You may have noticed more and more people describing themselves as queer these days. And if you’re outside the 2SLGBTQ+ community, or grew up hearing “queer” as a slur, you might be wondering: Why that word? Isn’t it still controversial? What happened to “gay,” “lesbian,” or “bi”?
These are fair questions; and the answer, like queerness, is layered.
So as my second article in this Pride Month series, I want to share why I now identify as queer. How that shift in language helped me feel more whole, more grounded, and more connected to community. And what this means for how I approach my work as a researcher, where language plays a powerful role in shaping inclusion and understanding.
Queer Is More Than a Label – It’s a Sense of Liberation
When I first came out, I used the word ‘gay’ to identify myself. It was familiar. It made sense to others. But as I evolved through my coming out process, I realized that it didn’t quite fit. It felt narrow and like I was condensing a complex, evolving identity into a single checkbox.
And more than that, it came from a framework that didn’t feel like mine. Words like gay, lesbian, and bi, while meaningful for many, often originate from a heteronormative lens. One that assumes straightness as the default and builds categories for deviation. It flattens complexity into digestible terms and invites conformity over curiosity.
When I came out and said I was gay, people stopped asking questions. They thought they understood me. The label did the work, even when it didn’t tell the full story.
But when I saw what reclaiming the word ‘queer’ could offer me, something shifted. I no longer felt the need to define myself using language built by systems that were never made for people like me. Embracing queer meant embracing possibility. It meant refusing to shrink myself into labels designed to make others comfortable.
It also meant recognizing the intersections of my identity and how queerness doesn’t exist apart from race, culture, gender, or ability. My experience as a queer person of colour isn’t the same as a white queer person’s. Or a queer woman’s. Or a trans person’s. Or a queer person with a disability. Queerness doesn’t erase those differences, it reveals them. It shows us that identity isn’t one thing, but a series of intersections that shape how we move through the world.
Embracing my queerness gave me space to be whole. To be expansive, contradictory, curious. To live in the in-between. It pushed others to ask instead of assume, and invited me to keep discovering myself.
Queerness, for me, isn’t just about who I’m attracted to. It’s about what I’m drawn to: complexity, creativity, resistance, reinvention. It connects me to a history of people who didn’t wait to be understood. Artists, healers, thinkers, and everyday rebels who reshaped culture by showing up fully, even when the world wasn’t ready.
How Language Shapes Research & Our Realities
In research, we often ask people to “identify.” To check boxes, fit into neat categories, align with predefined options. But what happens when the boxes don’t fit?
Too often, surveys reduce gender to a binary or offer only a handful of dated terms for sexual orientation. The result? We lose people – not just their participation, but their trust. When someone doesn’t see themselves in the language we use, they don’t feel seen. And if they don’t feel seen, they stop showing up in the research altogether.
Inclusive language isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a matter of rigour, respect, and representation. It reminds us that our job isn’t to simplify people to fit our frameworks. It’s to evolve our frameworks to reflect the beautiful, complicated truth of people’s lives.
Queering the Research Lens
Finding myself in my queer identity has changed how I show up as a researcher. It’s made me more attuned to what exists between and beyond tidy categories. It’s made me question the assumptions baked into “standard” survey instruments. And it’s made me push for approaches that honour complexity, including:
- open-ended questions
- lived-experience-informed design
- and collaboration with the communities we seek to understand
To me, queering research doesn’t mean sprinkling rainbow language into a questionnaire. It means recognizing that ambiguity isn’t a flaw in data but where the richness lives. It means asking: Who gets to define the categories? And who’s being left out? And while this approach is rooted in my queer experience, it extends far beyond it.
Queering the research lens is ultimately about resisting the urge to oversimplify human experience – something that resonates with many people outside the LGBTQ+ community too.
Think of immigrants who straddle multiple cultural worlds. People with multifaceted ethnic or racial identities who are constantly asked to define themselves in singular terms when their experience is anything but. Individuals navigating chronic illness or disability, whose realities shift daily even when their diagnosis stays the same. Women in male-dominated industries, especially when their leadership or communication styles are coded as “too emotional” or “not assertive enough.” Neurodivergent people navigating environments built for neurotypical norms, where masking is often expected and authenticity misunderstood. Or racialized folks in predominantly white institutions who feel the need to code-switch or downplay parts of their identity to be seen as “professional.”
All of these experiences resist simplification. Queering the lens is about making room for people’s full lived experiences. It’s about designing research – and building culture – that reflects how people actually live, not how systems expect them to.
It’s also about recognizing that many people move through the world being told they’re too complicated, too hard to categorize, or too “other” to fully count. But the truth is: their complexity isn’t a flaw. It’s a form of data we’re privileged to access.
Queering the lens means building space for ambiguity, nuance, and fluidity in our methods. It means valuing the perspectives of people whose lives don’t sit neatly inside survey boxes or standard demographic codes. It challenges us to expand our frameworks so we can be more accurate in our conclusions.
Because when we allow people to show up as their full selves, we don’t just get better insights – we build deeper understanding. And that’s the kind of research that makes a difference.
Words Open Doors
Moving from ‘gay’ to ‘queer’ wasn’t just a change in vocabulary. It was a mindset shift. A declaration. A letting go of the need to make myself easily digestible to systems that were never built for people like me.
It invited better questions:
- Who am I really drawn to; not just romantically, but spiritually and creatively?
- What kind of life do I want to build?
- Where do I feel most like myself?
- What does freedom actually feel like?
What You Can Do (as a Researcher, Ally, or Human Being)
If you’re building surveys, moderating focus groups, or simply trying to connect with people whose lived experiences are different from your own, here are five things that help; both in practice and in mindset:
- Consult with community members. What feels inclusive to you might still miss the mark. Inclusion starts with listening.
- Avoid “Other.” Use “Prefer to self-describe” instead. It’s more respectful, and it tells people their identity isn’t an afterthought.
- Interrogate your frameworks. Ask who built them, who’s centred, and who gets left out. Be willing to challenge “best practices” that weren’t built with equity in mind.
- Build in flexibility. Design research tools that adapt to the richness of human experience, instead of forcing people to adapt to the tools.
- Stay humble and curious. Language evolves. So should your methods.
Final Thoughts: Queerness Is a Perspective
Being queer isn’t just part of my identity – it’s the lens I see the world through. One that invites empathy, sharpens imagination, and challenges inherited systems. It helps me ask better questions, listen more deeply, and seek out the richness in what doesn’t fit.
It also reminds me that none of us lives in a vacuum. My experience of queerness – shaped by culture, race, class, and privilege – is not universal. And that’s the point. Our differences are not distractions from the data. They are the data.
So during Pride, and all year long, I hope we take time to reflect on the language we use, the boxes we build, and the people we centre. Because when we create space for people to show up fully, our research becomes more honest, our insights more impactful, and our world more just.
Happy Pride! I hope that in your journey, you find the words, and the people, that make you feel fully seen.
