"I always knew," she explained before giving the rest of us a knowing smile. I silently nodded along and shifted my gaze to the arch of lipstick adorning my fluted glass. Within queer conversations like this one, I often heard narratives describing gay and transgender people as having always known they were “different”.
At as young as three or four years old, many members of our community either began to understand that they are different from their peers or present physical representations of these feelings to their parents. And the prevalence of this narrative is an answer to a very painful question. During the early years of the gay liberation movement, queer people were viewed as perversions of the cisgender heteronormative standard. Everyone was thought to be born straight, and only dangerous worldly influences caused people to choose to engage in “sexual deviance”. But as numbers in the liberation movement swelled, queer people began to explain their earliest understandings of how their attractions were innate through descriptions of their childhoods. How could children at such young ages understand and convey their queerness if it was due solely to "perverse influences"? With this answer, the wider perspective shifted and the battle front moved toward de-stigmatizing queerness as "adult" or "explicit".
As we learned more about sexuality and gender through research and qualitative study, we began to understand that there are also people who did not know they were queer from a young age. When society embraced the philosophy of self-discovery, some who would have never had the space or opportunity to interrogate their sexuality or gender can now explore these feelings in a safer environment. Up until my freshman year of high school, I was unable to even understand queerness. I didn't have the knowledge or language to describe what I was feeling or who I felt I was becoming. I didn't know that attraction could be a spectrum, or that transgender people were real until my first year of college. So I read book chapters, blog posts, and coming out stories voraciously. I went to group meetups, LGBTQ talks, and drag shows. It took years for me to comprehend my queerness, and consequently, I found the "I've always known I was gay" narrative reductive. I felt there was no space for people who had to work, research, and parse to understand their sexuality and/or gender as I had. I felt invalidated and my new found identity seemed inauthentic. The pain of that alienation almost forced me back into the closet, particularly after coming to terms with being non-binary.
But now after almost a year of being completely out, I am beginning to develop a more complete perspective of the narrative of "always having known". When I was a child, I can remember feeling different. The concept of being a tomboy, something in contrast with the flowery pink ruffles of girlhood or the ridged constraints of boyhood, drew my constant attention. I can remember longing for a name like "Jamie" or anything that conveyed androgyny. Not that long ago, I realized that my preteen obsession with the movie Bringing Down the House was due almost entirely to my misunderstood crush on Queen Latifah. Piecing a handful of these memories together has begun to create a different picture of my relationship to my queerness. And as I grow to understand my gender and sexuality more, I realize that I was always myself, and that self has always been queer.
S. Brathwaite is black non-binary writer, director, and "Haiku Haberdasher" who pries open the structural meaning within traditional literary forms. As part of the Press Play Poetry Collective, they create spaces for emerging spoken word artists by hosting showcases, open mics, and poetry slams throughout their community. When not writing or organizing, they can be found counting things and thinking about writing.
Pronouns: They/She
Instagram: @SunShineLogic
Twitter: @sbrathwaitelit