Am I A Queer Imposter?

Just because I so easily pass for a straight married woman

When I was first awakening to my sexuality, way back in the 1980s, the term queer was a slur. It hadn’t yet been reclaimed, but it’s not like I would have used it to refer to myself anyhow, because back then I just assumed I was straight, and I had no real reason to think otherwise. I was sexually attracted to boys and men, and although I appreciated women, I’d never had the opportunity to see if I was really interested in transcending my societal programming. I just figured that if I liked guys, I was straight. It never occurred to me that there were other options. Then I got married, and it seemed like that door had truly closed forever.

It wasn’t until I was 50 that I was in an both an environment and a frame of mind to find out what really did appeal to me. My husband and I went through a sexual exploration phase, first with each other, and then eventually involving other people as well. At that point, I was finally confident enough in myself as a person who no longer aspired to be what society deemed desirable and was able to pursue what seemed interesting to me. Although my sexual and romantic interest is still primarily in men, I’ve found that I’m quite attracted to some women. I even fell in love with one.

Although I’m not a big fan of labels in general, I do realize that sometimes they are a necessary part of conveying information. After a lot of thinking about it, I finally decided that pansexual is the term that probably fits me the best, although I’ve wondered if I’m perhaps a little bit demisexual as well. I’ve often said that I wouldn’t want to have sex with someone that I didn’t want to have an in-depth conversation with, and my attractions are now based largely in who I find interesting (for any of a variety of reasons) regardless of gender.

My husband James and I have been seeing a woman named Tamara for more than four years now and she is our most frequent extra-pair sex partner, although we do see other people from time to time. My other partner Nat lives across the country from us now and at this juncture, if we do see someone else, it’s most likely to be a woman. With the exception of our friend and lover Lane, we just haven’t found a lot of guys that we’d want to play with. James is also pansexual and although he’s fine not interacting with the another man, it does potentially complicate things since we only see other people together.

Despite the fact that James and I consider ourselves pansexual and polyamorous, it’s very easy for us to present as a straight married couple. That’s what most people see and assume when they look at us, either separately or together. We’d actually like to be able to be more open about who we really are, but with the exception of a few close friends, most people have no idea. It’s not really something that can be blurted out with no context, and it doesn’t often come up in conversation. We’ve also found that most people don’t really want to know about anything that challenges their preconceptions or rattles their beliefs about mainstream life — and we don’t particularly want to make other people uncomfortable.

I have to admit, that I already have so much daily stress in my life that I’m not overly anxious to needlessly create more, although I do really enjoy spaces where I can really be honest and open. Just before the pandemic shut everything down, we finally got around to joining a local polyamory group, and have been using the shelter-at-home period to get to know some of the people via the Facebook group, although I live outside a major metropolitan area and there are over 5,000 people in the group, so it’s taking some time. Once we’re able to resume in-person meet ups, it will be easier to build some real community, but in the meantime, online spaces are the primary place that I can be transparent about who I am.

And since it’s not very easy to be open, most often I’m not. I certainly respect every person’s right to be forthcoming about their sexuality — or not, so it’s not really that I’m judging myself for that. It’s just that I spend so much time presenting as a straight married woman that it has me wondering at times if I’m kind of a queer imposter. I don’t even really think of myself as queer. Yes, I’m in a longterm romantic and sexual relationship with a woman and really enjoy women as well as men. But I still don’t think of myself as anything other than me — without labels or alliances.

Does that make me a queer imposter? Or does it make it just me being me? In some ways I’m subject to the pressure of society, but in many other ways just going about my life as I please, without asking for acceptance or understanding from anyone other than the ones I give my love to? I understand the importance of community and belonging even as I don’t have all that I wish. I can still have empathy for the complete absence of that, even if I’m fortunate enough to have never experienced it first hand. I’m not oppressed or discriminated against for my sexuality, largely because it’s never guessed in the first place. I understand this is privilege.

I look like a happily married woman, and I am. That is a huge part of who I am. And I’m also a woman with another male life-partner, and a woman with a long term female lover. There are terms for those things, and although I use them in relation to myself, I don’t necessarily embody them all of the time. Am I queer? I suppose, technically I am. Do I embrace that term? No, not particularly, although that is no reflection on anyone who does. My experience isn’t theirs — my experience is mine, and that’s the only thing that really counts for me in my world.