By Danny Maggs
DISCOVERY
I knew I was gay from the age of nine. I can’t remember how I figured it out – though I’d keep rewinding the Disney Princess sing-along DVD to “I Won’t Say I’m in Love” (oh, Megara), I don’t remember exactly how my sapphic realization came to be. I do remember, however, my first reaction being utter, desolate sadness. I have a brief but vivid memory of crying in my twin bed because I felt, in my fifth grade heart, that if I loved girls, I would never be loved back.
I came out later, in seventh grade, when I first learned there was a word for it. It was neither sincere nor moving. My mom was in the doorway of my room, asking me why I’d been acting like such a pill lately. Not wanting to accept the terrible truth (I really was being a pill), I went all in – “I’m gay, mom, and I’m scared!”
She (who has, I’ll add, always been accepting and loving) rolled her eyes and gave me my first queer reality check. “That’s not an excuse, honey.”
I remember getting to high school and coming out as a lesbian (after a couple years of proudly announcing my bisexuality through middle school). When I was a freshman, a senior in the show I was performing commended me for “being so sure of who I was.”. It was kind and validating, but also confusing – the multitudes of straight girls in my grade who were already dating boys were sure of themselves, not I – I couldn’t decide if I was gay, bi, demi, pan, or one of the other ones… this universe of romance and sex and gender that wasn’t explored for longer than fifteen minutes in health class was at once inviting, enticing, and terrifying. And I was the feisty theater kid who supposedly knew how to kiss girls.
All throughout, that one senior’s comment haunted me. I knew I came across as “sure of who I was” – I spoke about my queerness all the time. In class, in rehearsals, on Facebook – but had I read a lick of queer theory? Had I “done the work” to know the history of the true queer elders? Or was I an utter fraud?
Plus, there’s always more. And there always will be – my sexual and gender identities are a single star in the ever-expanding universe that is the human experience of queerness. And when you’re a kid whose first thought in relation to this queerness was that of devastation, you’d much rather it be a single solar system. Find your planet, your label – and that’s where all the people like you will be.
It can be a terrifying realization if and when you discover that nobody is exactly like you.
But, does this mean you are alone?
REDEFINING
Enrolling in Smith College was an easy choice for me. Lesbianville, USA, where I still live, was supposedly a haven for people like me. And goodness, I had never seen so many sapphics in my life. This was a place where queer was a powerful word, not just a descriptor – it held history; it held passion and love and sex and fury and struggle. There were whole classes on lesbians – who knew there was enough to fill a semester? But, and perhaps more importantly than the academics, there were real people.
I met so many queers, all different. Even just within the lesbians: nonbinary lesbians, he/him lesbians, asexual and aromantic lesbians, lesbians with trans men – one of my best friends is at once a lesbian and a gay man. Ve is well-versed in queer theory and gender studies, and helped another best friend of mine come to the (albeit comedic) conclusion that they are at once a straight man and a straight woman. And the LGBTQ+ agenda got me too: I had loved and preferred hearing they/them pronouns used for me over she/her, but didn’t believe I “qualified” enough to use them. My trans friends pointed out to me that if the pronouns made me feel good, I really should just start using them.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
Sure, I’d heard of the spectrum of gender identity and sexual identity. But I never fully grasped it until I was surrounded by queers. Queers who came to the college straight and cis and left gay and trans. Queers who had known since they were young, queers who didn’t know until they graduated. Queers who had known but repressed it out of fear or anger or anxiety. Religious queers and queers with religious trauma. Queers who found it the most joyful thing on earth and queers who wished more than anything that they were “normal.”.
At long last, I was free of my perception of the queer community as rigid. My experiences fleshed out my perspective of the queer world, with its turmoil, joyfulness, and passion.
ELDERSHIP
Obviously I’m not going to seriously assert that I was a queer elder back in my middle school. But in a way, I was a mentor. Whether I knew them personally or not, I know that some people saw me, so open and seemingly confident in my queerness, and felt like they could explore and express themselves. Especially if they didn’t know anyone else like that their age.
But why me? Did they only see me, a privileged white kid with a loud mouth? Did they realize that I knew about as little as they did?
I’ve realized, as I have graduated and spent time away from my “Lesbian Mecca,”, how incredibly lucky I was to have the experience I did. In my case, those I learned the most from were my peers. My peers who had lived experience, whether it was for decades or months.
My experience at college was quite unique. Evils and struggles that have befallen the queer and trans communities throughout the centuries have depleted our numbers, beyond repair for some generations. It is no wonder, and a great tragedy, that many queer youth do not have a queer elder or even peers to look up to in their lives. How can we redefine the idea of eldership to be inclusive for those who do not have access to queers of a certain age?
I make the argument that there is more than one way to be a queer elder. Those lucky enough to know older queer and trans folks, who have lived the history and felt it first-hand, will know the importance of their input. But there’s more that we can all provide for each other; what I believe is a form of eldership.
One thing we need from eldership, always in times of political and social attacks on our identities, is love. As cliché as it sounds (and at the risk of sounding like a corporate entity attempting allyship during pride month), loving ourselves and the entirety of our community is imperative to survive and thrive. That’s what all that I learned from my queer peers boils down to. How can we protect and save something we do not cherish with the passion it deserves? I love being queer. I have, and will continue to have, moments wherein I wish I was perceived differently, or even that I wasn’t at all. But I love it nonetheless, and give myself grace to feel those feelings knowing I will always come back to peace.
And I love my queer community – all of them. I love them for their queerness, and that’s not something that I think should be a controversial thing to say. Queerness is a beautiful thing, and I can afford to give love, compassion, and hold space for all of us, because the love I feel from my own will never run out.
MULTIPLE POSSIBILITIES OF TRUTH
Earlier I made the assertion that the queer human experience is akin to the expanding universe. Whether or not you subscribe to this theory in physics, you cannot deny that every single child born LGBTQ+ adds a completely new and different dimension to the experience. We cannot define eldership in a single dimension, or by a single factor, just as we cannot define any one queer “label.”. Engaging with as many of these dimensions as possible, whether through the internet or in-person, grows our understanding and thus, our capacity for love.
Like a painter’s masterpiece, the longer you look at it, the more beautiful it becomes.
The beauty of the queer community is in its freedom. Existing while constantly hearing the rhetoric of abnormality and even repulsion at your doing so – yet you continue on. I love you.
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Maggs, D. (2023, June 23). REDEFINING ELDERSHIP: Redefining Queer Eldership. Creative Generation Blog. Creative Generation. Retrieved from https://www.creative-generation.org/blogs/redefining-eldership-redefining-queer-eldership