One of the classic fears of the LGBTIQ+ condition, be it homophobia, transphobia or discrimination of any other kind, is in essence a fear of social disconnection.
This could manifest as the fear of losing any sense of stability, torn from support systems, losing our jobs, being kicked out of home. Our dreams are little more than an afterthought when we’re concerned primarily for our safety. Particularly while growing up, it’s a central tenet of our selfhood - always test the waters, divulge to no one, keep yourself protected. The anxiety bubbling away at the centre of our daily lives acts as a kind of hidden saboteur. It whispers to us that our otherness will eventually be exposed. Singled out and humiliated, our loved ones and formative connections will realise that we are inherently flawed, corrupt, monstrous, and, fundamentally - unlovable.
But love is not only limited to romance or blood ties. It’s the redemptive quality of friendship that is often underestimated when we talk about what it means to be LGBTIQ+.
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It’s incredibly frightening to imagine being uprooted from normalcy, and it leads many of us to start making plans early, rewiring our attitudes to relationships, reprioritising as protection. Perhaps that rethinking is what we need to do more widely in our culture. It’s something I remember doing often in strategic and anxious moments where I catastrophised about my future and the reliability of my birth ties.
Familial acceptance always feels so conditional, so frightfully tenuous. Romantic love, while obviously possible for LGBTIQ+ people in 2023, also feels highly stigmatised and mostly, just tolerated (whether you’re trans or a cisgender queer person). The sense of being unlovable on all fronts affects our psyche so deeply that it’s no wonder that poor mental health is so common in our community, and that our attitudes towards intimacy are pathological, invulnerable and avoidant.
Even though I internalised these cultural myths early, I conversely knew, in some way, that love could always be a possibility in less typical formats. Platonic support one of the very first languages of love that developed into a priority as I grew older. I experienced unexpected affection from the parents of friends, the fleeting support from classmates and neighbours, godmothers and family friends and my own peers, when I feared the rejection of my parents and felt the absence of their care.
The natural instinct is to categorise “queerness” as a mode of attraction that refers to the way we love others, who we have sex with, who we might end up marrying. The conversation often ends there. It’s perceived as a total focus on who we relate to in a sexual context. So adapted are we to the mainstream heterosexual pathway that many queer people feel that we have to blindly follow those pathways to find support, and to feel a sense of belonging in wider society. But could an idea of queerness also apply to the way we regard friendships, as absolutely necessary and not a backdrop to any other love? Over time I’ve grown to see it as a way with which I can understand my past as well as my present - looking back and realising how I’ve developed these highly dependable, engaged friendships out of necessity, where we are constantly meeting each other half-way.
Other queer people often confide in me about similar feelings. While some of our straight peers grow into their late 20s and begin to invest all of their energy in their spouse, possibly putting unhealthy strain on a single person, many LGBTIQ+ people grow older together in less linear ways, learn to distribute their energy evenly, to communicate diplomatically and to understand the power of multiplicitous love.
As I move out of adolescence I become cognisant of the way my straight friends withdraw their time and energy from their friendships, the same ones that kept them alive and thriving through their hardest periods. Though this absence is often felt by them, they simultaneously feel incapable of articulating their isolation and burn-out. Often, the quiet inference from our culture is that these sacrifices are nonetheless laudable, and mark a milestone - the sign of moral, social and personal maturity and superiority, as history has often suggested.
Blind conformity comes at great personal cost. Queer theorists have understood the alternate concept as “queer time” - a type of progression and development that falls outside typical norms and doesn’t match hetero life goalposts. Our sense of personal achievement, and satisfaction, must be self-created. Still, anyone who doesn’t follow the same path is inferred to have failed at meeting the demands of the social order. They’re losers, misshapen and psychologically inept. Yet statistics of divorce/marriage separation (preposterously high) might be a better measure of how mythological this view is, and a real insight into the failure of the nuclear family, one-size fits all model.
Getting married sounds great, of course, and I’m excited that it’s now a possibility for us. I love nothing more than the idea of inviting 500 people to bear witness to me and my partner in bespoke outfits prancing around in ceremonial style. But I’m equally as sure that my life will remain rich, varied, and colourful without that kind of prioritisation - never seeing friends as a temporary stepping stone to a romantic partner.
Having decoupled love from any hierarchical ideas of worthiness, I'm able to live fluidly in a way that allowed me to have deeply committed relationships with friends, often intensely vulnerable and abundant ones that allowed us to be completely ourselves in each others presence, to never feel pressure to “perform” or put on a face.
It’s considered naff to confess a devotional kind of love for our friends. We’re rewarded more often for perpetuating narratives of supreme self-sufficiency like “Live for yourself.” But at any given time I feel like I’m living in servitude to no less than 10 different people. I admit that I yearn for their closeness, their approval, and companionship, and feel emboldened to know of their successes even when we’re far away. We’re not supposed to admit this or betray ourselves by suggesting codependency. But I enjoy the space we give each other, as well as the occasions for us to come together. Our life experiences have habituated us to checking in, keeping watch, and looking out for each other, especially given the precariousness of our lives.
There is a richness to my relationships that I treasure in a way I almost can’t articulate, and I live happily in the knowledge that it’s enough.
Jonno Revanche is a writer/editor, cultural critic and multidisciplinary artist originally from Adelaide/Kaurna land. You can follow them on Twitter .
