I don’t hate straight people
I’m sure you’ve heard something like this: “I don’t hate queer people. I just wish they wouldn’t flaunt it in public.” Or, “I don’t hate gays. I just wish they wouldn’t shove it down our throats.”
I thought cliched bigot-sayings like that were a thing of the past, memories of the 1980s and even the 1990s — although as an undergraduate in the early 1990s, I was surrounded by queer people. But that was a bubble.
I was a teenager in the 1980s, and I was in my twenties in the 1990s, never mind that anti-LGBTQIA+ bigotry seemed archaic to me in that decade. Yes, despite the microaggressions and despite straight people constantly assuming I was straight. Most books I read in the 1990s were by and about straight people and never about transgender or nonbinary people. I didn’t even have a label for my orientations — and that’s a plural because not only was asexuality not acknowledged but also people didn’t talk or write about romantic or aesthetic orientations, which aren’t identical to sexual orientation. I began volunteering at a feminist bookstore in 2009, and that allowed me much more exposure to queer authors and characters.
When June 2021 came along, I knew it was Pride Month. Thanks to the pandemic, I was (and am) accustomed to socializing online more than in person. Imagine my shock when I logged onto Facebook and read a post from a popular…