Freaks.

Paradigm Shift. On owning (individual and collective) identities. The week of the Grammys, 2023.

Freaks. My ex defined myself and my people—my friends—this way, today.

And there was no individual sting, not for me.

My ex and I, both former ‘Jesus Freaks,’ have an unusual relationship. I know he mostly loves and respects—even admires—my ‘statistically different’ perspective and embodied truth. Except on the days it’s too tiring for him. Regardless, he benefits intellectually and emotionally from being intimate with a queer, non-binary (enby or NB), P.O.C., though he doesn’t seem to share the enby part too freely, amongst his family or his cliques.

Anyway, fine. Call me a freak and it’s par for the course in our relationship, a backhanded compliment and the conversation moves on… But, gut-twistingly, thoughtfully, tenderly—in the same moment—there was hurt in my soul… for my people.

The people who have picked me up, who’ve rallied around materially and spiritually since my externally happily-ever-after, interracial and heterosexual, evangelical church marriage, imploded.

By and large these people are queers and singles and immigrants, ‘of colour’ or so neurodivergent, chronically ill or unconventionally partnered that they too, rally under the freak flag, with regularity. Or are conversationally put here in the ‘camp’ camp, by ‘normal’ cis, straight, white men—like my ex.

So therein lies the rub…when he derisively mentions that Sam Smith is in the media again for their wardrobe choices or dismisses Lizzo’s pop as same-y and derivative, I ask him: “Are fat, AMAB people not allowed to wear what they want? Including nipple pasties and loose corsetry?! Did you not hear the flautist extraordinaire turned-singer-on-purpose-in-order-to-succeed culturally use her hard-won platform to give an impassioned plea that we treat all black women who look like her with the same plaudits she’s receiving publicly; rather than expecting them to keep grinding away in the background of our lives, like everyday superheroes, with no respite?”

He tut-tuts and rolls his eyes, yeah yeah, he says… having just confessed earlier in the evening that he’s the lone non-misogynist, less-racist voice when his ‘boys from work’ head out on the town for weekly drinks. Emphatically he insists that he knows they’ve gotta educate each other because the other ‘normal’ humans standing round that bar with him will never listen to freaks; like Sam Smith or Lizzo…or me.

So where does this leave us?

Him shrugging off my uncomfortable questions… but apparently translating them to an even less radical audience every time a beautiful (i.e. non-freakish?) woman walks past. Me, feeling reliant on such an imperfect ally-turned-activist, while grappling with internalised prejudice that shows me I’m one, too.

My colonised and conditioned subconscious whispers just how different me and my people are; even as my prefrontal personhood knows they’re not, really. We’re all human… and it’s wrong for them to be poo-pooed, for us to be dismissed, even in private. I tell him so.

With thanks to my friends and on their behalf—so on my own, too—I’m choosing to feel the sting tonight—and to remember that that is appropriate. Since according to the world we currently live in, by my ex’s definition and my own, I may be loveable and respectable in my humanity; but as a non-gender-conforming, non-straight, non-white soul, I am still—clearly—a freak.