The human eye can distinguish 30 shades of gray. Odd that we call black and white photography “black and white” when so much of its nuance, drama and power comes from those shades of gray. It is a quirk of the human imagination that spectrums are often reduced to their polar extremes. What should rightfully be called “Gray Photography” is black and white. Racial identities too are reduced to blacks and whites, or to people of color and people without color. Politics are left or right, despite the fact that there are expansive swaths of center. Controversy is summarily recorded in history as a struggle of Us versus Them. Sexualities are Gay or Straight, or the equally polarized and rigidly defined “Bi”.

I don’t know what it is about gray space that lends itself to being overlooked, but it happens again and again. Gray space is consistently reduced, collapsed, ignored. People, events, emotions, relationships, words, art, you name it, are automatically sorted into dichotomous extremes. Good or Evil. Right or Wrong. Man or Woman. Friend or Foe.

To me, being queer means occupying gray space. It means cradling that space in your hands and in your heart, holding it up, acknowledging it, recognizing it. “Here I am!”, shouts the queer person, “I am that which must not, will not, does not fit into the dualistic order of things. I am not entirely one or the other. There is no word for what I am, but I exist! I exist!”.

Being queer means placing focus and importance on shades of gray. It means identifying dichotomies, recognizing them as artificial constructs and revealing a spectrum of meaning. It means replacing black and white thinking with 30 shades of gray thinking.

In the current political climate of polarization and tribalism, it is becoming increasingly important for us all to reach out to people we disagree with. This means treating people we disagree with as complicated, feeling individuals rather than as the enemy.

Queers, as people who occupy the space between extremes, have a unique vantage point to witness controversy. Many queer people, myself included, once identified as “not queer”. We may have been straight, closeted, afraid, in denial, late bloomers, or simply not concerned with labels. I identified, at different times in life, as straight, mostly-straight, curious, ex-straight, a man who has sex with men, a man who loves men, gay and queer.

I, like many queers, have occupied many different identites along the spectrum of sexuallity, gender identity, and politics. The road to my queer identity was a journey along a spectrum where I could stop, rest and take stock of myself and the expectations of society.

The result was a growing appreciation for the the expansive distance between gay and straight and for the many shades of gray in between. My experience as a queer person traveling along different spectrums of identity was a crash course in the acceptance and appreciation of ambiguity. I learned to see things less and less in terms of black and white.

Because queer people often have the experience of traveling across spectrums, they can identify with people on either side of polar extremes. When we occupy gray space, we can reach out and touch both the black and white side of things. Queer people can act as bridges, reaching across divides, connecting people who think differently.

If you’ve ever had your mind changed. If you ever seriously questioned your identity. If you ever found yourself becoming someone you didn’t expect. If you’ve ever felt uncomfortable with labels but discovered you were at a loss of words for what to call yourself, then you are already thinking queerly.

Queers are everywhere. Ambiguity, uncertainty and self-determination belong to everyone. All that gray space, those 30 shades that exist between black and white, that space is common ground. In that space, using the queer imagination, we can discover empathy and mutual understanding.

Next time someone says something you disagree with, resist black and white argumentation. Find that gray space, that common ground; there’s more of it than you might think.