Entries tagged with queerness

I really liked this essay by Kit O'Sullivan, about growing into their non-binary identity; in particular, the sentence 'The stepping stone into myself was the moment that I realised “queer” is an umbrella term for plethora of sexual and gender identities that are simply not cis or not straight' really resonated with me. Because I understand why a generation of gay people - perhaps principally gay men - can never hear "queer" as anything other than the term of hatred and abuse that was hurled at them (I have much less sympathy for Tumblr teens who talk about "the q-slur"), but it's so much easier than "biromantic asexual, increasingly unconvinced about gender as a concept" (and also gives away a lot less personal information in the course of getting across the fundamental point of Not Straight). "Queer" allows me the space to explore, to feel different on different days. It gives me the freedom to be myself without having to commit to specific definitions. It encompasses all the parts of me instead of trying to put different bits into different boxes. It feels like me in a way other identities simply don't.

I very rarely make a deliberate decision to listen to music, but this morning when I got off the bus, feeling exhausted and miserably anxious, I didn't really feel like listening to a podcast, and decided that actually, after seeing a lot of social media mentions of Billy Bragg yesterday, it had been far too long since I'd listened to any of his music. So I fired up Google Play and put 'Between the Wars' on. This may in fact have been a mistake, as I found myself tearing up at the opening notes and only got as far as 'I raised a family / In times of austerity' before Actual Sobbing ensued*. For a song that's 32 years old, it felt far too relevant to everything that's going on in politics at the moment.

I was reminded, though, that much as I love 'Between the Wars', 'Sexuality' is the song that made me a fan of Bragg's music. I heard it on the ITV Chart Show one Saturday morning in 1991, when it was released as a single. My mother said she thought it was a bit indiscriminate, but for me that acceptance, that sense that not only was it OK not to be straight but that sexuality could be fluid and whatever you wanted it to be, was the most amazing, liberating thing. I hadn't ever encountered those kinds of ideas outside SF before (there is a moment in The Dispossessed when the mostly-heterosexual Shevek and the mostly-gay Bedap partner for a while, as a way of cementing their friendship, which was similarly revelatory in the way it conveyed the idea of sexuality as a choice, but that was set on an alien world in the far future, and Bragg was right there in 1991). I became a fan there and then, and have remained so for nearly three decades. (Of course, it took almost that long to work out that I'm actually somewhere on the ace spectrum, and the carefree, enthusiastic approach to sex and relationships of 'Sexuality' really isn't for me, but I'm still happy that it is for some people, and that there's a song to celebrate it.)

*Slightly embarrassingly my line manager cycled past me as I was sobbing, but as we were going in the same direction I think she only saw my back.

On queerness (45/365)

Two songs