Shedding Heteronormativity

I was taught that boys do boy things and girls do girl things. I was taught that someday if I'm lucky I will be in a monogamous relationship til death do us part. I was taught that being gay is a secret, and being zoo is also a secret, and being a furry is also a secret, and... gosh the list goes on. Uh. Being a brony. That was one that made my cheeks flush super, super red, when any inkling leaked about me, a strong tough stoic boy, secretly liking that show.

I don't know who taught me all of these things. Everyone, I guess? It wasn't like Uncle Pat sat me down one day and quizzed me about whether monogamy is normal, with the goal of making sure I stayed within the flock. It was just... a given throughout every book I read, a given throughout every lesson in every class, a given throughout all of the gossip and stories that ever passed my ears: if you cheat on someone you're a piece of absolute shit. Polygamists are freaks. You should wait for your one true love rather than just hooking up with people who you aren't going to have a relationship with anyways.

Oh no, what if my one true love has fur and four legs?

The dog soulmate was a bigtime secret.

Oh, nudity, that's another secret. You know: this thing that we're all born as. Huge sin. Don't be naked.

These days I hang out naked in friends' living rooms as other gay people go about their own business in the house, some also naked, some dressed. I go out to catch the bus wearing a skirt and a shirt with furries on it, and I nuzzle my friend, who I am not married to, though he is married to someone else, for warmth, and also for the fact that I like cuddling him oh-so much and I don't mind if the world knows it. The barista at the cafe asks for a name for my almond milk cappuccino; I give them the girl name that everyone calls me, and me and my friend find a place to yap about all of the latest zoo stuff, and also what shows we've been watching lately. We share stories about our lives and the lives of our other friends: these stories assume that boys may do boy things or they may do girl things or they may do intentionally transgressive things or they may do things that are without categorization. Girls may also do any of the above as well. Nonbinary folks as well, anyone else in between or out of bounds.

Why was all of this kept from me?

Did they just assume I wouldn't be interested in a life of cuddle piles and forms of address that actually make me happy? Were they, in effect, sparing me from things that would gross me out?

Or did they really, really, not want me to know? Was it a tactic to try to prevent all of this gay polyamory from corrupting me, so to speak?

Or, did people always tell me, and I was the one who tuned it out and failed to actually ever consider it for the longest time, and I did all of those years of heteronormativity to myself?

I don't know. Little of Column A, little of Column B, little of Column C, perhaps.

It's like, whatever. That's all the past, I guess.

Now is now. And now is very cuddly. Now is very good. I listen with rapt attention to pagans and therians telling me about the world. I go out and I do things that Health Class told me would ruin my life (drinking at a bar, egads) and I double over and try and fail to gasp for breath as I cackle hard at really, really, really funny jokes that one of my friends is making. I go about all of my daily errands with a zeta visible on my person at all times. I visit family sometimes, and I watch the TV that's on in their living room, and I see this reality show being super-duper-definitely woke by featuring a gay couple, and yet, I can tell, as I'm watching, that they really want to refer to each other as "playmates," not "boyfriends" or anything that implies a heteronormative romantic monogamous bond as such, and so they seem to have settled on calling these two "partners" for the show, in order to... not offend? Not teach? Not let the queer cat out of the bag?

I don't know why this thing I have found seems to be such a secret: this sacred garden of exotic genders and relationship dynamics, I would show it to others gladly, Look! Look! It is here! It is possible! It is good!

I shout and I shout and I shout of this beautiful queer world to that sad boy in high school who is carefully making sure no one else sees his phone background of Rainbow Dash, but he cannot hear me, all the way back there in time.

Now I live my live with outward joy and adorned in tokens of all of this queerness that is possible; And I hope that someone who would be helped by it sees a Rainbow Dash shirt on me, and goes, Oh. It is here. It is possible. It is good.




Article written by Bark (April 2026)