Credit: Daisy Jones
Relationships
“As a queer person, will I ever be able to properly relax around straight people?”
By Daisy Jones
3 years ago
3 min read
Writer Daisy Jones reflects on her experience of otherness in predominately heterosexual spaces – and ponders what needs to change.
There’s this weird feeling I get sometimes. It’s usually when I’m at some kind of public-facing event, like a wedding, although it does sometimes occur when hanging out with straight friends and acquaintances. It’s a feeling that’s hard to pinpoint and even harder to describe, but it’s probably comparable to a vague sense of unease – as though I’m suddenly in the wrong place or have arrived wearing something embarrassing. It’s like I’m not quite supposed to be there, although nobody would admit it or claim to notice.
It’s a feeling that tends to be more pronounced when I’m with my girlfriend and we’re in ‘the outside world’ (the straight one). It’s a feeling that exists in the hesitation of people introducing us (“This is her, er… partner”) and the subtle double-take that happens when I reach for her hand. It’s a feeling that springs up in the absence of questions and the avoidance of subjects. Straight people love gossiping about their love and sex lives, but often seem to tip-toe around mine. When I’m in majority straight spaces, my relationship starts to not feel like a regular relationship, but a lesbian relationship, as opposed to what is widely considered ‘the real thing’.
When I’m alone or even in queer spaces, I genuinely completely forget about being ‘other’. I’m too busy existing and having fun and being in love. I don’t usually look in the mirror and think ‘gay!’ or imagine that my relationship is markedly different from, for example, any of the ones on Love Island or wherever else. ‘Omg, that is totally me,’ I think, while observing some random 6’2” hetero man on a reality show with attachment issues. But then I’m in the outside world again, and there are reminders everywhere that I am still defined by my queerness in ways that I can’t grasp fully. Other people simply do not see me how I see myself, and that can be disorienting.
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