Content warning: This article discusses queerphobia, including slur calling, microaggressions, and misgendering. If you’re not in a headspace to read this, that’s fine! Read some of the other great articles this week, we understand :)
Just about every queer person will have this experience: you’re walking down the street, when suddenly a guy leans out of a car squealing past and yells, “Faggot!” His mates laugh from the backseat. You scoff, roll your eyes, and watch the car speed away.
Just about every single queer person will also have this experience: you’re sitting with a group of friends. Everyone is chatting, having a good time – until someone makes a certain comment that makes you frown. Maybe it’s, “Okay but lesbian sex isn’t really sex is it?” Maybe you overhear someone telling a story about you: “God yeah, it was so funny when he – fuck, sorry I meant she – fuck, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what is wrong with me tonight.” Maybe your mate mentions enjoying a stereotypically girly TV show. “What, are you gay or something?” another friend replies, in a jokey tone. You laugh in the moment, and the conversation speeds past before you can even register how you feel. But something lingers.
No one wants to be seen as queerphobic – especially not in modern day Dunedin. The University prides itself on an inclusive image, sporting that Rainbow Tick certification. Gone are the days where you can beat up a gay person with little-to-no repercussions, or use “gay” as a synonym for bad. And while this is obvious, absolutely incredible progress, the wound of queerphobia, though healing, remains open.
Queerphobia has increasingly taken the form of unintentional microaggressions, even (and often) from members of our own communities, including friends and whānau. Since these kinds of comments are by definition ostensibly small or innocuous, it’s more difficult to call them out compared to explicit bigotry. Microaggressions are a sort of Bigotry Lite – difficult to register and easily dismissed. This leaves queer people caught in a double bind, having to put their own feelings of devaluation aside at the risk of offending others. Even if I, a queer person, am hurt by the ignorant comments, I have to worry about the potential fuss I create by bringing them up, knowing that my accusation of queerphobia will be taken as a personal attack.
Nico is a second-year Arts student whose girlfriend Eevee is a trans woman. Recently, his flatmate started making uncomfortable comments about Eevee. The flatmate expressed discomfort at her presence because she’s trans, saying that, “I'm glad I have a lock on my door.” This response to trans women is disgusting. It implies that there is some inherent danger in having a trans woman present in the flat. Eevee says that the flatmate made no attempt to actually know her as a person: “It was just this interpretation that because I was trans, I'm essentially a predator.”
Despite the comment, the flatmate in question is a member of the queer community and “would definitely classify herself as someone who doesn't consider herself transphobic,” according to Nico. He says that the flatmate's identity as a queer person made it difficult to confront her since Nico knew it would be taken personally, and therefore “not worth the hassle.” The comments got so bad that Nico has essentially moved out of his flat.
Although Nico and Eevee’s experience is more extreme, every queer person I spoke to was able to share a similar story. Whether it’s misgendering, people making fun of a different sexual minority in front of you, someone doubting your gender identity because you don’t dress in line with their expectations; these small comments all have the ability to get under your skin and fester.
Bigotry doesn’t always take an explicit form, especially not in today’s climate of political correctness. But when these comments are made by someone you care about – someone you trusted to do better – sometimes, the betrayal hurts more than a slur ever could. When the person in a car yells a slur at you, there is a certain comfort in the fact that the car is driving away – that you will likely never see them again. “It’s less of a personal attack because they don't know what they're saying to you,” says Nico. “I’ve been called so many different things from cars.” In contrast to the impersonality of being called a slur by a stranger, comments from people you trust cut deeper and, unlike when the car drives away, in a way you cannot escape.
To a lesbian, a comment of lesbian sex not being “real sex” comes across as you not taking their relationship as seriously as you would a straight relationship. Repeatedly misgendering your friend after they transition reads as you not actually respecting their identity – that you still see them as their old self, even if you claim otherwise.
Someone is able to fully recognise how horrible being called slurs is, and then turn around and make a comment that is less explicitly bigoted, but equally hurtful in its own unique capacity. The experience can be worsened when said by someone who you know will take being called out on this as a personal attack. This stems from good intentions: it’s great that people don’t want to be bigoted! But that doesn’t exonerate you from harmful behaviour. Even actions that read as allyship can be harmful to queer people.
In my own life as a trans masculine person, people misgendering me is a regular part of my existence. Almost everyone in my life has misgendered me at some point, in some way. Sometimes, when people either catch themselves or I call them out, an onslaught of apologies begin: “I’m so so sorry, oh my god I am so sorry.” The person who messed up is desperate to prove to me that they don’t view me as a woman, they promise they don’t. In this overdramatic display, however, all of the responsibility has been placed on me. I am the one who must forgive you, often in front of people. I need to alleviate your guilt in order for the conversation to continue, rather than you needing to change your behaviour. But what about the guilt I feel when I let it slide?
Dynamics like these create an environment where calling people out for microaggressions becomes more trouble than it is really worth, leaving the victim to saddle the comments rather than the perpetrator to confront their actions. If I don’t forgive the person who is apologising again and again for misgendering me, our conversation has come to an awkward stalemate, and I risk hurting their feelings. It’s a false double-sided narrative, in which your fear of being seen as bigoted overrides any actual bigotry you express.
In a weird way, the added risk of causing “drama” by hurting someone’s feelings almost makes the slur-calling seem appealing. Like I said, as the car drives away, I know I will never see it again. If someone in my life makes repeated, small comments, I have to face them day after day. For me, and I know for others, it creates a twisted desire; a desire for them to be more explicit in their bigotry. “Just call me a slur!” I internally beg. “I know you’re thinking it anyway!” If they were just outright with it, it would create a situation where it was more socially acceptable for me to call them out, and for me to dismiss their opinion as not worth my time. Instead, queer people are the ones who carry the weight with us.
This isn’t to say that every person who unintentionally misgenders someone or makes a queer person uncomfortable is some horrible bigot. Far from it. The world is shifting, and what is the “norm” is shifting with it. But for all of you allies sitting at home, don’t think you are excused from bigotry because of good intentions. Listen to your queer friends when they tell you that your words hurt them, because we don’t mean it personally. We just need you to do better.