Mod Post: The Place of Cisgender Allo-Hetero Perisex People in Queerly Beloved

[soc_puppet]

Something I've been mulling over since Queerly Beloved's inception:

If we accept questioning people (and my conscience says we must), then we also need to accept that some of them might find the answer is they're not queer/LGBTQIAP+. It's rare, I know, especially for folks who spend a good amount of time asking themselves, but they do exist. What happens when to them? I don't want to kick them out of a community where they've found support that they need, and especially where they can potentially support others as well; if they stay, how might their role in the community change?

After long consideration, I have some potential guidelines to propose; they are currently open to community members for commentary and input:

Cisgender allo-hetero perisex people are allowed, but should not make any post all about themselves unless they have actual, first-hand lived experience with an issue. Examples include questioning one's gender and/or sexuality, and supporting a queer/LGBTQIAP+ loved one, especially where any of these intersect with other marginalizations. Queer/LGBTQIAP+ voices are still to be prioritized on queer/LGBTQIAP+ issues.

This should allow anyone who has discovered that they're cis allo-het and presumed perisex to continue to support the community, as well as solidifying a place for other allies, while still prioritizing queer/LGBTQIAP+ people. However, there may still be some things that I'm missing or haven't thought of. Do any of you have any input on this proposed policy?

Edit: There's already a lot of good discussion in the comments section, proving that yes, I definitely didn't think of everything! I wanted to say thank you to everyone who's added something so far, and I promise I'm reading, I'm just also a teensy bit foggy at the moment. Please continue to share your insights and constructive criticism, and together we can try and find a good balance for community policy 👍

Comments

[fred_mouse]

I like it.

[elf]

I like the idea but I'm not sure the phrasing works. It's hard to identify what "make a post all about themselves" means - that's not a set of criteria that can be objectively measured.

I'm fond of the approach of, "Queer is a coalition, not a demographic" - there may be cis/allo/het/peri queer people. (Polaymory. BDSM and other kink communities. Cisgender gender-nonconforming people. Plenty of non-LGBT-etc. people have faced discrimination and sometimes attacks over their sexuality or gender expression.) I'm not saying "those people are queer too!" but am aware that many of them have been part of queer communities for a long time.

I don't want to broaden the community focus to "every category of people who faces grief because of how they do sex or gender" - which includes several types of criminals - but I don't mind acknowledge that there are cis-het-etc people who may have relevant experiences and insights to share.

[izzet_bedtime_yet]

I agree with this. I tend to think of it more as... being a part of the queer community doesn't necessarily say what your identity is, or was. People can belong because they at one point identified under the queer umbrella, because they have an intimate/family relationship with someone who connects them to the community, because they grew up in the community, because they are different in some way that makes them seek out the companionship of different people and the queer community is where they found home, etc.

We all know the phenomenon of people who think of/describe themselves as "allies" centering their experience over that of marginalized people, claiming authority they don't have, or otherwise failing to check their privilege. We need to be able to address that phenomenon.

[sciatrix]

At this stage in my life, I think of allyship as an action, not a status, and I find it easier to bar people from acting in non-allied ways than for identities and experience. This does not mean that I'm like, "yay straight cis people come talk about your feels here!" in my settings--it means that I ask the people in my groups to be mindful of many kinds of marginalized experiences within broader queer coalitions, and to familiarize themselves with general sore spots. So for example, since I largely organize ace groups, I often nudge people who are so excited to feel free of pressure to engage in sex themselves to remember that that needs to not spill over into sex-negativity that might hurt people who have been historically marginalized for the expressions of sexuality that they do want to have.

I also think about groups in terms of specific focuses on who is/should be centered at any given time, and I try not to advertise more inclusivity than I actually have in mind. So if I'm saying that I'm organizing a general queer space, I try not to actually center it on my own subcommunity and experiences and make it a general space. On the other hand, I also think that all queer identities and experiences deserve to have places and times to be centered, too, and that you can't simply expect cis gay men (for example) to only use the generalist spaces.

Bluntly, the kinds of clueless straight and cis people who insist that they are allies and distort everything around themselves cannot meet these requirements on their own behavior. They wind up weeded out by the emphasis on being aware of other people's experience and listening, and they stumble and then dig in and sulk when corrected; they're not accustomed to that kind of listening and trying to be respectful, and they are not accustomed to not being centered.

It's not about what you call yourself. It's about how you act to other people.

[wraithmoon]

See, I like inclusivity to this. I do agree though that a "stay on topic/focus" point needs to be made if someone who was questioning themselves and they realize that they're cis/het, etc.

[ahunter3]

I went through DECADES of not knowing if I had any appropriate business positioning myself as part of L+G / LGBT / LGBTQ (it changed over time as you'll recall) community. I knew I was different and I had my own descriptive terms for it, but they weren't being used by others who were already presenting as part of that group and I didn't know if I'd be welcome. (Identical questions as far as being part of the feminist community, by the way — when does "being in a similar situation with similar concerns" equate to "one of us"?).

I *tend* to think that anyone questioning for very long is only questioning because there's some fundamental sense of difference from the orientation / gender mainstream. The person may keep considering various MOGII identities and shaking their head and saying "nope, that's still not it, it's something else" but their questioning implies that they started out shaking their head and saying that very thing about being cis / het / endosex mainstream.

[sciatrix]

*coughs* Oh, hey, that's how I feel about gender at this point. It's... ugh, I gotta delve into that and figure out if there actually is a "my people!" somewhere, but I often feel like a gender lumper in a world of splitters. Gender non-conforming fits best for me, but it's frequently hard to articulate clearly why I am simultaneously very particular about my gender presentation, know damn well that this presentation does set me apart from most women, experience great distress if I'm forced to inhabit another presentation...

...and still feel completely comfortable lumping that presentation and gender "tradition" under the broader category of "female." I just think that broad category contains a lot more gender traditions than we all tend to think. And that perspective is rather at odds with most of the stable-nonbinary folks I know, and it's not a fluid thing at all, and genderqueer might work fine but there's still not a clear way for me to answer the question most of the time.

So. Yeah. What you say sounds right to me, yes.

[duskpeterson]

In the 1970s, I realized I was bi. Back then, there was no LGBTQ community; there was only the gay and lesbian community. A number of gay authors assured me that there was no such thing as a bisexual. All the way up through the twenty-first century, I kept encountering queer groups that excluded bi people.

In the 1990s, I realized I was nonbinary (or "bi-gender," as I called it back then). That concept didn't yet exist in the queer world. So I was denied membership in a trans support group, just when I needed support most.

In the 2010s, I realized I was grey-asexual. Last I heard, there are still a considerable number of people in the queer community who deny that asexuals are queer and who try to prevent them from marching in Pride parades.

I think it's quite legitimate for any community to say what type of communication they consider acceptable - for example, requiring that communication be focussed on queer experiences. But I believe that monitoring members' *identities* is a slippery slope that leads to hell. Personally, I am not all keen on queer groups that try to keep out or silence the people whom they consider to be non-queer. Queer is an ever-evolving concept.