Queers have been forced into a third category of gender: normative man, normative woman, and the elusive, unidentifiable queer—capital Q. 

Here, I mean to define the social gender of queerness, a phenomenon I’ve recently noticed. This is not to be confused with genderqueer or any non-binary identity. This third gender of queerness is nothing anyone can actually fully embody or identify with. 

It’s a subconscious label only used for social situations, most often used when we decide how to treat someone. We don’t use it to accurately describe their sexual tastes or internal gender identity. It’s not for a census or anything. This third gender of queerness is a way to both punish those who are different and find others like you. It is a label cishets continue to give queers and that queers allow themselves to fall into, or occasionally, reject. 

How do we ALL force this third gender?

We do it every day. It’s the presumed identification of an effeminate gay man by their flowery blouse, a trans woman by their velvet tone of voice, a non-binary person by their electric blue hair, or a bisexual by their eclectic taste in music. You believe this person is queer because they seem to talk, look, and act queer; they do all the things you believe a queer person would do. All of a sudden, you believe you’ve hit the nail on the head and you put them in the third social category: queer.

Sometimes you might even be right! But this process is not on purpose most of the time. I don’t believe we intend to see the world this way, it just happens. 

Normative means this person follows the rules, whether they mean to or not. It means we all have silently agreed the specific combination of 2-in-1 shampoo, basketball shorts, and a grimy little goatee will more often than not, mean you are speaking to a man. This person could be a cishet woman for all we know, but if they followed the arbitrary social rules of what a man looked like, they could fit into that box and be granted all those specific privileges. 

What about queer men and women? Aren’t they both queer and men or women? 

Of course, they are, but I’m talking about social categories of gender, not the internal ones. I have noticed that queer men and women are read as either normative or queer, not both. Their otherness, this third category of queerness, is placed upon them before their actual internal gender is, so even if they are cisgender, they are lumped into Queer. 

As the character Roy Cohn in “Angels in America” said it best: What you are is defined entirely by who you are. 

Can we get some examples? 

Your social status defines if you are treated like a man, woman, or Queer. Any male librarian or women-run mechanic shop could fall into this third gender. You could be a straight guy who just likes cardigans but everyone might think you’re a raging homo! You could be a cis girl who likes her hair short, but everyone confuses you for Elliot Page. 

It doesn’t matter what you actually identify with. Until declared, non-normative cishets can also fall into this Queer space.

Here’s another example if you’re still confused: Imane Khelif, a cisgender woman, competed in the Olympics for women’s boxing, but because of her appearance and ethnic features, she was gendered as ‘queer’. Many news outlets ran a smear campaign against her, promoting ideas that she was “really a man,” to fuel the fear of trans women. 

However, she’s not a trans woman, she’s an Algerian cis woman who boxes. But this reality didn’t matter because she was pushed into the box of Queer. Not a man because she was clearly feminine, not a woman because she didn’t reach those standards, but Queer because she looked different. 

They put her under a specific light, took her mannerisms, facial features, height, weight, musculature, and clothing, and put it into our formula of man, woman, or Queer and determined that she has failed masculinity, femininity, and can only be discarded to Queer. She was effectively punished for looking different. Not for actually being queer, but for what other people’s ideas of queerness were.  

How are trans people affected?

Many trans people experience a dramatic shift from being treated as “normative” to being treated as queer after transitioning, even if they’ve always been queer. Connor Hampton, a trans sophomore at Cal Poly Pomona, says it can drastically affect one’s mental health.

“[Being othered has] affected my relationships mainly,” Hampton said. “How some people stay away from me or weren’t allowed to be around me as a teen. I used to be pretty popular when I didn’t identify as queer. So when that switch flipped, some people changed and…didn’t like me just because.” Hampton said. 

Okay, that was a lot of jargon but what do we do with this information? Listen here, reader. This is all I ask of you. 

Notice: How do you identify someone you haven’t met? How do you interpret their gender? How do you decide what to say, and how to act? Challenge yourself to notice your intentions. Consider how you would treat others around you if you suddenly perceived them as queer.