Native Americans conceptualized queerness as natural, and people who identified as queer (Two Spirit people) played a significant role in society. In many tribes, Two Spirit people were considered to be balance keepers, and they had specific names, roles, and traditions within each tribe. Connecticut’s Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation revered the Two Spirit people and viewed them to have special powers.
The introduction of Western religion in Native American culture led to the condemnation of queer identities. Religious language delineated homosexuality as a sin and against the law, and language surrounding sexuality and gender was fixed and strict. Native Americans who attended American schools often had to suppress their culture and traditions to assimilate; the American education superimposed their own set of ideas and rules upon them.
Before the French occupation, our Vietnamese did not have a name for queer bodies- because they were seen, like all bodies, fleshed and of one source- and I didn’t want to introduce this part of me using epithet for criminals.
On Earth we’re Briefly gorgeous, Ocean vuong
With identification, comes rules. And with rules, comes surveillance. Through contemporary Western language, society has come to identify queerness as outside of the rules. Heteronormativity does not allow boys to wear dresses or ride in pink bikes, and boys who do are labeled as deviant. And those who breach the rules are closely monitored.
Days later, a neighborhood boy, riding by on his bike, would see me wearing that very dress … At recess the next day, the kids would call me freak, fairy, fag.
Ocean Vuong
Even if color is nothing but what the light reveals, that nothing has laws, and a boy on a pink bike must learn, above all else, the law of gravity.
Ocean Vuong
Do you remember the morning, after a night of snow, when we found the letters FAG4LIFE scrawled in red spray paint across our front door?
Ocean Vuong
With language that harms, there is always a risk associated with being seen, being identified. Not because being seen is wrong, but queerness is identified as “wrong” in Western society. Thus, for the LGBTQ community, to be invisible is to be safe. But to be invisible also means to be always masked, always in disguise, and always in fear of being revealed.
Isn’t that the saddest thing in the world, ma? A comma forced to be a period?
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
