It imposes an arbitrary way of presenting sexuality, and with queer styles being entirely self-defined, club bouncers will inevitably get it wrong sometimes no matter how necessary it is to keep these spaces safe, it’s upsetting to think that sexual profiling prevents queer people from accessing them. “It’s mainly men, because there’s a lot of gay-bashing that goes on in the club ‘G.A.Y’, a lot of instances where straight men will go in and beat up gay men.” Whilst this kind of gatekeeping is clearly necessary to ensure the safety of the people that these spaces were built for, it is still a deeply flawed system.
“A lot of gay clubs in Manchester don’t allow certain people in if they don’t “look” gay,” Emily goes on to say. Queer people must rely on contextual factors-and even then, assuming sexuality is a slippery slope Not only do we run the risk of perpetuating stereotypes, but we make ourselves vulnerable to prejudice and, in some cases, violence. “If you’re looking to date (within the LGBT community) you want to attract and approach the right people in some situations, this can be dangerous.” While straight people can approach members of the opposite sex with the likelihood that they share a sexual orientation, queer people must rely on contextual factors-and even then, assuming sexuality is a slippery slope. “In a non-queer space, I wouldn’t feel comfortable approaching any girl, no matter how ‘queer’ she looked,” says Emily, a nineteen-year-old gay woman from Manchester. To some individuals, environment is crucial to assuming sexuality. Queer expression is also unique in that it isn’t mandatory-whereas people of colour always have to be perceived by others as a person of colour, with all the prejudices that accompany it, queer people can choose to highlight or subdue aspects of their sexual identity depending on whether they perceive their environment to be safe or not.
As a movement loosely built around ideas of individuality and self-acceptance, there are no rigid requirements for how to present as queer. Whilst the LGBT community is firmly established within modern society, it is not as uniform or prescriptive as a religion. There are many styles that can immediately identify its wearer within a certain cultural or religious group orthodox Jews, for example, are often visually recognisable when they wear traditional religious clothes- yarmulkes, and payots are particularly characteristic. Presenting one’s social identity through clothing is nothing new. But as much as I enjoy watching the LGBTQ+ community poke fun at the blandness of heterosexual fashion trends, it does beg the question: What does straight look like? What does gay look like? And should we be enforcing aesthetic binaries based on sexuality?
With over 4.7 million views, the trend is wildly popular. They shed their gay exterior, removing piercings, scrubbing off layers of bold makeup and ditching their thrifted wardrobe as a voiceover says: “This is what I think I would look like if I was straight.” The final look is conservative, generic, and stripped of character. It took a total of twelve hours before I was hooked, and in my mindless scrolling stupor, one trend in particular stood out to me: “#ifiwasstraight.” A typical video under this tag is as follows: a queer person, dressed in their usual style, cosplays as their heterosexual alter-ego. With lockdown entering its twelfth week and every Netflix show on my list binged to completion, I did something that I vowed I would never do I downloaded TikTok.