Questioning

Gebruikt voor mensen die hun seksuele oriëntatie, genderidentiteit of allebei aan het verkennen zijn of er nog niet uit zijn. Questioning is een volwaardige manier van zijn, geen tussenfase die per se ergens in moet uitmonden.

De "Q" in LGBTQIA+ staat sinds de uitbreiding van de afkorting LGBT in de jaren negentig ook voor "questioning" - een erkenning dat het verkennen van je identiteit een legitieme, doorlopende ervaring is en niet alleen een opstapje naar een vast label.

Myth: questioning is just a phase

Sometimes it is a phase, in the ordinary sense that people move through it. That is not an argument against it. Adolescence is a phase and nobody uses the word to dismiss it. What the myth usually means is "this will resolve into you being normal", and it is offered as reassurance to the person saying it rather than to the person hearing it.

Myth: you have to pick something eventually

You do not. Some people use questioning for decades. Others move to queer, which does similar work without requiring specificity. Others land on a precise label and stay there. All three are ordinary outcomes.

Myth: questioning people are not really LGBTQIA+

The Q has covered questioning since the 1990s, deliberately. You do not need a completed identity to be part of a community, and gatekeeping the uncertain is how people end up working this out alone.

Myth: if you were really trans or really gay you would just know

Plenty of people describe knowing early and clearly. Plenty of others describe years of confusion, false starts and denial, and their identities are not less real for it. Certainty is not the entry requirement.