Actively Affirming Your Queer Identity
I’m rounding out pride month this year with some thoughts about queer affirmation. With the amount of hatred and harm we continue to witness against the LGBTQIA+ community, we need to counteract it with fervid affirmation.
Affirmation of queer identity doesn’t always have to be “loud & proud”, in fact this form of queer affirmation during pride month can actually be overwhelming and isolating for members of the LGBTQIA+ who are still closeted.
In the slides at the bottom of this post more discreet methods of affirmation and personal validation are explored, but let’s not stop there. Let’s talk about the WHY.
Queer people in general need to be affirmed because we live in a world that generally does not accept us. Queer affirmation is an act of resistance against oppressive forces, toxic beliefs & harmful ideologies.
Closeted queer people need affirmation for the same reasons, but also because they often don’t have access to the same community-based support people who are out can obtain. The invisibility they experience can be excruciatingly painful to tolerate, as can the dissonance between how they are presenting themselves to others versus how they feel on the inside.
Methods of affirming yourself while in the closet may include:
- Finding a queer therapist who can hold space for you to be your authentic self in session, with no pressure to “come out” if you don’t want to or cannot safely do so
- Journaling about your identity and how it has evolved
- Engage in a values sort, to reconnect with your values & priorities
- Reading/ listening to stories of other queer people, especially related to their experience being in the closet
- Finding one or two safe people to come out to … or perhaps visiting a LGBTQIA+ support group to expand your circle of outness
“I am very interested in the idea of not just witnessing but being witnessed and being seen. And I think so often as an artist, we think our job is to look, but I think as a human what we also need is to be not just seen, but to be beheld. And I think that when that happens, and when someone can do that for you, or when you see an animal looking at you and it just feels like, Oh, I am being witnessed as part of community; I watch the crows and the crows watch me and they know my routine and I know theirs and here we are together. It is this kind of connection, an interconnection and also that sense of working against aloneness, you know, that idea that we aren’t separate.”
– Ada Limón in an interview with Mitzi Rapkin on the First Draft Podcast
This is why pride is so important. This is why queer visibility is so crucial. Feeling seen fosters connection.
Witnessing someone, even ourselves, with acceptance rather than judgment or agenda, is an irreplaceable method of affirmation.
In exploring methods of queer affirmation this week I’ve attempted to move beyond affirmative statements and introduce additional methods of affirmation. However you choose to engage this practice, the point is simply to express yourself!
Queer people are needed. Queer voices are needed. Queer bodies are needed. Queer expression is needed.
Queer liberation is worth fighting for.
