Being Queer in a South Asian Family: Do I Have to Choose Between My Culture and My Sexuality?
Too Queer for Brown Spaces, Too Brown for Queer Spaces: When You Feel Like You Don’t Belong Anywhere
When you walk into a room, which part of you enters first — and which parts of you stay hidden?
Today I want to talk about the experience of feeling like you’re too queer for brown spaces and too brown for queer spaces.
I want to put words to the experience of struggling to feel like you belong anywhere, and what the hidden costs can be of never feeling fully seen.
It might leave you feeling like, in order to be queer, you have to choose. And in stepping into who you are, you might feel like there’s a lot that you also have to leave behind.
I hope that reading this makes you feel less alone, and reminds you that this is a very real and valid experience.
I hope you’re more able to imagine a life where both parts of you are welcome.
And I also want to acknowledge and make space for sadness.
I don’t think you necessarily need to choose between your culture and your queerness, but I do think you might need to make some tough choices. There are things you will gain from that, and also things you might have to grieve.
What does it look like when only one part of you is welcome?
The experience of not talking to your family about your dating life is pretty common across the board in some families.
But if you’re queer, it can be something that is completely ignored and glossed over, like that part of you just doesn’t exist.
In order for the relationship to continue, there is a part of you that is never allowed to set foot into it.
It’s the tense pause before referring to your partner as “a friend”.
It’s asking everyone but you about the topic of partners or dating.
It’s sensing something is off when you aren’t dressing or conforming to gender expectations.
Hair length, makeup, clothing, body hair — everything about your presentation can feel threatening and loaded.
So, very understandably, you learn to switch off that part of you to keep the peace.
And you never fully feel like anyone really knows you.
Feeling alienated in queer spaces too
The same can also be true in queer spaces.
If you go to queer spaces, you might feel a similar level of alienation. The things you like, the movie references, the iconic quotes, the food, the outfits — maybe even things like spirituality and religion — no one fully gets you there either.
It’s something you have to pack away.
And maybe if you don’t live somewhere diverse, it’s just something that you have with your family.
These references really make up a special part of your family relationships that you might not have access to anywhere else.
Watching K3G and eating pakoras at Christmas time might be something you really associate with love and family, as well as culture.
It feels like home.
So when you have this brewing identity that you either feel will create conflict, or you’re just not sure how it’s going to go down, it’s not just your family relationships you might be worrying about losing.
You could potentially be worrying about losing your history and your culture too.
Why belonging matters
I love to yap about the psychological benefits of belonging.
I read a study about some monkeys and it suggests that having a meaningful and safe social network is strongly linked to mental and physical health outcomes.
And having to navigate this part of yourself can create barriers and distance within your safe social network.
If you’re largely figuring this out alone, it can really take such a toll on you.
I wanted to get an idea of what people’s real experiences were, and as you do, I consulted the ancient texts.
Which is Reddit, obviously.
I found it really interesting that so many contributors to a diaspora thread reported that they were not openly out to their community and family, but felt more comfortable being out to white people and people who weren’t from the same background as them.
One Redditor posted:
“Honestly because of the auntie grapevine network I was always extremely careful around other Desis, and sadly felt I had to avoid them.”
I think this is also very common.
The fear of your family and community rejecting you, and maybe even your lived experience of already being rejected, can lead you to become very cautious about judgement and gossip.
You might sever that part of yourself even more and create this feeling of being a kind of spare part.
Not quite fitting in completely in either space.
The guilt of choosing yourself
There’s also the guilt you might feel about not meeting family expectations.
It’s a common immigrant experience to feel like your parents have been through so much worse than you have.
To feel that, after everything they’ve sacrificed, how can you choose yourself?
When you know the future they imagined for you is not going to happen, how can you continue to pretend without it eating away at you?
I think a lot of this is grief.
In every decision you make, every truth you tell, there’s the grief of having to live with however the chips fall.
With every person you learn is safe, there is the grief of learning who isn’t.
The grief of the boundaries that you don’t want to have to set.
The grief of not meeting expectations and not being the “good daughter, son or kid” that would have made them happy.
The grief of knowing maybe you can’t get married in your place of worship if that’s what you want.
That all needs to be felt because it’s real, and it is a heartbreaking reality.
You don’t have to reject your culture to embrace your queerness
It’s okay to have complicated feelings about this.
It’s okay to love parts of your culture and choose to move away from other parts that don’t serve you.
There is no right or wrong way to be from where you are from.
Your queerness and your experience are powerful and important.
Finding chosen family where you can be your full self can be a great way to integrate these two parts of yourself.
You can make your own traditions that honour your complexity.
You can learn to take up space in places where queerness has always existed, but perhaps has never been acknowledged.
You deserve spaces where you don’t have to leave part of yourself at the door.
Where you don’t have to choose which version of yourself gets to enter the room.
And where both your culture and your queerness can be acknowledged as real, important parts of who you are.
If you’ve ever felt like you have to choose between your identity, your culture, your family and yourself, I hope you know that you’re not alone.
And I hope you can begin to imagine what it might feel like to belong without having to make yourself smaller first.
Looking for a therapist who understands the complexities of South Asian and queer identity?
If you’re navigating family trauma, difficult family dynamics, cultural expectations, coming out, boundaries or questions around your identity, therapy can be a space to explore these experiences without having to leave parts of yourself at the door.
