Queer Community in Real Life

After finding out that a person from my Japanese class, let’s call him P, is also non-binary (thanks to my facebook stalking skills), I sorted out a moment to talk to them about which pronouns he preferred and also to talk about gender and our experiences in the queer community. My queer community is strictly online, since I don’t know many people who are trans in real life, but it turns out that P has great contacts and even has a girlfriend who is trans. Though we had this conversation four weeks ago, we still haven’t been able to meet again. Hopefully I’ll see him tomorrow at a meeting I’m going to about queer identities in feminism, since he is supposedly also coming.

Anyway, discovering P’s gender and developing this friendship (?) led to three different things. First of all, I came out to my family. Knowing that I was no longer alone, I was able to stand in front of my parents and sister and show them a video I had made a long time ago talking about what the word transgender meant in relation to my gender, as well as saying that I liked girls. Their reaction to this was a mix between “we don’t care”, “we already knew” and “just don’t tell anybody”. I knew they wouldn’t react negatively, but they don’t seem to understand the concepts of dysphoria and community. Now that my gender is out of the way, the next thing I can announce is that I plan on going vegan as soon as I leave home, that I am an aromantic asexual and that I also happen to be polyamorous. Okay, maybe that can wait a while.

The next thing that happened is that I also realised that I have idealised my art teacher too much, nodding my head in agreement to everything he said –though I don’t think he realised. As I said elsewhere, he is the first person that I came out to, and though he was very supportive, he couldn’t really help me when it came down to non-binary issues. Now that I feel more secure and have managed to identify openly as who I really am, I have finally gotten a hold of myself and started having my own opinions again, regardless of what my teacher says, which is good.

Getting to know P also made me develop some kind of attraction towards him, which is funny because I identify strongly as aromantic and don’t imagine myself with anyone any time soon. I got to the bottom of these feelings and came to the conclusion that it is just a platonic attraction mixed up with relief and admiration. I think I just wanted to feel understood by somebody in real life.

Oh, and I met another girl yesterday, but I’ll talk about her next time.