Q&A: “What are your thoughts on “passing” in the queer community?”

anonymous said:

What are your thoughts on “passing” in the queer community? Mostly in terms of being mistaken for a heterosexual couple and if this actually gives people privileges that people in non-heterosexual seeming queer relationships don’t have.

sorry for taking so long to reply, anon! it’s been one hellava week….

i’ve said this before in reference to other “het-blahblahblah privilege” arguments that people make, but i’ll say it again because it equally applies to this.

having one’s identity erased by society due to heteronormativity is not a privilege.

i will shout this from the rooftops until the end of time.

society literally assumes that e v e r y o n e is straight until “proven otherwise”, i don’t care if that person is a lesbian, gay, asexual or anything else. and yet, for some odd reason *cough*biphobia*cough* i don’t see people making the argument that a lesbian, for example, accesses “straight passing privilege” when she’s single, not with her partner, not out of the closet and/or not “visibly queer”– whatever the hell that means. i mean, according to people who claim that “straight passing” is a thing, that lesbian would be accessing “straight passing privilege”, right?? and yet i see no one making that claim. i wonder why.

*cough*biphobia*cough*

a bi person being assumed to be straight does not in fact make them straight. that person is bi. their identity is being erased. society is fucking that person over. how is that a privilege? being assumed to be something when you’re not puts you in that much more danger when someone finds out that you aren’t what they assumed you to be. it’s that much more undermining and toxic to that person’s own identity and sense of self when the world– even the LGBT “community”!–  doesn’t even acknowledge or recognize you for who you are.

furthermore, society’s bullshit, ie. heteronormativity, does not mean that bi people who are assumed to be straight have it easy. people need to stop looking for any and every excuse to target bi people as not being “gay enough to count”. the argument of “straight passing privilege” is yet another attempt at labeling bi people as “practically straight” and i will have none of it.