I prefer "Recovering Heterosexual"

In celebration of St. Louis PrideFest this weekend, I thought I'd talk a little bit about the homosexual agenda... well, actually my homosexual agenda. No, no, not my secret plot to turn Hailey Duff into a dyke- just my thoughts about me being queer and society. Or as a friend recently described hers, "my brief history of Gay!" When I came out in college at 19, it didn't seem to shock anyone, except me. Maybe it was because I went away to a liberal women's college in the Northeast. Or maybe it was because I could keep score at a baseball game and knew how to shotgun a beer. Regardless, it seemed that everyone else realized that my high school obsession with Molly Ringwald was not because of her acting abilities. After my "well, duh! that makes sense" moment, I think coming out was the easy part. What was difficult was figuring out all the other stuff that comes along with it.

Having "the gay" at Bryn Mawr wasn't really news. In fact, the thing that I always struggled with and still do to some extent, was not having enough of the gay. There is a very delicate balance between avoiding the usual stereotypes (i.e. flannel, mullets, women's sports, Indigo Girls concerts) and having enough identifiers to be recognized by others as a lesbian (i.e. flannel, mullets, women's sports, Indigo Girls concerts.) I always worried about "passing" as straight- something about heterosexuality being everyone's default orientation unless you meet one of the qualifiers listed above really irks me. After moving the St. Louis from the East Coast, one of the first three sentences out of my mouth would usually proclaim my "gayness!" Talk about over-compensation...

Maybe this is changing as queers in ours and younger generations seek to avoid labels and exist as individuals- gay, straight, or whatever. With articles in Time proclaiming the quiet gay revolution I wonder where we will end up in 20 years. What is the outcome of this "revolution?" Will the labels still exist? Will there still be a default orientation or will we simple just be able to live our lives?