Add one cup of buttermilk, one egg, and three tablespoons of melted butter into a bowl. I start with this sentence because, honestly, writing about this topic makes me nervous. I would much rather talk about an old pancake recipe: it’s simple and only takes a few easy steps, unrehearsed and unhurried, to make something delicious. Just make sure to give the butter a few minutes to cool down before adding it to the egg—not doing so might cook them.
Recipes are predictable.
Queerness is not. I say this because it’s important: the only queerness I understand is my own, and so what I will expand on here is really just that—my own experience with queerness. I write this text with great humility, with the knowledge that you might disagree with my understanding of this world, and with the hope that that’s okay.
Let’s start with a definition. Standards of the English language tie queer to strange. Now reclaimed by the LGBT+ community, it used to be—can still be—a slur to tag us as unnatural, outside of what is considered normal, desirable, and ideal. Many have heard it wielded as a violent act, the quipped word coming out as a punch, two consonants, and three vowels holding a strength so brutal that it forces bile up your throat.
I, on the other hand, grew up in a place where the term queer did not really exist. I mean, I grew up in a country and amongst a people whose primary language was not English. But besides linguistic contexts, my world was one where the concept of intimacy amongst women was as great of a myth as American exceptionalism. When our “self” and our desires do not involve a man, people do not see us. We briefly become invisible and unthreatening, not something that needs to be discussed or explicitly admonished. After all, if we are not here for the pleasures of cis-men, do we even exist? So if I were to describe the feeling I had when I first interacted with the term queer, I would say it tasted of liberation and community.
bell hooks, writer and activist, defines “queerness not as being about who you’re having sex with … but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.” I read and write her words with great reverence because through them, she was able to capture the soft hum that always seems to vibrate behind the term queer. Even in her sentence, queer is paired with short verbs that are in turn connected by a series of ands—“to invent and create and find a place”—the staccato, almost dizzying, a mirror of the constant movement residing in queerness.
To be queer is to look at the world in front of you, the framework within which all acceptable dynamics are laid out in stark lines, and feel a longing deep in your bones. It’s reaching out to find those small, interstitial spaces nestled between ‘norms,’ and finally exhale a breath that’s been sitting heavy in your lungs all your life. When I realized that what society had mapped out as acceptable behavior does not allow for me to exist as I am, I found beauty in doing exactly what hooks described: in inventing, creating, and finding my place in this world, regardless of what it thought I should be. And it is in this constant internal questioning, in this movement, that I define my queerness. It is the process of continuously reinventing the ways I see myself; how I pull a skirt over my hips or button up my slacks, the titter between days where I style my long hair carefully, for hours, and those where I choose to shave most of it off. It’s the exercise of standing in front of the mirror and pressing my breasts against my chest, musing at the thought of my shirt laying flat, or looking down at soft, manicured fingers lovingly slipping between mine. It is meeting someone that society had not planned for me to see, at least not in the way I see them, and asking them what would you like to make of us?
I think the best parts of my life are when we get to answer that question together.
Add three quarter cups of flour, a teaspoon of baking soda, and half a teaspoon of salt in a small bowl. Mix.
My sister once told me it is unfortunate that those external to the queer community believe sex and romantic love are what make our most defining relationships. I would go so far as to say that the most beautiful, even foundational, forms of queer love are actually platonic. Sonia Sanchez anchors what, in my opinion, is at the essence of queer relatinships:
without your
residential breath
i lose my timing
Platonic queer relationships offer a rare kind of solace. They grant the kind of relief unique to being home, to arriving at that place where you can tug at the seams holding you up, letting all of your insides spill out for the world to see, and still feel like you belong. It is in my friendships that I find unconditional love, the space where I can test out my movements until I find a rhythm that fits, and the encouragement to discover the outline of myself and finally paint it across my skin.
When the rejection and disgust that comes with being queer leaves me breathless, it is my community that coaxes oxygen back into my lungs. Community as in family. As in, for every person that chooses to see ugliness and shame in what you consider to be the most beautiful parts of your soul, there is someone who will look at you, eyes soft, and smile in wonder. Community as in continuity. As in, for every time someone sneers when they see me lean down to kiss a woman, telling me I am too westernized or that I am an anomaly, I remember al-Zarqa’ and Hind Bint al-Nu’manin, the two pre-Islamic lesbian lovers. I think of all the gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, gender-non-conforming and intersex people, all of the others who came before me and stand with me, and I know that we are ahistorical. We have existed long before now, and will continue to exist, to invent and create and find home.
Take the dry ingredients, and slowly add them in the liquid batter. Mix lightly, keeping the lumps.
Maybe being queer is not so different from making pancakes. In fact, the act of sharing them comes as a nice metaphor for sharing my queerness. When I prepare pancakes, I always do so in a way I know I will enjoy. I pour the lumpy batter onto a hot and lightly buttered pan, and keep it from spreading past a small and thick circle; I lay out jars of honey and jam, a bowl of fruit, and my pot of Arabic coffee. Then, I invite people, arms open, to find joy in something I love.
Author: The author of this piece chose to remain anonymous, but wished to share their story with the hope of creating connection where there is longing, and encouraging understanding where there is hesitation.