In Depth or in Distraction > Identity Matters

Changes in sexuality - when your sexual identity changes, what then?

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drama umbrella:

--- Quote ---This is a section for members to discuss anything and everything relating to identity in a tolerant and safe space.
--- End quote ---

I thought there was some good points raised by women who have had their lesbian identity change and dealing with what happens with that.

My birth mom was an out dyke for 16 years. She struggled really hard to come out of the closet to accept she was a dyke and did some very hard work to undo what her parents had programmed into her, she left her second marraige to pursue her own sexual identity without interference from people who told her she wasn't worth anything because she was a dyke.

16 years later, she fell in love with a bloke. it was a complete shock to her. She lost the community she spent years building for herself in a small town with the gay community there. My half brother even stopped speaking to her because he thought mom being with a man was "disgusting." He didn't speak to her for two years.

Her husband dropped dead of a heart attack two years into their marriage on the front lawn of their house.

She moved back home to canada, very alone, as she had lost most of her friends, and had a breakdown.

She lives in a trailer in the desert now.

Losing a community and concept of self can be incredibly damaging. Isolation hurts people. if that wasn't the case, there would be no need for community resources for people. My primatological background has taught me how biological our need to not be alone is. Our brains are made to have us need to belong somewhere.

When we lose our group and our identity, for something we fought for very hard, it can be incredibly isolating. I know what it's like to have no one around, no family, no friends, no community. it's fucking hard. And I know how hard it is to start trying to get one. I can't imagine how my mom felt, knowing that she didn't fit with the heterosexuals around her, because of her politics and her beliefs and her strong sense of being a dyke for 16 years. Then thrust into a world that she has no connection with. And no one in her past community wanted to speak to her. Even her son was angry. I can't imagine what went through her head after she'd be excommunicated from her community that was so close in that town.  And to struggle at the same time with having a a change of everything you thought you were and no one to talk to about it.

So, with that thought of my mom, I wanted to open a thread in a "safe and tolerant space" for people who wanted to talk about shifts in their sexual identity and the politics/community/isolation/self-sense experiences.

I think it's important, given my mom's experiences and watching her mental health deteriorate, to have a place to look for shared experience and support.

TheCJ:
Sadly, I think we do need this space! Not everyone is so tolerant and for the life of me I can't bloody figure out why. So, you know, thank you for this thread! I might work up the courage to post in here a bit later when I'm not on my phone.

Cuticle:
I went through this several times, being out as bi at one stage, then lesbian, then went into the closet which most interpreted as either I was bi or cured, then I came out again.  I know being in the closet is not quite the same as having a shifting sexuality or orientation but I can identify with the feelings of isolation and loss, particularly after coming out several extremely close straight friends just stopped talking to me and haven't done so since.  Even when I went from being with a femme partner to being with someone more boyish, some people didn't like it, believe it or not it messed up the decor at their dinner parties.  Even now I was quite upset yesterday when my relative sent back a CP invite marked 'declined' with no note, no card, no word of congratulations.  I knew exactly what that meant. 

To be shunned because of the ID of the person you choose to be with ought to just make you think the people doing it are morons, but the reality is it hurts and queers can be just as bad at shutting you out if you go straight, although for their part I understand a bit better because as someone said in the other thread you are exercising privilege all of a sudden, also for me you might be in the closet or in denial.  In a community where many of us have a fragile sense of self in a homophobic world choosing to distance yourself from an 'ex gay' might be more about protecting yourself.  But it shouldn't be a blanket thing, at least stop to work out how evolved your friend is being before just cutting them out.   :-\

Uncle Pants:
I was reflecting on this recently. I remember being afraid to come out as bisexual in case it turned out that I wasn't. Then I was worried about calling myself lesbian in case I was actually bisexual. Then I was worried about calling myself lesbian in case I wasn't a woman. I think a large part of this for me is to do with how I think rather than about what I am; I just don't believe in certainty and incontrovertible facts.

I heard a very moving keynote speech last week at a conference by Thomas Glave, who's an intentionally out English professor. He talked about the problem of the anti-identity politics attitude, and the gist was that the more open and out we are about who we are - and who we are can be quite untidy and difficult to untangle - the more other people struggling to come out and be themselves are likely to find people they relate to. I can't see why there shouldn't be room for people with clear, simple, constant identities, and also for others with more complex or fluid identities.

musclegirl:
I agree with what you've just said about room for both fixed or more fluid identities. Everyone is different.

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