Being visibly queer has pushed plenty of people away, but also brought me closer to so many others. Graphic by Eleanor Angelly. 

JASPER PILARZ | NEWS EDITOR | lpilarz@butler.edu

When I graduated from high school, I immediately cut my hair into a hot pink pixie cut. My hair was spiky and borderline fluorescent when I stepped onto Butler’s campus for the first time. This was the first time I had been granted the freedom to explore my ever-present questions about my gender, and I knew I needed to do something extreme to push myself into this new phase.  

I’m a transmasculine person who doesn’t plan on medically transitioning entirely to male, nor am I on hormones. I don’t meet the expectations for where I should be in my transition. I know it makes some people — in my community and beyond it — take me less seriously. 

Discovering yourself is never easy, but feeling that who you are on the inside doesn’t match what you are on the outside is an entirely different level of confusion. Whether you’ve been out of the closet for a day or a decade, the journey of exploration to find said identity is often taken alone. 

In turn, LGBTQIA+ people tend to flock together, creating visually and socially recognizable groupings to feel understood. Cliques aren’t exclusive to queer people, but sometimes we become so desperate for a community that we shut ourselves off from other people — even from each other. 

I’ve been part of Butler’s LGBTQIA+ Alliance for nearly four years now, and it has given me an opportunity to see these divisions in our community and reflect on where they came from. If we are going to call ourselves a community, we need to make an active effort to be supportive of each other, no matter where we are in our journey.

Senior English major Mya Tran spent a lot of time around freshly “out” people in high school, via theater and their high school’s gay-straight alliance (GSA). At that time, this was exactly the community Tran was looking for. However, as they’ve matured in their identity, Tran said they moved away from those spaces.

“You go through so much when you realize that you’re gay, and a lot of GSA spaces are really geared toward figuring yourself out, learning who you are, [and] figuring out your sense of style,” Tran said. “And then once you have all of that, it can be really easy to look at any kind of GSA type thing and [think], ‘Okay, what else do you have to offer me?’”

While you may not need your local GSA or youth advocacy group, they might need you. As we grow up and join the world of serious adults, we’re going to see so many young people who remind us of our younger selves. They’ll be ignorant and presumptuous and maybe even a little cringe, but they’ll also be scared and unsure and alone.

Now more than ever, a GSA can give queer people something we desperately need — community. While we’re making strides every day, it’s still a very scary time to be questioning your gender and sexuality.

Being secure in yourself won’t stop homophobes from wishing you harm, either. In 2024 alone, 45 laws have been passed limiting the freedoms of transgender people across the USA. Until 2023, the FDA still highly recommended against letting gay men donate blood and even now restrictions exist against donors taking preventative HIV medication like PrEP or PEP. 

First-year exploratory studies major Emma Lammert came out as asexual a year ago. She said her parents struggle to understand that she won’t just grow out of her aversion to sex, and this makes it difficult for her to feel sure of herself.

“Every time I bring up being asexual around my parents, they talk about it like it’s a phase,” Lammert said. “I am not confident about anything in this world, and the one thing I am confident about [they] are somewhat undermining.”

Feeling misunderstood or unwanted by family is a pretty common occurrence for queer people. Rejection at home is a real fear and often leads young queer people to seek each other out for support.

Butler alumnus Andre Hardy was Butler Alliance’s president for two consecutive years. Hardy said he had to make space for himself in the organization, as he didn’t initially feel welcome in the community as a Black transgender man.

“One of the reasons why I actually became the president of Alliance is because when I entered the Butler community, I didn’t feel like I connected enough with the queer community,” Hardy said. “I didn’t see myself represented on the [executive] board at all … Over time, I feel like I connected more because I made space for people who looked like me and who were like me.”

The population of Alliance and its membership may not ever accurately represent the full LGBTQIA+ population of Butler; rarely will one club ever encompass that many identities. Still, problems arise when these spaces become more exclusive than inclusive. 

As the years have gone on, I’ve felt considerably more out of place as a queer person on campus, and this is most distressing at times when I feel separated from my own community. There’s an expectation, especially for transgender people, to become something the rest of the world can understand, instead of being someone you understand.

Hardy said sometimes it feels like there are unspoken expectations for someone transitioning, when in reality any sort of gender-related change is unique from person to person. 

“In my experience, when you’re starting out in your transition as a person, first and foremost, people fail to realize that your transition is your own,” Hardy said. “They start putting expectations on you as soon as you come out … some of those [masculine features] I want in my transition, but I also want to honor my feminine side. Just because I’m transitioning doesn’t mean that I have to let [femininity] go.”

I know I am my most authentic self, even if my transition hasn’t made me a man. I’ve found community and love being just the way I am. On top of that, I’ve gotten to welcome so many people into Butler’s queer community through Alliance and my friendships, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love seeing people grow and change and try new labels or shift back into old ones. If I flew under the radar, who knows how many young queer people would have felt unseen like I did.