queerspawn definition .004
I think being a queerspawn (a word that makes me think of squid) means being part of a largely invisible culture by birth (i.e. like Jews without any established history or culture ... yet) invisible, in many ways, to both straights and queers. And it's a culture and identity that still hasn't figured out what it means to itself. Our history is short. Queer culture has only recently become public. Up until Stonewall, gays, too, were invisible. We queerspawn of those Stonewall (and beyond) queers are in the very protean stages of figuring out if and how to deal with our many sexual and cultural identities and the fact that we can manipulate them, change in and out of them like clothes. I'd say it doesn't help that the gay community's struggle for equal rights has forced many of us queerspawn to show a black face of normalcy and contentedness for the struggle. It's implied that we're to demonstrate our assimilation so that we AND our parents can be seen as such. But I've come to see this "normal" face that I presented to the world for many years as a kind of self-hatred lite -- a caricature and deprecation of ourselves that should be shed post haste. There's also the issue of "pride" ("I'm proud of my gay parents"), which also often feels contrived and should be implied at this point. Even at 33, I still feel deeply conflicted and think often about what it means to have gay parents. But I do prize it. It's my fucking culture too, even if I don't always feel like I belong exactly.
-- Noel Black