Queer as fuck and all that sapphic artwork
Given my daily routine I consume Reddit like it is Oxygen when I am researching due to the nature of my work. I subscribe to many queer subReddits including numerous lesbians ones, and as such I do not get a huge amount of heterosexual content in my feed. Usually there is the odd art piece from r/imaginarylesbians as I scroll, and yesterday when I clicked on a great piece of Barbie and her new “friend” it struck me just how queer my life actually is. Out of curiosity I watched the first episode of the recent Kardasian series and just felt that it was somehow lacking, and seeing the queer artwork I realised I am missing the queer content in the ostensively straight series. A queer Kardashian would be a queer thing indeed.
Ever since I came out to myself in the 1990s I have always had an eye for queer stuff, usually articles about trans folk or whatever sensationalist headlines the papers and magazines chose to print. Paris Lees and Shon Faye have written about growing up under Section 28, though for me at the time because I went to an all-boys school being gay was never talked about. Ever. All my queer content was self-educated, and given my Christian upbringing hetero-normativity was the only thing that both my parents and the church acknowledged. I saw queer folk, especially trans people, as objects of fascination, not fully understanding just how oppressive the world at large really was. Thankfully the content I read did not undermine my sense of self, as the trans women I read about were typical people not treated as freakshows.
This is why I love the fact the world is this vibrant queered space that we can make it online. I found the internet pretty much as soon as Netscape was a thing, and by 1996 I was neck deep in Geocities and then MySpace. Queer online spaces have always been a thing, but it was search engines and easy platforms that allowed us to connect into a wide web of ideas and concepts that even five or six years before were done through mail order. I remember stumbling upon Fictionmania for the first time and realising that I had found an outlet for fiction my tiny little brain could not compute. Yes, the stories were in the best possible way trashy, but for someone who had no exposure to the erotic side of queerness it was an education.
Of course not all things online are healthy or wholesome, but in a way that is the same for much of the analogue world. Being queer, especially when there are no easily accessible queer spaces outside bars and clubs, often means that the only spaces you can inhabit are the online ones. The great thing about digital spaces is that you can be yourself, explore new versions of yourself, and reinvent your persona on the fly. This can lead to extremes, but also allow you to road test who you are before you come out. For me it was a weird time in those early days, as I created the persona for myself that isolated me away from parents and family, probably a reflection of the internal issues I was going through. I got called out on it by a close friend who cut me off, and it taught me a lesson that even when you recreate yourself being honest is a virtue that should always carry through.
Even using the word queer to describe myself was a 20 year journey. At first I was stridently lesbian when I first came out, to the point that my attraction to anything masculine was excused away. It was only in my mid-20s that I finally admitted to myself I was bi or pan-sexual, yet even that did not quite distil who I was attracted to. The easiest way I describe my attraction is that I like who I like, and probably a bit of Yousexual going on, as in I am sexual for you. Using queer is my shorthand to cut through a long conversation, as I can happily point to twenty or thirty different body types, personalities, genders, and modes of being that I find attractive. All the people, all the lust, desire, attraction, admiration, and so much more.
These are the things we missed out on due to Section 28. Not just how to have safe queer sex, but the healthy role models for queer relationships and adulthood. Yes, historic queer figures litter art, literature, films, and every other form of human endeavour, but you have to hunt to find them. Unless you have access to a classical education or a good library up until the explosion of social media there were only whispers and then the rest of the world was straight and rigid. Not squishy and vibrant and all the things.
Which brings me onto ships, OnlyFans, porn, and fanart. Oh how we love to queer all the things the straights think they own. Not that I exactly go hunting for the queer stuff, but look at my Archive of Our Own writing or Fictionmania submissions from back in the day and I was hella queer before I admitted I was hella queer. Fast forward to today and that queerness is very much part of my vocabulary. I play hockey with a women’s team in the UK, and that queerness comes out even when I do not realise it. No one cares, its just one of my things, though as I am currently single without kids it does make for amusing comparisons at times, especially when I talk about who I fancy.
It is this free and easiness that I love about being queer in the 2020s. Society allows me to be queer in a way that even 10 or 15 years ago I had to be more discrete. Being myself, being queer as fuck, is a lifelong journey, especially coupled with being trans. I know that I am fortunate to have found this space in time to have this personal freedom, but the journey here was not straight in any way shape or form, it was tangled, messy, and hella queer.
