I was just thinking about the time I was at a queer group, waiting for it to start, and we were just casually chatting, talking about what we did over the weekend. I mentioned what my wife and I did. A younger woman scoffs and said “I hate when men say ‘my wife’. It’s like they think they own her.” I’m just standing there, confused, kind of expecting the other people around us to also be confused. But no, all the women started talking about how awful men are to their wives and how wives deserve better than straight men.
So now I’m super uncomfortable because we’re at a group for all types of queer people. Yall know I’m queer too and at groups like this, I try to make a point to queer it up because I’m safe to. We havent met, do you even know how I identify?
If you knew anything about me, you’d know that at the time my wife and I got married, marriage equality had only been legal for about a year. Legally, we were no different than any queer couple. We didn’t know that we’d be able to be legally married. At the time, I couldn’t legally change my gender marker in my state (the law at that point was you had to have 'irreversible surgery’ to change your gender marker). Just because I am a trans man does not mean that there was some switch that flipped and instantly put me on level playing field with cishet men.
I don’t know what made me think about this again. But that was a very uncomfortable experience for me. It was the last time I went to that group.