1/4/25

The Question

I'm sure you've seen the grey question that slides across the top of my website. This question guides every piece of art I create, and today, I'm answering it with words: How do queer people of color navigate social conformity? The answer is simple - they don't, and they can't. The world we live in does not allow it. While people of color and queer people face their own distinct challenges in navigating society, when these identities intersect, the conversation becomes more complex. We all make choices about social conformity - in our clothes, our hair, our words, the language we speak - but these choices carry different weight based on our intersecting identities. Take femininity, for instance. While women are broadly expected to be feminine, what that means and how it's enforced looks vastly different for white women versus Black women, Asian women, or any woman with marginalized identities.

Priveledge in passing?

Let's look at DL men as a contrast to understand this better. Contrary to what some people believe, I don't think DL men are queer. By presenting themselves as heteronormative men, they do not allow society to perceive them as queer - by being DL, they purposefully exclude themselves from queerness. This complete embrace of heteronormative conformity actually removes them from the question of how queer people of color navigate conformity, because they've chosen not to be publicly queer at all. As a trans person, I have talked to many DL men and I can say that they are elusive and hard to connect with because they can't be themselves. This is not a jab at DL men; I understand their decision. Everyone who experiences same-sex attraction or gender nonconformity faces this choice: whether to embrace their identity publicly or conform to heteronormative expectations. DL men choose complete conformity, removing themselves from queerness entirely. I made a different choice. I had to make the decision to come out to my family first as gay, then as trans because I decided that my happiness was worth more than the privilege of heteronormativity. While I don't identify as a woman, I am feminine enough to be perceived as one and I allow this. I allow this because it is safer for me to be assumed as something binary. But this strategic navigation of safety is different from complete conformity. While I may be perceived as fitting into binary categories at times, I don't hide my trans or queer identity - instead, my art and existence actively challenge these very systems of conformity that make such choices necessary in the first place

When speaking about this topic with my friend, author Julie Enszer, I described these decisions as compromises, but she offered a different perspective - suggesting they were more like 'a constant negotiation' between ourselves and the world around us. The world doesn't make enough space for the 'grey.' This is the reason why DL men cling to heteronormativity and the same reason why I choose to present myself as binary - if you don't adhere to being black or white, your life will be harder. This negotiation between societal expectations and personal authenticity isn't a one-time choice - it's a constant recalibration. Queer people of color often live nonlinear lives because we're constantly finding balance between survival and self-expression.

This balance points to something deeper in queer experience - what scholars call 'queer temporality.' A linear life follows a prescribed timeline: graduate, get married, buy a house, have children, retire. But queer people of color have historically been denied access to these traditional markers of life progression. Throughout history, both queer people and people of color have faced these denials separately - segregation kept Black families from home ownership while sodomy laws criminalized queer relationships. When these identities intersect, the barriers multiply. We've been barred from marriage, denied the right to adopt children, excluded from housing, and pushed out of educational institutions. Even today, as some legal barriers fall, systemic discrimination continues to push us out of these traditional timelines. Our lives don't - and can't - follow this linear path because the institutions that create these timelines weren't built for us. They were built to exclude us. So when I ask 'How do queer people of color navigate social conformity?' The answer isn't just about how we present ourselves or modify our behavior - it's about the fundamental impossibility of conforming to a system that was designed to exclude us from its most basic milestones. We don't navigate social conformity because we can't - instead, we create our own paths, our own timelines, and our own ways of measuring a life well-lived. This is both our burden and our freedom.