This article is a part of the HPR Pride Month Collection and represents the independent perspective of the author.
“Am I unlovable?”
No. Yes. Maybe? This passing thought has lingered in my mind — and my heart — since my youth. I came out as gay at age 10, and the love that I had felt in my childhood was replaced with fear. Hushed tones, family secrets, slurs, and violence followed me until high school graduation. While the people close to me showed care and continued interest in my life, a piece of my personhood had been forcefully torn away every time I said “I’m gay.”
I was forced to grow up fast. Suddenly forced to defend my identity — my humanity — was nothing short of sadistic. My hometown, Norwalk, Iowa, was no place for queer existence, let alone queer love. The bullying, violence, and threats never stopped; so in turn, I utilized violence to protect myself. Once I endorsed that violence, the love that I had for myself and others had died.
As I grew older, I missed the markers of adolescence defined by first loves. My friends grew into different versions of themselves, matured by their romantic relationships. Meanwhile, my maturity — defined instead by my work ethic — developed at the expense of feeling unloved. At times, I had been so overwhelmed by lovelessness and abuse that I was scared of what I might do to myself.
For most of my life, I threw away notions of ever finding love. At 18, Grindr opened up a possibility to meet other queer people. I was ecstatic! But the spark that had so quickly subsumed me was quickly extinguished as I realized the app’s true purpose. “Topdaddy69,” “threesome?” and the infamous “looking?” flashed across the screen. This was an app for lust, not love. And that quickly became clear by my soaring body count — a number that would make a cis-het person’s jaw drop. Due to the patriarchal and toxic standard that exists for cis-het men, raising their body count is often seen as a brag. For me, it was a cry for help. The search for love had been replaced by the search for validation — for my body, for my sexual skill, for my ego. I became desensitized to hookups over time, eventually viewing my sexual ecounters as a simple means to an end.
But what about my emotional needs? Those would only be satisfied by my escape from Iowa to Massachusetts. But college brought much of the same — ungratifying hookups that could never replace the piece of myself I had lost. The isolating consequences of the pandemic only gave me more time to sit with my sorrow as I watched my cis-het peers flourish. Social media was a window into their perfect lives. I attempted to construct the same image while suffering my indignation and jealousy.
Only over the last couple of months have I experienced the romantic love that had been absent from my life. Ironically, Grindr did help me find someone. For the six months that I’ve known my partner, we’ve grown a lot together. I found someone who is emotionally intelligent, speaks my language of sarcasm, and is more thoughtful than anyone else I know. I thought that I’d found love.
And then I read bell hooks’s book “All About Love.” hooks offers an intense spiritual reflection on love in our society and how lovelessness has prospered. Lovelessness, as hooks uses the word, is the pervasive cultural aversion to speaking against the pain and abuse that prevents us from loving. When I asked myself “Am I unlovable?” I was internalizing society’s loveless attitudes. But I, as an individual, should not blame or pity myself for the hate that the culture around me fosters. After reading just a few pages, I had realized that I have never known a single thing about love. I guess I had thought it was just a deeply intense feeling, something that naturally falls into our laps as life, God, or the universe dictates. However, hooks is not interested in this media-warped perception of love — replete with Prince Charmings and happily ever afters — but instead pursues the spiritual process of loving in all relationships.
Loving is actionable and willful, a choice made in combination with “care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication,” according to hooks. hooks asks us to use love as a verb, not as a noun (as I have throughout this entire piece). The strongest part of hooks’ discussion of love, to me, is the emphasis on extending the spirit to another person in the pursuit of growth. I realized that I have never had this. Growth of the spirit requires deep and honest communication about our feelings, wants, needs, and vulnerability with another person beyond the surface of daily life. It is simply this newfound sense of awareness that has changed my approach to my relationship — we’ve committed to creating time and space for honesty and vulnerability. This constant vulnerability is the lifeblood of loving, and yet, is the simplest and most obvious change. It is not easy; loving requires effort everyday. But approaching our relationships with this self-awareness can be life changing.
The caveat — because there always is — lies in society. We are never taught how to love; it is simply assumed. hooks reaffirms throughout the book that love can never coexist with abuse. It is materialism, capitalism, and greed, which conditions us to see love in partnership with violence. As a queer person, I know this violence well. Bullying, bigotry, and hate are born of a society which does not value love. The kids who called me slurs and chased me home from the school bus stop were not taught to love others because love and community is not valued in today’s world of mass consumerism and materialism. hooks makes clear that isolation — which breeds lovelessness and bigotry — is the “outcome of life in a culture where things matter more than people”. To me, this explains why the bullying never stopped (and still continues in my school after I left): my personal wellbeing was simply not conducive to the growth of my school. While investments for anti-bullying measures are small, my school — like almost every other school in the US — recently invested $25 million in entirely new athletic infrastructure. We ignore the problems in front of us to solve problems that do not exist.
The solution to the problem of lovelessness is not so simple as just reading a book. hooks says this problem “requires conscious practice, a willingness to unite the way we think with the way we act”. But perhaps if more people read her book, we could consciously practice loving each other — especially our queer youth navigating a loveless life.
So no, I have not “found” the love that I’m looking for because I have not put in the effort to create it. But now I’m willing. hooks has empowered me with the knowledge that I’ve been searching for throughout my whole queer existence. Ironically, I’m starting my journey of loving during Pride month, 11 years after coming out. Loving is surely the most complicated thing we ever experience, but queer love is further complicated by cishet hatred. Had this hate been absent from my youth, and had I been taught to love by a society unconcerned with materialism, perhaps I’d have truly loved or been loved by someone. I know now that I am not unlovable — I had just never been taught what love is.
The original artwork for this article was created by Harvard College student Allaura Osborne for the exclusive use of the HPR.
