Visibility. Again

The question of visibility raises the chestnut of assimilation or separation.  I prefer to be separate.  I like feeling like I’m part of a renegade group who push the boundaries.  I don’t really do it anywhere else but in how I look and who I live with. Apart from that, I work, pay taxes, drive on the right side of the road (which is actually the left side). But in that most obvious sense, I’m a bit on the outer of the mainstream.

My friends, however, are a different story.  Many of my dyke comrades have had kids (five couples so far, with another two in the works) and several have moved to the suburbs.  They send Christmas cards, our email updates about their families.  They appear happy, but it’s not a life I want.  They are straighter than the straight couple next door.  ‘Married’ (four of the five had commitment ceremonies), monogamous, with child/ren and conforming to all of societies expectations.  Except for the bit where they married a man.

I don’t want to disrespect them.  Like I said, they seem happy. But it’s no longer the radicalism that has been the hallmark of the queer community for over fifty years.  Perhaps it’s easy to say now that we have legal rights and don’t get routinely bashed/arrested/shunned for being LGBT. Maybe I am being arrogant and self entitled.  But I look at my married friends and have less and less in common with them.  I have begun to hang out with straight couples without kids and other less traditional queer folk.

The second part of this argument seems to point to the importance currently placed on gay marriage.  Which, really, is a topic for another time.