Ramble

At the Spirit of the North Conference, which was incredible, i found myself in another conversation defending the right to have queer space without allies.  I feel like sometimes it matters that there be in my life people who exactly get what is going on, and that there is room for queer only, or gimp only groups, and that is also space for larger groups which include partners, friends, and allies.

I still find myself feeling excluded though, and I was wondering why, because it wasn't anything anyone else was doing, so I thought I should take a look at what it might be that I am doing and I think it is this:

I am so used to having to fight for the right to be accepted in spaces that I find myself on a kind of automatic pilot at times, caught between these two polar opposite modes of being.  One, a kind of silent defensiveness, waiting, and hoping desperately that I will be welcomed and acknowledged in that space for who I am and allowed to speak and participate; and the second a kind of defensiveness which states that this isn't a space where I would want to participate anyway.

It is partly about feeling like I do not belong or fit in, so insecurity, but it is partly about a history of systemic bias, of being rejected on the basis of things I could not change.  Being female, being fat, being queer, being too black, or too Estonian, being an atheist.  I have built a layer of defense against institutional rejection which is now hampering me.  It is interesting, because I do not like to think of myself as tender hearted.  I think I was initially, but inequities really cut me to the quick, and being unable to change them really became something to innure myself against.