but I could no longer keep a label in my life that didn't support me.
Queer and I had a good run. We met a couple of years ago and after getting to know each other, I realized I had fallen in love. We seemed meant to be.
There I was, a burgeoning sex radical, an intellectual activist, and someone generally inclined to march to the to beat of her own drum. And there was queer, a label that wasn't a label, that was defined by not being defined, and that asked you to ask me more.
A lot of times, both at Bowdoin and beyond, "queer" is used as an umbrella term for the LGBTQIA community. But my queer, and the queer of many queer theorists and activists, means something different. Our queer is about challenging heteronormativity and homonormativity. It's about deconstructing and destabilizing identity categories like "gay" and "straight" or "man" and "woman." It's about understanding identity as something that's fluid, malleable, socially constructed, and historically contingent. It's about being different.
My queer identity has very little to do with the gender of the people I'm attracted to. In fact, I'm predominantly, but not exclusively, attracted to cisgender (male-presenting) and cissexual (born with male genitalia) men.
I'm queer because of the way I understand sexuality. For me, sexuality is a lot more than simply an expression of which gender or genders I like. It's about the personal qualities I look for in partners, the physical attributes I find attractive, the range of ways I enjoy expressing myself as a sexual being, and the types of sexual and romantic relationships that I like to create.
I'm queer because I'm non-normative in how I think about, approach, and engage in and with sex, sexuality, gender, and relationships.
I'm queer because I refuse to be a part of a heterosexist system of sexual and gender oppression, and because I reject sexual and gender binaries. I'm queer because I want to challenge and break down all systems that confer unearned power and privilege.
I'm queer because it's one word that simultaneously says a lot and says nothing at all. It forces people to actually have to get to know me and my identity or to admit that what they actually want to know is if I'm attracted to them (it is easier just to ask, by the way).
This is my queer, and I hope that it speaks at least partially about the queer of other queer queers here at Bowdoin, to use the language of queer theorist Cathy Cohen. By this I mean a queer that is not just a queer (as in someone who is LGBT) but a queer queer, the kind who may or may not identify with a lot of the reasons why I first called myself queer. And I think us queer queers need more of a voice on campus.
A couple of weeks ago, the Orient published an article entitled "Queer at Bowdoin" (March 30). While I'm glad that queer issues are being addressed, I know that I and many others felt that our voices were missing from this article. We heard about being gay at Bowdoin, but not a lot about being queer, at least not a queer queer. We felt spoken for and grouped together with people and experiences that didn't reflect us.
There have been times in supposedly queer spaces on this campus where I and others have felt like our voices were lost, stifled or misunderstood. Where we felt like our identities weren't recognized, accepted or validated.
This isn't a problem unique to Bowdoin, nor is it the fault of any individuals. I think there's a natural instinct for "minority" groups to create somewhat rigid borders, both for fear of losing people who can serve as support systems and allies, and for fear of being infiltrated and even destroyed by the forces of oppression. But sometimes this act of securing group boundaries results in some people being excluded from both the majority and the minority. Their voices are suppressed or muffled, and they struggle to find their way into conversations or to get support in their ventures.
Sometimes this happens in our queer community at Bowdoin. Sometimes we're not so good at accepting all the queer queers on campus, and this became frustrating for me. It hurt to always hear people in and out of Bowdoin talking about "queers" but never talking about me. It hurt to read the literature and find out that scholars felt that queer had just never lived up to its radical potential. I started thinking that it was time to move on and end things with queer.
And then I went to the drag ball last Friday night.
There I was, in this amazingly, beautifully, queer queer space. It was an environment of celebration, self-exploration, and self-affirmation. It was liberating and empowering, a place to play around with sexuality and gender.
Students who had never come to Bowdoin Queer-Straight Alliance or Thursday night "ginner" (gay dinner) were there; students from all class years; students of, presumably, all identities; and students in all states of dress and undress.
We were proud of our diversity and our differences from the normative culture. We were proud of our queerness, a queerness that transcended how any individual in that room defined their sexuality or gender.
So here's what I propose. Let's make the next frontier of being queer at Bowdoin be creating regular, consistent environments on campus that are as empowering, liberating and welcoming as the drag ball or last fall's Queer Summit. Let's challenge ourselves to go beyond our own interests, identitie s and beliefs, and to tackle some of the touchy subjects. Let's make it clear to the campus and to each other that no one can speak for what it means to be queer at Bowdoin because there is no one normative queer experience here. We're queer, and queer—by a nonexistent definition—means we're individuals.
Since the drag ball, I've been reconsidering my relationship with queer. We're talking things over, and we'll see what happens. But no matter what label I do or do not let into my life, I'm always going to be someone who marches to the beat of my own drum and sticks to my guns. And I'm always going to identify with other people like that, whether they congregate at 24 College St. or at Sunday brunch.
Michelle Wiener is a member of the Class of 2014.