I have long been an open and avid supporter of the LGBTQIA+ community. I believe that straight people can only be allies if they understand the community, and see themselves as a part of it, by accepting that gender and sexualty are fluid, and some can be more fluid than others. This is a humble attempt to explain that the rainbow community isn’t unnatural, and most people are more similar than them than is widely perceived.
Think of the rainbow as a gender spectrum. On the violet (blue) extreme is the manliest man you can describe. He doesn’t have to be someone you know, but has all the qualities of the ideal/perfect/macho man. He’s probably a hunk and doesn’t cry, ever. He probably chills on beer and football on weekends and gets all the girls. He presses a lot of weight at the local gym, he is confident and strong. All his characteristics can fit the stereotype of a perfect man.
On the red end of the rainbow, therefore, is the ideal woman. She is smart and pretty, she’s docile and loving and cooks all kinds of amazing food. One could really keep describing her endlessly, and never finish. She is the stereotype of the perfect woman.
Most of us don’t fit the bills of ideal man or woman. We all lie somewhere between the two extremes. While we describe what epitomes of both the genders should be like, we usually don’t embody the list ourselves, nor do most people we know. We all have, in varying degrees, some characteristics of the so-called, “opposite gender”. That’s why some women are “tomboys” and some men more “effeminate” than others.
And if that is true, why have genders at all? But maybe as a step before, why judge those who fall on a different colour on the rainbow than us? If we all started out on the extreme ends, by being born with “male” or “female” parts, and all of us moved from that end, why judge those who are more mobile than us? If we are all mobile, and the definitions of acceptable masculinity and femininity are blurry, why judge those who fall outside our arbitrarily drawn definitions of gender?
All of us, even those towards the extreme of the gender spectrum, belong in the spectrum, and we keep moving within it. We can be more or less extreme in different phases of our life, and thus our “gender”, so to say, keeps shifting. So gender in general is fluid, because ours is, Because think about it honestly, most of us wish that the acceptable way for someone to react in most situations wasn’t linked to their gender, that we could express our joys/sorrows/anger/fashion/food/lifestyle choices based on our instinct, rather than what was socially acceptable for our gender. Because most of us aren’t the stereotype, and most of us can’t even agree on what the stereotype for a perfect man/woman is.
And if we agree that gender is fluid, so must be sexuality. If we feel more or less masculine/feminine for periods of time, we must be able to be attracted to people who are more or less masculine/feminine at different stages of our lives, for varying lengths of time. So if we can belong anywhere on the rainbow, our partners must be able to as well. If our gender is fluid, the gender we are attracted to can be too. And if we aren’t sexually attracted to anyone for some years of our lives, there can and must be people who aren’t attracted to anyone sexually at all.
And that is why, as a feminine-born/feminine-presenting person in a long term, monogamous relationship with a masculine-born/masculine-presenting person, I can claim to empathise with the LGBTQIA+ community. I am privileged because my gender and sexual choices ae more acceptable than some others. I am lucky, and although I can’t claim to know and understand completely the struggles that a lot of humanity goes through, I can see that they are not all that different from me, or any of us. I belong in the rainbow, and always will, and so will all of us. It’s time to keep arbitrary prejudice aside, and embrace those who have been targeted for so many years for being only slightly different than us.
Aspiring Feminist 