Amanda Dawson | Contributor
Featured image by Amir Yazdanparast
Over the past ten years, during which I’ve been openly queer, I’ve come to the conclusion that straight, cisgender people, or “normal people” by their own definition, live in an alternate reality. It must be a terrible reality for them, seeing a world full of rainbows, men dancing in speedos, all kinds of drag performances, women with short hair and people who aren’t women nor men. I, for one, would love for one of these cisgendered people to point me in the right direction, because where I live, in this cold, dreary world of heteronormativity, most people are actually straight, and in a lot of places it’s downright deadly to be otherwise.
I’ve had straight, cisgender people inform me, an actual queer person, that all these labels are made up. You may have heard of some of them: asexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality, genderqueer, genderfluid, transgender; the list goes on and regardless of anyone’s personal opinions, they’re all valid. However, I find many straight, cisgender people seem to seethe at the mention of these names, as though the mere acknowledgement of non-binary identities or people who have no interest in engaging in sex somehow invalidates everyone else’s existence as men, women or sexual beings.
Some straight, cisgender people even police how members of the LGBTQ+ community can identify ourselves, insisting that because a word does not make sense to them, it shouldn’t exist. They seem to have this privilege to place themselves as the sole authority over how language should evolve.
Now it would be ignorant of me to deny that straight, cisgender people can have it hard. I know, because they’re also human beings caught up in a world of constructed social hierarchy. Many of them face systemic discrimination and daily microaggressions in other forms, whether it’s because of ethnicity, national origin, physical disability, mental illness, socioeconomic status, level of education, religion, language ability or any combination thereof. Intersectionality exists and needs to be considered in the fight for equity.
Sometimes even members of the LGBTQ+ community make mistakes in remembering that we’re only one marginalized group among many. Some of us occasionally forget that many of our own members face multiple forms of discrimination and that some of us are, in fact, capable of being oppressors by way of other forms of privilege.
And even for people like Stephen Harper, Justin Trudeau, Justin Bieber, Macklemore and many other wealthy, famous, straight, cisgender white dudes, life can be tough sometimes. Dealing with paparazzi, haters and critics is probably tough. However, while we all have bad days or even bad years, not everyone faces the same wall of oppression or the same level of sheer ignorance every day.
But let’s face it: no matter how many mainstream movies and TV shows include realistic representations of LGBTQ+ characters—and there aren’t that many; no matter how many laws, protections and bathrooms are put into place to include us in everyday society and normalize our existence; no matter how vocal we may appear to be, we will always be only a minority of the whole population that is LGBTQ+. We will never be a majority among any other demographic. No one is “following a trend” by coming out, even if the words we use to describe our gender or sexual and romantic identities don’t fit your standard of normalcy. We’re simply trying to be acknowledged as people who exist and whose voices matter. We are as normal as the rest of the human population, and the only reason some people may think otherwise is because they choose to see us merely as stereotypes, rather than as human beings with individual needs and emotions.
So my message to all the straight and cisgendered people who complain about how gay everyone is these days is this: please step back into reality and remember that the LGBTQ+ community is still a minority—we’re just finally being granted some space to exist as freely and openly as the straight, cisgender world has for thousands of years.
