5:04pm October 7, 2010

“

Like I said, this is a community that prides itself on it’s freakiness. That freakiness takes on a lot of different forms, having to do with gender, appearance, sexuality and, at least in my group of friends, disability. There is also a lot more acceptance for variance in body size than there is in most of the world, and I happen to be lucky enough to know a lot of totally sexy fat girls. So, sometimes, I really do feel accepted and included in this community of freaks. Sometimes I feel that being a fat, one-legged Jewish dyke is the most natural thing in the world and feel absolutely included and at home. As my friend Hilary, a double below-knee amputee once put it: “You are all my freaky family, because when I’m with you, I don’t feel like a freak.”

But of course, sometimes I don’t feel that way. Sometimes I get annoyed and pissed off at people who identify as freaks when I don’t think they really know what that means. Sometimes being a freak doesn’t make you feel like a rebel, it just makes you feel gross and untouchable. It means having people stare at you and be afraid of you. It means really feeling like a freak, like the kind of person people gawk at and feel sorry for, meanwhile thanking the lord they get to have a normal body.

A lot of my friends call themselves freaks because they are pervy smelly anarchist dykes who have as much of a problem with mainstream gay (and lesbian) culture as they do with mainstream corporate america. I feel the same way. And I know that when you’re out in the real world, being queer is reason enough to be labeled a freak, let alone being a sadomasochist or a serious gender deviant. But sometimes when we’re in a group and everyone’s in full-swing flirt mode, I get this horrible feeling that I’m still the freak, still the outsider.

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