Feeling like an imposter amidst queerness is nearly universal among queer people. Drawn-out questioning and uncertainty are so common that many people see it as an initial sign of queer discovery. Realization and discovery preceded by a period of uncertainty is still the norm for queer people. The default structure of society normalizes a cisgender and heterosexual way of being. I’ve come to think of it as presumed cis-het until proven otherwise.
I felt compelled to write this because people worrying about their queerness even though they’re not overtly queerphobic is such a common thread in my life. Every queer person I know has experienced it to varying degrees, and I’ve met vanishingly few people online who were absolutely certain of their queerness and never deviated. The feeling isn’t going to go away for our people, so let’s talk about it.
The ambiguity below the stream
Feeling out-of-place with one’s queerness isn’t something with a documented source. Discrimination, curiosity, mental state, and material circumstances can all make us feel like a better (or worse) fit in our lives. I do believe that the feeling can often be traced to a mismatch between the masks we wear and how they touch the world, and ourselves.
Personal identity is always fluid and shaped by our surroundings. Given the chance, we pick a mask that best matches our feelings and the present company. A mindset for the internal world and a presentation for the external world. Those of us who’ve had to conceal our queerness or neurodivergence are quite familiar with the perks and costs of masking. The behaviors I bring to a museum are very different to the ones I have alone in my apartment. And I’ve seen what schoolteachers are like in private. They’re not bringing that to work.
These masks are not like the ‘masking’ we neurodivergents endure to fit into a neurotypical society. The masks of identity are a palette of behaviors and thought processes we draw on to interact with the world. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to engage with the world as any version of ‘ourselves’.
When we wear the wrong mask to a situation, we feel out of place. Others might notice, but it’s usually internal discomfort over a perceived faux pas. More relevant to being queer, sometimes our sense of self doesn’t align to a mask we aspire to wear. That creates an internal dissonance that is very frustrating. Depending on how we make sense of the world—our internal schema—we may experience this dissonance as ‘not feeling queer enough’, ‘being an imposter in queer spaces’, or ‘gaying without a license’.
These internal conflicts are insidious because they become internal anxieties. External events like bullying, snide remarks, or online content could be a starting point, but our minds turn these inciting incidents into a self-reinforcing anxious spiral. That’s one of the ways the gayest person you know can fear for their place in queer communities. They’re seldom an actual imposter, but they feel like it.
There isn’t a ‘cure’ for this any more than there’s a way to cure generalized anxiety or personal trauma. Like anxiety, this feeling of imposterdom is bespoke-tailored to make us miserable. The ‘evidence’ it draws to prove a case for our inadequacy is harmless or senseless to anyone else. Unfortunately, it’s an invisible weapon forged solely to harm us. It’s difficult to overcome, but we are powerful.
Getting some distance
Anxiety preys on the vulnerable. It’s especially harmful to people beset by difficult times or trauma. The defining attribute of anxiety is that it’s irrationally forceful compared to a healthy stress response. When we can’t trust our feelings, we still have two good options: evaluating our fears from a detached perspective or asking others for help.
The road between anxiety and queer imposterdom is always open for traffic. Uncertainty is good for personal growth, but unresolved uncertainty becomes worry. Unresolved worry becomes anxiety. Unresolved anxiety becomes trauma. We can turn things into a growth moment at any point during the sequence, but it gets more difficult the more our fears fester.
What I’m getting at is: Being uncertain about your queerness is a normal part of being queer. It’s best to resolve those uncertainties into personal growth and recognition before they grow into something more frightening. Note that I didn’t say uncertainty needs to resolve into certainty. Certainty can be helpful, but it’s not the only way to be queer.
Fluidity and uncertainty are conjoined
When we’re in the thick of Queer Confusion™, it’s easy to miss the fact that queerness is fluid and uncertainty is part of the fluidity. Once we open up to the initial label of ‘queer’, we’re pretty likely to face renewed reflection and conflict later in life. That new wave of chance could very well start as a bad experience or discomfort that makes us question part of our identity. It doesn’t feel good to have the labels pulled out from underneath us, but it is how fluid identities behave.
If that happens to you—as it’s been happening to me for a decade—remember that the power is still in your hands. Your identity is asserted by you, and nobody can remove your internal convictions. If you want to blurt it out to a trusted friend or keep it locked up forever, that’s your prerogative. If you feel more secure in a safe harbor identity than something unexplored, you can stand by it. Queerness is a journey, not a ladder.
I strongly suspect that most of my readership subscribes to the statement that ‘gender and sexuality are fluid’. What follows is that we should apply that same openness to ourselves.
Queerness is imperfect
I’ve told many people who’ve written to us with questions about queerness that queerness is not a prestigious club worth gatekeeping. I stand by that view because I believe queerness is strengthened by openness to different modes of being. Conversely, I don’t like it when people treat queerness as something exclusive or competitive. Needless to say, I don’t get along with the gold star lesbian creed.
I’ve noticed that when faced with the imperfection of our queerness, we break away from the color and disorder we usually embrace and revert back to rigid thinking: labels, categorization, and fixed definitions. Queer people who normally enjoy the messiness and chaos of queer community can become very touchy about labels and where they fit when their stability is challenged. I’m certainly guilty of this. It seems paradoxical at first, but I suspect it’s a psychological defense we employ to fall back on what we consider ‘universal’ when we’re challenged. Whether that challenge arises in a social setting via our internal monologue, it still destabilizes us.
Once again, I wish to dispel the myth that being queer is prestigious or worth gatekeeping. Our families and communities tend to improve when we adopt a ‘Yes, and…’ mindset to newcomers and new perspectives. Adding onto that, I’ll point out that there is no form of queerness that is ‘unproblematic’ or utterly without risk because queerness is part of personhood. And personhood is messy. Holding views or biases that are not fully aligned with our idealized ethics isn’t a sign of moral failure. It’s recognition of our own imperfections and the work we can still do when we’re ready. If taking on guidance from imperfect places or problematic views takes you to a place of comfort, that’s your right. The upshot to that openness is that you can adopt new labels or changes even if you don’t fit an idealized definition. As they say: Don’t let Perfect be the enemy of Good Enough.
Unlike some of my other explainers, this one doesn’t have any bullet pointed lists or step-by-step procedures. Self identity has way too much flow to effectively box into plain categories and steps. The hard work of queer exploration and questioning will always fall to the person having the thoughts. All I can do is present snippets from the worldview that have led me to anchored, stable identities (my transness) and allowed me to cope with uncertain identities (my bisexuality).
Truthfully, most of the pressure I felt left when I realized that there’s no way to win queerness, and the only way to lose is to become a hateful person.
Comments
Appreciate your articles, Summer!