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e. hashman 🇵🇸

I have never been comfortable with labels in the same way that I resist being stuffed into neat little boxes. The labels aren't the whole story, and I struggle with feeling included in the wider labelled group, but they do tell an important part of the story.

The Q in LGBTQ is mostly assumed to mean "queer" these days but growing up I more often heard it as "questioning." Here's to those questioning—you don't have to fit neatly into boxes. Coming out isn't a one off or a one-size-fits-all.

My best working definition for queerness is "not letting society dictate your life based on your gender" but I'm not sure how much that resonates

@ehashman thank you. this is also my experience with a resistance to labels while also a desire to find my own place as part of our larger community 💛

@amcasari I'd go so far to argue that a careful and strict categorization of queer identities is to in fact miss the point of queerness but we'll save that for the 201 posts

@ehashman I read someone say once about labels that any cat can tell you that there is a world of difference between a box you get into on your own and one someone else tries to put you in. I feel that way about labels.

Especially when being agender means that traditional ways of describing one's sexuality (by reference to one's own gender) just don't work for me.

@ehashman seems pretty relatable to me. I’d probably add “or sexuality” to that definition for broader LGBT coverage of “queerness”.

But yes “queerness” is basically “I’m not staying strictly within the lines drawn by others of what is socially acceptable”.

@ewenmcneill but compulsory heterosexuality dictates your sexuality based on the gender you were assigned at birth, so I'm not sure it's necessary to call out explicitly

@ehashman I agree that “varying definition of gender” (yours and those you partner with) does allow encompassing a lot of sexuality as fitting within the “expanded rules of heterosexuality, now less hetreo”.

But to me queer especially, but also LGBT in its more expanded definitions — LGBTQIA — also includes the things like polyamory, ace, aro, kink, etc. Which I don’t think of as gender, but do think of as still under the sexuality umbrella.