AM Leibowitz

I had a conversation some time ago that left me adrift. A friend and I were discussing gatekeeping in LGBTQ spaces. We were lamenting the sometimes exclusionary behavior toward bisexual people in what appears to be a heterosexual relationship.

“I sometimes feel so invisible, being married to a man,” she said.

“I know what you mean,” I replied. “I’m also non-binary, so I’m often treated as an ally.”

“Right. Happens all the time, and it’s always assumed I have all this privilege and none of the oppression. I wish they knew what it’s really like.”

We talked a bit more about it, and then conversation moved on to our health issues and how it’s affected us. She uses mobility aids, but I do not.

She told me, “I don’t think people with chronic pain should really call themselves disabled. They’re more like allies. Most of them don’t even know what it’s like to have to rely on accessibility, and they’re taking away the focus from what people like me need.”

It stung. Weren’t we just discussing how gatekeeping affects us when we can be presumed straight? I didn’t answer her; I couldn’t.

***

Twice this week I was reminded of that old conversation, the one where someone saw nothing amiss with bemoaning her outsider status on the one hand while gatekeeping on the other.

The first was a very similar conversation. Like the previous time, the person speaking wanted validation of one identity while stripping others of a second. “I demand to belong/but you don’t belong.” A denial that anyone but the very most clearly-defined insiders could possibly fit. A discussion of exactly what traumas a person must have suffered in order to claim their status.

That last one is particularly hateful. Forcing people to relive their worst moments of being harmed as a ticket in the door is vile. It is triggering. It is traumatic.

***

The second reminder of the conversation was about books. It was over the course of more than one conversation, but they all happened within a few days. What makes a book queer? Do heterosexual people belong in a gay book?

The answers left me feeling less upset and more puzzled. My own life probably wouldn’t be “queer enough” for some people, and it surely would have too many heterosexual people in it for most folks’ comfort.

How do we decide? I don’t have a good answer. There are books that I would probably say are fantastically queer even though the main character isn’t in a same-gender relationship on page. There are a whole lot of same-gender romances that I would say are distinctly un-queer, despite the main characters having same-gender sex on page.

There’s purity and gatekeeping in the book world too, and those of us who can’t slot tidily into a genre or category or pairing often lose out or are outright rejected.

***

I’ve lived my whole life in those in-between spaces, the ones where you might be in or out depending on the whims of the in-group. The ones truly on the other side of the fence don’t want us. They point to the closed community where they think we belong.

The desire for neat categories where people can be slotted is understandable. We long to find those who are like us, and we gather together when we do. Someone who straddles the line feels threatening, as though they might invite inside those who have done us harm.

But where does that leave those of us who can’t be lined up and counted? We want to belong just as much. We stand at the door and knock, but the guard has told us the Wizard is too busy to speak with us.

I grew up at that intersection. From an early age, I learned I was incorrect. My father is Jewish; my mother grew up attending what I gather was a fire-and-brimstone type of church. We were told we did not belong, that we were not Jews, despite my mother no longer being a Christian at that time and despite our deeply rooted connection to the Jewish community in various ways. On the other side, I learned that I was a curiosity, a museum piece, a puzzle for Christians to solve.

“You can be a ‘completed Jew,'” they said. “We could help.”

***

For a long time, I resisted identifying as transgender or as disabled (or even as a person with a disability). I present to the world in particular way, and it’s easier to agree that I am not enough of those things to call myself an insider.

Until recently, I have spoken very little about my upbringing in an interfaith family, despite having many cultural holdovers. Last winter was the first time I dared call myself fat after I was denied treatment based on my weight. In both situations, I had felt like an imposter and that my experiences were in no way valid in comparison to others.

After last night, shrinking away from a conversation in which one of my identities was questioned in hateful ways, I don’t want to do that anymore. I do not have to meet a list of bullet-point requirements in order to belong. I don’t have to tick boxes in order to have experienced discrimination. Who I am is not dependent on someone else sizing me up and deciding if I qualify.

***

I am a lot of things, and I refuse to deny any of the parts that make me whole. If someone wants to think of me as “half a queer” or “half a Jew” or make snide references to my gender or size or disability for not being enough, then perhaps those people are not worth my time. I couldn’t care less about the people on the outside who hate me for the half they see as wrong. Why should I care about the insiders who hate me for the half that matches the outsiders?

My identity is not up for debate. If society rejects me for that in me which is different, and gatekeepers won’t allow me sanctuary, then I can and will find a community of others like me. Others who live in the spaces between.