I’m Jamie and I’m a non-binary queer person living in Chicago. I like food, sharks, video games, being on couches, having fun, and laughing. I’ve been out as a trans person for about 3 years now, and out as a queer person for almost 10!!
I initially came out during college. But in hindsight, there were a lot of feelings and thoughts that could have led me to discovering my queerness earlier had I had the resources and connections. Like maybe I should have spent more time paying attention to my CLEAR ROMANTIC FEELINGS for my same-gender friends and less time practising the violin.
A lot of how I approach and think about my identity stems from a shared experience of floating through a lot of different spaces but not feeling 100% seen in any of them. Like a constant session of doing the hokey-pokey where only small parts of you are welcome.
“This has given me an invaluable set of skills to build bridges between explicitly different communities”
For example, being born in Korea but raised in the US. Being a queer Korean person. Being a queer person of colour working in the tech industry. Being a “passing” non-binary person. Being somebody who really loves pineapple on pizza and a lot of other situations where I feel accepted but not necessarily invited. This has given me an invaluable set of skills to build bridges between explicitly different communities and to validate softer parts of ourselves that are not quite so clear cut.
Being queer is a huge part of how I experience the world and how I move through it. Talking and dreaming about different ways that gender manifests across experiences is one of my favourite ways of getting to know people. The ways that I have had to become so sure of myself have guided my conversations with strangers and my given family as they get to learn about my own identity and gender expansiveness.
“Queerness is something that is best experienced, not studied”
It has taught me to be a more spacious, open, sympathetic, abundant, joyful, and exuberant person. Through conversations and experiences, it has become clear to me that queerness is something that is best experienced, not studied. I think about how a large basis of the LGBTQ+ equality movement is being “born this way,” but I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with choosing to be queer. It’s DEFINITELY a lot more fun.
The thing that I love exploring is queerness and relationships. I love building new relationships based on affirmations and joy. I love taking my friends on dates and discovering old and new ways of how we appreciate and build each other up. I love seeing the things in relationships both with each other and with ourselves that get cut away, broken up, taped together, replaced entirely, grown from a seedling, and shared in between.
I guess what I am ultimately attracted to is love (#libra) and how we think about it (#airsignsallupinmychart) and being queer is a huge key to learning and experiencing all aspects of that. Sometimes, it can feel like one *record scratch* moment after another and there are more than two days in an average week where I wonder if it is all worth it.
To me, being queer is exciting, innovative, and oftentimes feels like making sense out of Jello. And more than any of those things, it feels like coming back home, which can be the most welcoming invitation for anyone that’s ever felt like an outsider.
Jamie Chung
Edited by Ash O'Keeffe
LGBTQ+ Activist