George Fowler is so in love with being queer he wants to shout it from the rooftops, but it wasn’t always like that. Here he shares his journey of becoming, truly, proud!
I didn’t always think it was a good thing to be queer. In fact, I remember the exact moment the dread kicked in and never left. I was eleven, a classmate was running ahead of me across the sunny school field – ponytail bouncing, laughing at some joke. All at once, a completely novel sensation hit me like a shock wave – a longing that stopped me in my tracks. I stood motionless in the grass, surrounded by giggling, playing kids, suddenly very alone. I distinctly remember thinking – “oh no … I hope this doesn’t mean what I think it means.”
It’s a lifelong journey to overcome that initial sting of shame. I spent my teenage years petrified that anyone would ever ‘find out’. I spent my early twenties dressing femme and dating men, believing that life would be so much easier if I pretended. And then, in my mid-twenties, when I had finally come to terms with being gay, I found myself unable to avoid the nagging idea that I might be a man. I spent the better part of a decade lurching in and out of the closet, bargaining with my body and hoping it wasn’t true.
Now, I’m pleased to report that I regret every second I spent wishing I wasn’t queer. Every year, I get weirder, gayer, and more proudly and gloriously transgender. And, every year, the more grateful that I am to be this way. What a gift it is to be gay! To be trans, to be ‘other’, to experience life as an outsider.
Queerness has given me so much. For starters, it’s made me question everything. When the world has lied to you about one core part of your identity, it begs the question – what else isn’t true? Gender norms? Capitalism? Monogamy? When life’s prescribed parameters do not apply, we’re forced to become attuned with our own individualised wants and desires. We’re free to create ourselves from scratch.
And create, we do. I know gays who are covered with the dumbest tattoos you will ever see. I know people who co-parent with a vast network of friends, family and lovers. I know people who treat dressing for the day like a sacred ritual. And I also know people with monogamous long-term partners, kids and respectable jobs – but every one of them, I’m sure, has questioned whether those choices were correct for them.
Queerness has given me the best people I’ve ever met. The love of a rainbow chosen-family knows no bounds. We collect each other like trinkets, bonded by mutual experience, understanding, and culture. And, more often than not, gays are nice people – because when you know what life is like as an outcast, you tend to care about others. We listen with compassion, we give a shit about injustice, and we vote for the little guy.
And good god, we’re good at stuff – and for good reason. Our experiences make us lateral thinkers, rule breakers, and survivors. We’re funny and fashionable, we’re problem solvers, and we’re beautiful, resilient weirdos. We don’t thrive despite our queerness, we thrive because of it.
Now, queerness is the piece of me I am most proud of: the thing it has taken the most strength to finally celebrate. I have fought to love what I see in the mirror. I am so grateful to be undeniably and inescapably queer – and I hope you are too. Happy pride, everyone.
George Fowler is a gender diversity and inclusion consultant, a trans man, and a big queer dingus. By night, you can catch him as glittery drag king Hugo Grrrl.
