Queerness and“fitting in”

I’m a bad queer. I spent most of my teenage years growing up in a conservative country in complete denial about my non-straightness. I went through every usual excuse in the book to try and deny exactly how much I thought about men.

“It’s just experimenting,” I’d say to myself, scrolling through photoshopped nudes of Titanic-era Leo DiCaprio. “Just a phase,” I’d swoon, staring lustily at the topless guys playing football in my high school, shuffling towards a shady corner.

A few years later, after I moved to the UK, I eventually came to terms with my sexual inclinations, going through the slutty phase most country bumpkin queers go through when they arrive in a heady, bustling metropolis. I’m not one to bemoan that stage in my life. It was liberating and, regardless of the overwhelming badness of most sex I had during that period, a good thing for my confidence and self-acceptance.

This desire to sleep around slowly went away, though. What replaced it was essentially The American Dream — Gay Mode: I started imagining myself being in a power couple with a driven, careerist hottie. We’d have successful jobs, get gay married, buy a gay house and adopt (potentially) gay kids that I would prove to the world were better than any kid raised by straight couples.

This went on for a few years. I tried desperately to make an abusive relationship work with a manipulative man far younger than me, just for sheer desperation to belong, to tick the boxes I’ve been getting told for decades I was meant to tick to achieve joy.

Along with that disaster, I spent a hefty chunk of my time trying to make fuck buddies commit themselves to something more long-term with me. I’m not going to blame this all on heteronormative standards on relationships - a part of it were my own desires to find a vaguely Andreas-shaped hole to hammer myself in. When you live your entire life thinking you’re a tiny bit off, especially with the cherry of Greek Orthodox guilt on top, it’s hard to go “fuck it”.

Where I’m going with this is t0day’s news that UKIP would be marching in this year’s Pride Parade in London. Naturally, there was a lot of sabre-rattling from all concerned who think it’s despicable that a party capitalising on marginalisation and bigotry should participate in what has always been a celebration of acceptance and inclusion.

Reasonable, but hypocritical. The Pride Parade has come a long way from its politically-charged roots in the 70s and 80s, when LGBT issues properly came to the foreground. Even though initially a reaction to the status quo, a giant middle finger to the silencers and oppressors, the “movement” slowly became absorbed into the mainstream and resembles more a second Mardi Gras than a remembrance of past sacrifices and future struggles.

Participants include dictator and Apartheid-funding, LIBOR-rigging Barclays Bank, the Armed Forces, and tax dodging corporate behemoths Amazon and Starbucks. Why are other kinds of oppression acceptable? The pride movement should be all about intersectionality and combating injustice, regardless of whether or not it’s towards minorities. Our aim should always be supporting the oppressed, not stopping at the bare minimum.

There exists this sentiment of self-congratulation by “allies” involved with the festivities, similar to the Straight Ally Awards, a circle-jerk for achieving basic human decency. “Oh, you haven’t discriminated against gay people? You actively encourage LGBT people to apply? Good for you, have a biscuit.”

So is it truly so ludicrous that yet another horrible organisation is involved with a revolutionary movement de-clawed, de-fanged, and turned into a street party? I am as eager to applaud them as I am to applaud Barclays — at least the former is already reviled by the mainstream.

You shouldn’t have a problem with UKIP being part of Pride, or any other participant. You should have a problem with Pride itself. You should take issue with our representatives desperately warping themselves to be taken in by the hetero norm, to be told “OK, now you’re normal enough for us to let you play”.

Why do we need them or their approval? We’ll never “fit in”. We can’t anticipate “normal” relationships, parenthoods, even lives, in a world that still largely reviles the unknown and misunderstood. And we shouldn’t. The people who inspired Stonewall’s name would agree. Shame the charity’s too busy congratulating the government for — by force of circumstance — throwing us a marriage-shaped bone:

We should embrace the notion that as queer individuals, we’re better than asking for permission, and better off not fitting in hetero-moulds. We have the freedom to decide how and where we belong, and how we lead our lives.