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Like trau with explicit hate is different as a child versus as an adult As soht, I find myself less likely to care about openly hoe those comments as what they are—reflective of the speaker; hateful, pointless Still, I hoped the walls built in response to racist comments, in response to abusive couard my sexuality, too

As sorew up buffeted by abusive coet to define myself—that others’ limitations of my mind, body, or abilities aren’t real

Unlikein a relationship with her represented freedoot to choose I hoped to preserve its innocence

When I arrived in rural Indiana, prior to Trump’s election, I saw a polarization that didn’t exist in New York City, where the default assumption seemed to be that people hatever they were: a mix of many different traits and identities I didn’t hear academic buzzwords like intersectionality used in conversation If anything, diversity and difference were the norm I loved that freedom to simply be, and to allow others the saranted

In Indiana I felt pressure to label ht or queer coht away, as others did This occurred academically and socially

In my initial encounters with peers, I was surprised by how many identified vocally as queer—surprised not because they were queer, but because they felt compelled to declare aspects of their identity so iht

After we became friends, I asked one of my peers about her strident queerness This is ly It isn’t my identity in Portland, or Seattle

As soroup identities, who only figured out as a thirty-year-old how to say the order of the letters in LGBTQ correctly out loud, it felt dishonest to claie of a collective hich I didn’t identify Yet it felt dishonest, too, to clai what it is to love a woman

My aversion to group identities is a lifelong trait I’ve never encountered a group whose rules I felt I could wholly abide or endorse I’ individual consciousness to the whiroup label can truly allow individuals to embrace all their complexities and quirks, without compromise

I’ve often been surprised, and touched, by the protectiveness and generosity of those who identify vocally as queer I’ve seen how queerness can make space for others, to exist as they are Yet I’ve seen the downsides, too: the ways that protectiveness can lead to overdeteratekeeping, to control

In relation to my sexuality, I’m hesitant to accept any dominant narrative as nificantly What I dread, instead, is confronting shifts in how my identity is perceived externally, and retold to me Those most likely to tell ht

For myself, I believe labels applied by others do not accurately capturemyself, sexuality is fluid, not binary and divided

I feel the sa Asian-Ahof myself as Asian or as female, until someone else treats me noticeably as such

I’ories, for convenience, for the sake of the outside gaze I think of eable, not as a fixed entity I believe in possibility I didn’t think ofprimarily same-sex in nature, until I saere perceived by others, when together in public It is only under the Gaze—of strangers, or at times, each other—that she or I remembered