Bone of My Bone

To exist at the intersection of womanhood and the queer community is to constantly calculate the math of your own worth. I’ve found myself looking at the culture around me - the hyper-saturated media aesthetics, the sudden influx of fictional adoration, the bright neon of June - and wondering: how much value does the world actually assign me when there is nothing left to consume?

There is a staggering dissonance in realizing that while women make up over half the population, the world is not inherently set up to value us as human beings first. For many men, a woman’s worth is directly tied to her position as a potential prospect. We are assigned value when we are a love interest, a muse, or standing at the very forefront of a roster. We are allowed relevance when we fit the comfortable mold of the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl" - a cinematic fantasy designed to kickstart a man’s self discovery while we remain safely objectified on a pedestal.

I learned this math immediately within the context of my own social circles. For a long time, I anchored myself in co-ed friend groups, sitting at tables dominated by men where I assumed I was a peer. But there is a quiet structural erasure that happens when you are a woman in a room full of men. Because I didn’t exactly fit that transactional mold, my presence was subtly re-coded. I was allowed relevance only when I fit the comfortable archetype of the “cool girl” who could hang with guys, or the safe confidante who poses no threat. Better yet, I became the convenient sounding board who could help them decode their own dating lives, offering advice on all-things-girls and talking shamelessly about mutual celebrity crushes.

In this dynamic, I became a sounding board for their ambitions, a safe harbor for their emotional unloading, and a refreshing burst of background color to spice up a once predictable routine. There is a specific kind of exploitation in being the “safe” female friend: you are trusted with the raw, emotional depths of men who would never show that vulnerability to each other, yet you are simultaneously denied a vote in the group's hierarchy. You are a therapist on call, paid only in the currency of proximity.

We have become the modern-day “rib” to society. 

In the traditional creation myth, Eve is formed from Adam’s rib - an accessory pulled from the real world, designed entirely to keep him company and decorate his garden. This is the exact blueprint of performative appreciation today. The moment I was tired, or struggling, or simply chose to exercise my own independent agency by setting boundaries, the fascination faded. The second I demanded the same unyielding respect and space that men in the group inherently granted another, the illusion cracked. I wasn’t a peer to be known - not deeply, at least. I was a utility whose purpose had run out. Worshipping a concept from a safe distance is easy because an aesthetic doesn’t have messy human needs; it doesn’t talk back.

Mainstream culture treats marginalized identities like temporary utilities. We are relevant when we hold purpose, and only when we serve that purpose for someone else. The same structural erasure applies to the LGBTQ+ community, a group routinely mined for its vitality while its humanity is dismissed. 

When I arrived at school, surrounded by a uniform, stereotypically straight crowd, I was constantly reminded and praised for how “artsy,” or "whimsical," and “out-of-the-box” I was. At first, it felt like flattery, as all compliments tend to do. It was a sense of validation of my style, my taste, my perspective. But the praise quickly soured into something hollow; I realized these people weren’t actually invested in my depth or my safety. They were welcoming me into their circles for a colorful “quirk” of character, an exotic pet to prove their own open-mindedness. To them, I became something of a walking mood board. 

The true isolation, however, came when my identity shifted from a fun aesthetic and array of traits into a real-world struggle. In those same straight-dominated spaces, my unique heartbreaks and struggles were quietly invalidated or ignored entirely. When a heterosexual relationship ends, the world stops; it is treated as a profound, universal grief.

But when I experienced my own fracture of a queer heartbreak, it was met with a hollow, dismissive silence. Because my relationships and sense of self didn’t always align with my peers’ rigid scripts, my pain was treated as a subtext - a minor plot point or an experimental phase that didn’t require real comfort of structural empathy. It was as if a heartbreak without a man involved wasn’t a real structural loss, just a quiet disagreement between friends. 

I noticed this paradox especially as I also faced heartbreaks amongst men within this same crowd. The minute I was treated poorly by a man, my pain was somehow validated instantaneously. Suddenly, the straight crowd knew how to speak my language of my grief. They understood how to villainize the boy who hurt me because the narrative fit neatly into the patriarchal text they were oh-so used to reading. My suffering was only legible to them when it was caused by a man. If a man hurts you, you are a tragic protagonist; if a woman hurts you, you are entirely on your own, mourning a ghost everyone else refuses to acknowledge.

This is the central illusion of modern devotion: it loves the fruit of our culture - our music, our style, our energy, our labor - but it completely refuses to protect the soil we grow in. It loves Chappell Roan, but turns a blind eye to the legislative and social threats facing the queer community. It loves the idea of a deeply feeling, poetic woman on a movie screen, but calls real women “difficult” or “dramatic” the moment they set a boundary or demand actual structural respect for their lived experiences. Worshipping the art while abandoning the artists is the ultimate act of cultural voyeurism. 

But like Eve reaching for the fruit, the illusion cracks the moment we choose to exercise our own independent agency. When a woman or a queer person steps off the pedestal, sets hard boundaries, and demands real-world power instead of temporary adoration, the world that “worshipped” them yesterday often labels them as disruptive today.

I, myself, am outgrowing the desire to be anyone else’s favorite track on a playlist or an extension of someone else’s narrative arc. This June, my goal isn’t to look pretty in a garden built by someone else - it’s to demand the right to build, protect, and own my spaces, entirely on my own terms.

We are relevant when we hold purpose, and only when we hold purpose. There is no space for us to exist with struggle or for the culture of our identities to be truly appreciated since we’re only appreciated temporarily.