I Don’t Identify as LGBTQ, but I Don’t Feel Straight Either. Can I Be “Queer Adjacent”?
I was assigned male at birth, and I have no doubt that the right call was made. I have always been heterosexual and have always felt comfortable in my masculine form. I feel no need to express myself as anything else via my clothes or appearance and I’m perfectly fine with he/him/his pronouns. So I’m just another straight cis-gendered white dude, right? Not quite.
Throughout my life I have always been more comfortable in the presence of women than men. I have no interest in talking about sports, and hanging out with the guys just isn’t my thing. I can hold a 10 minute conversation about chainsaws, but after that it gets awkward. I don’t have this problem with all men all the time, but it happens more often than what I imagine to be typical.
I was the only guy in my yoga teacher training, and I loved it. When people ask about what it’s like being a man in a yoga studio full of women, I joke “I’ve never been in a yoga class that didn’t have at least one man in it.” Once I was out to dinner with my wife and her teacher coworkers and one of them said “Sorry, it must be awkward for you being the only man here at the table.” I could only respond: “Well, it wasn’t awkward at all until you brought it up.” And I recently attended a class at a retreat center in Costa Rica with 17…
