Elise Matthesen

(This is an essay which was first posted on Twitter earlier today. I have reformatted from tweet-sized bites to actual paragraphs, added one clarifying word, corrected one misspelling and the names of two women I thank in the final paragraph, and fixed a punctuation bobble. Thank you for reading.)



I’m going to try explaining a thing. It’s a thing that involves a lot of people telling me that I don’t exist or that I am not what I say I am or what I think I am, so this is fraught territory.

Back when I came out forty-some years ago, there were plenty of people ready to tell me that bisexuals don’t exist. They said we were just closeted, straights experimenting, too cowardly to come out, or too frivolous and sex-obsessed to make a choice and settle down. They said our orientation was temporary, not really anywhere people could stay and make a home.

It made bisexuality sound like a bus station, with everybody heading for some other realer place. And some people did actually say they were bisexual when they were afraid to come out as gay, and then they later assumed that all bisexuals must be like they were, and became huge biphobes with extra sanctimony sauce on top.

Back then, I particularly resented those people who said that bisexuals had no integrity, when the truth was that they themselves had no integrity while they were using our label as a disguise, or a shield, or a conveyance to get them from straight to gay.I felt like they had borrowed our apartment to use as a party house, left it strewn with beer bottles and vomit, and then kept talking about what a dump that place was and how obviously nobody would or could live there unless there was something wrong with them.

So for 40-some years I’ve gotten told that my sexuality didn’t really exist, or if it did, it was just temporary. Liminal. A doorway instead of a room. Something people pass through on their way to somewhere else, a real place, a legitimate place, a place that exists properly.

I got told this by Gay & Lesbian Community Action Council services when I called in crisis. The answer was basically “we don’t have anything for you; call back when you get a real orientation.”

I think of that call when I pass the street where that phone booth was. That was one of several points in my life where I almost didn’t make it through. It’s probably really lucky that I got angry instead, and decided that I was going to live and thrive, if only to spite those people on the other end of the phone.

Sometimes anger helps. Sometimes anger will give you enough traction to make it through whatever lousy situation you’re in, whether that situation involves self-harm or other people telling you that you don’t exist.

Anger often has some collateral damage, though. It’s usually not a precision tool.

Anyway, I came out as bisexual 40-some years ago, and these days people telling me I don’t exist are more likely to get laughed at than yelled at, but they’re still at it, some of them. People who say my sexuality is a liminal state, something (real) people pass through. A phase.

I only came out as non-binary within the last decade. I knew since I was a little kid that I was something other than what people told me I was, but I had no words for it. “Genderqueer” and “non-binary” only made it to my vocabulary recently. I’m still figuring out my words. But pretty much immediately I discovered there were people ready to tell me I didn’t exist again. That my gender was, at best, a liminal state. Something real people pass through on their way to legitimate destinations, real places.

I also found out I could still get angry. And the anger was stronger for there having been so many years when I did not have words that even remotely described my gender, the me-ness that I lived inside, and - yes - sometimes hid for my own safety.

And sometimes that anger still has collateral damage. When I read something suggesting my gender is one of the liminal ones, something people pass through on their way to someplace else, I still flash on those moments in the phone booth, being told the helpline was not for me. Being told that they were only interested in saving the lives of genuinely gay or lesbian people. Being told they didn’t have time to waste on me, goodbye.

It really is kind of a wonder that I’m here, now, so many years later.

So I don’t know whether somebody saying my gender is liminal or transitional or temporary or fake or whatever is a micro-aggression or what. Denying my existence feels a little bigger than micro, but whatevs.

And I can’t promise not to get angry about it.

Actually, at this point I probably can promise that I WILL get angry.

But I do also promise to work to try to limit some of the collateral damage when I express that anger. Even though I am so, so tired. But I am going to try to point my anger at the things being expressed, and not at the people expressing them.

Can’t promise I won’t mess up. I probably will. But it’s exercise I’ve decided is worth me trying.

Just... please know, if only for the length of time reading these tweets, that my anger (and sometime fear and sometimes despair) at being told I’m temporary is partly because I almost WAS temporary, and I am not going back to feeling that way again.

And sometimes I am going to react very badly to a piece of writing or other art because it gets into that territory for me.

Doesn’t mean it’s bad art. It might be great art. But my relationship with it will probably be complicated and rather intense. And this is one of the reasons why I don’t review books any more.

What does this all boil down to? Maybe… ask me what I think of the whole thing 40 years from now? Dunno if I’ll make it that far, but I might.

These days I’m all about not being temporary.

— finis —



P.S. Part of the reason I am still here is because of the encouragement and kindness of Rachel Pollack and Roz Kaveney among other excellent women. Love to you all, and thanks. 💕