Saying Queer Out Loud

I am on a bus to Portland, Oregon to meet up with my daughter. I have a few pieces of lined paper and I am furiously trying to put down some ideas which have been circulating in my mind all week. It's about hope in what appears to be a hopeless world.

My daughter gives me hope. She is thoughtfully edgy and uniquely herself in a world that smothers uniqueness. When she was nearly fourteen, she “came out” to me as a Lesbian. Like a moment of historical significance, I remember exactly where we were: sitting facing each other on our living room couch. As her confident words flowed, my love for her increased. There was never any question for me about the wonderfulness of my daughter, but I did have fears about the world's discrimination. I also wanted her, if she were to so choose, to be able to marry and have a family. But I was getting ahead of myself, for there was so much more for me to learn and to consider than my teenage daughter's future marriage.

The bus arrives right on time at the Portland Train Station. I am full of getting-to-see my daughter energy as I hop off the bus, speed-walk towards Burnside and enter Powell's Bookstore, where we have agreed to rendezvous. I look around expecting her to already be there and make my way to the Cafe. I cell phone and find she is still on the Max. So after ordering a coffee and a biscuit, I sit and wait. Mothering has become just this, long pauses of waiting in between brief and fleeting encounters. With her statuesque beauty framed by the wooden cafe entrance and her reddish-auburn hair softly waving, my daughter arrives.

We are both excited because after dinner, we will return to Powell's for a reading/talk by Dan Savage and Terry Miller. Dan Savage, a sex advice columnist from Seattle, created an Internet site with his husband, Terry at www.itgetsbetter.com. They produced the first video for LGBTQ youth about how life gets better after the bullying and marginalized existence of high school. Their personal confessions about their own difficult adolescent lives encouraged thousands of other videos from both famous and every day Gay and Straight adult allies to pour into the site. Now they have edited these visual entries into the first It Gets Better book.

At twenty-one my daughter has made it through the adolescent bullshit, a first-time living together, horrendous break-up romance, and is on her way to becoming a solid, creative, compassionate human being. After reading the myriad sad yet strength producing stories from It Gets Better, I realize I will never fully understand what my daughter must have gone through, and may still be going through, during her growing up years. I stand on the sidelines as her truest supporter waving a rainbow flag but I will never know what “liking and dating girls”, the phrase she uses to describe herself, means for her.

When she came out to me, I quickly became a mother lion and a PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) mom. I immersed myself in the LGBTQ world, becoming friends with long term same-sex couples, learning what it meant to be Transgender, learning what it meant to be Queer. My daughter hated the word Lesbian, and as she developed relationships she hated the word partner or lover. Girlfriend worked for her but most straight people understand “girl friend” as meaning “friend.” When she sent a picture of her and her long-time love to grandma, grandma's reply was, “Nice picture of you and your roommate.” I am extremely proud of my daughter and I never hesitated to share about her and her romance. So I'd try to say girlfriend with an added and “I mean girl friend in the sense of her love.”

For a while my daughter preferred “Queer” and I did try and do try to wrap my head around the use of this claimed back, descriptive title for my dear one. I asked an older “Dyke” friend once about my uncomfortableness with the Queer word and she suggested I say, “Queer Identified.”

Sitting across from each other in the dimly lit and cozy Pastini's, we have a pleasant dinner and joyfully talk about our days. I stare at my daughter as she, with great animation, shares stories about her retail experiences: “There is no way to carry around a bunch of prom dresses all at once without looking completely ridiculous and ending up covered in glitter.” Then she proceeds to describe some of her customers as if they were fictional characters, full of whims and unfilled wants. This part-time job has immersed her in American consumer culture and she is loved because she listens and cares. Suddenly, I just have to blurt out: “This is so fun, having dinner with my adult daughter.” We both laugh as we head out the door and back down the boulevard to Powell's.

I grab a couple of seats in the back row while she browses. It is half an hour before Dan and Terry speak, but it is already standing-room only. Dan and Terry enter, two ordinary guys in jeans, tennis shoes and t-shirts. They comfortably stand at the podium together and take turns reading essays from It Gets Better. They have been a couple for sixteen years and have one son, D.J., now thirteen. Terry is the quiet, stay at home dad, while Dan Savage has gained fame and maybe some fortune through his sex columns, podcasts and books. You can see how much they love each other by watching their faces while the other one reads or speaks. Each face beams devoted pride and unconditional passion. Terry prefers not to be in the limelight, but as a bullied youth, he feels the weight of the responsibility to be a Gay mentor and role model. Dan, on the other hand, has no problem putting words to his causes: the unjust and bigoted treatment of Gay adolescents, the discriminatory way many American States view same sex couples by not allowing same sex marriage.

Dan's outspokenness, both in his frank speech and his honest writing, includes the “Queer” word and plenty of “Fucks.” I have been known to use the F word myself and I always tell my daughter my teenage students taught me all I know. As an English teacher I am an enthusiastic lover of words and I realize all the lists of “bad words” are only bad because we label them so. Words have the power we give them. I keep listening to the “Queer” word and occasional “Faggot” coming out of Dan's mouth. I understand that by claiming our enemies' derogatory, forbidden terms we lessen their sting. I know words can harm. My high school daughter mentioned often how she would hear “Faggot” and “That's so Gay” wafting down the high school hallways while she transitioned to her next class. I know I don't want to use words that hurt, only words that heal. And I think this is what Dan Savage is trying to do through his truthful speech.

So what is my truthful speech going to be? We live in an assumed heterosexual, conformist world. To stand out, to be different in any aspect of our lives is to be ridiculed. And to be Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer or Questioning is to be on the far end of the conformist spectrum. But this is what I love about my Queer daughter: she dares to be her genuine self, she dares to contradict the cultural norm and by this contradiction to expand the definition of what it means to be an authentic, self-actualized human being. She motivates a more tolerant, open me who walks outside the straight and narrow. Diversity and Queerness are gifts to all humanity I understand now. If I say Queer out loud, I make the once hate filled word a term of endearment and respect for the richness of an edgy, unique life fully accepted and lived. I love my Queer daughter beyond measure!

© 2011