BY Lux Alptraum
June 20, 2007
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As you’re probably aware, June is Gay Pride Month. To show our gay pride, we’re having Gay Week over at Boinkology: from Monday to Friday, it’s all gay posts, all the gay time.

I first heard the term “post-gay” (not to be confused with ex-gay) about ten years ago, in an article in the New York Times Magazine. Post-gay, the piece informed me, was about accepting your sexual identity without having it at the forefront of your persona. Or, as the article put it, Anne Heche was post-gay, Ellen DeGeneres was not (though, given Anne Heche’s subsequent return to heterosexuality, she may have been “post-gay” in more ways than one.).

At the time, I didn’t get it; but as I grew older, it began to make more and more sense (and if you believe Ritch Savin-Williams, post-gay is the wave of the future). The more I found myself exploring queer spaces, the more I found myself feeling a bit suffocated by the expectations that seem to come with a homosexual identity.

If you’re heterosexual, no one expects you to like a certain kind of music, or dress a certain way, or go to a certain club, simply because hey, you’re a girl who likes guys. There’s an understanding that there are a wide range of heterosexual people — that not all heterosexual people look, act, or dress the same way; that not all heterosexual people like the same kind of music.

Switch to same sex love, however and (in many communities, though certainly not all) you lose a certain amount of freedom. Suddenly, you’re expected to dress a certain way, to like a certain type of music, hang out in a certain part of town, be a certain type of person. You become gay first and a person second (which, of course, can be the case with many minority identities: think of all the assumptions made about black people, for instance).

Post-gay, then, is about escaping the expectations that come with a gay identity, about abandoning labels and simply choosing to, well, be. It’s the idea that we shouldn’t be judged — in any way — solely on the basis of who we choose to sleep with, that we should be able to establish an identity independent of our sexual preferences.

Personally, I find that idea refreshing.

[Photo by dorkynsweet]