I'm a 19 year old lesbian ("Lipstick") and my girl friend is a "Dyke" and I know she has had previous partners and well so have I but never a Dyke. I'm scared of what may happen when we actually do have sex. What if I do something she's not comfortable with? Matter of fact what do I do if I do? I'm scared that I'll completely blow it and ruin our sexual relationship.
This is a guest entry from The Gaytheist Gospel Hour as part of the blog carnival to support Scarleteen.
Preface: I was recently asked to participate in a blogathon to support Scarleteen, an online sex education forum for teens. I was flattered. I was humbled. I was a little queasy and had to breathe in a bag for a minute or 12. I decided to contribute the story of how I survived homophobic bullying thanks a single library book. I’m living proof that progressive sex education (no matter how small-scale) makes an enormous difference in the lives of the very young. It’s my hope that all who read my sarcastic, satirically-tinged autobiographical account will consider making an enormous difference by supporting Scarleteen.
"In this life, things are much harder than in the afterworld/ In this life, you’re on your own!" —Prince
High school is a laugh riot. It’s a jolly funhouse where the unpopular and the unusual are punished for their crimes against conformity with a topsy-turvy ridicule. Here, overweight boys have “due dates”, homely girls are proposed marriage by homecoming kings, underwear waistbands are wedgied into easy carrying handles for Special Ed students, and exchange students, (regardless of country of origin) are addressed in mock Chinese. In this swarming mosh pit of ha!rassment, powered by sweaty insecurity and raw, smelly fear, homophobia stands as the indisputable height of hilarity. At least that’s how I remember it.
“Gay” was the Golden God of Comedy at my Iowa high school back in 1985. It was the sun that shined down on an otherwise unfunny and frighteningly confusing world and made it all worthy of a ridicule most amusing. Anything could be “gay”, and therefore hilarious: a pack of Lit’l Smokies dog-piled on a cafeteria tray, “True” by Spandau Ballet, the color green and all who wore it on Thursday. Behaviors were “gay”, too: raising one’s hand in class, missing a foul shot during a gym class basket ball game, wearing one’s backpack over both shoulders as opposed to the heterosexually-mandated right shoulder. The entire marching band was apparently gay, and so were the Choir and the Drama Club. But they called themselves the Glee Club and The Thespians, so weren’t they just asking for it?
The Golden Gay God of Comedy was capricious. His ways were mysterious. Amazingly, not even heterosexuality provided an adequate defense against The Gay. Prince was a perfect example. Anyone who’d heard his Purple Rain album, (and only the Amish and the deaf hadn’t) had witnessed Prince’s very vigorous love of the ladies. Its most notorious track, “Darling Nikki”, was an epic ode to boy/girl frottage practically tailored to the heterosexual fumblings of the typical teenager, yet the man who had composed and performed it? Gay, gay, gay. It could be argued that, like the Glees and the Thespians, Prince had in his own way “asked for it.” He did, after all, wear high heels and make up, but so did Vince Neil of Motley Crue. Yet nobody called Vince Neil gay. And thus was the delightful cruelty of the Golden Gay God of Comedy.
When I moved from Ohio to this Iowa High School, I found myself a permanent inhabitant within the crosshairs of the Golden Gay God of Comedy. My favorite paisley shirt was gay. My red hair was gay. My glasses were gay. My inability to put a ball in a hoop was gay. I was president of the Student Librarians, a post I’d accepted with the purposeful solemnity worthy of the Gayest of the Gay. As fate would have it, I really was gay, which put a weirdly embarrassing spin on my relationship to the Golden Gay God of Comedy. How unfair, yet undeniably dead-on he was! He had called a duck a duck, and what could I do but quack “You got me there, bub!”?
I paid dearly for my hilarious gayness, and my own personal bill collector was comedian Chuck “Smith.” Who at my Iowa High School could deny his uproarious stylings? The spectacle of the redheaded new girl in the weird shirt with spit in her hair, getting groped by a “lezzie!”-squealing Chuck, filled the hallways with deafening laughter. Such rollicking high jinks!
Since the story I’m telling is sarcastic, satirically-tinged autobiography, I’m going to skip over the part where I cried when I got home and was afraid to go to school and hated the entire world for what had happened to me. In fact, I became physically ill while reliving 1985 in the writing the first draft of this story. Because there is no crying allowed in sarcastic, satirically-tinged autobiography, I’ll jump right over the abundantly obvious fact that what happened to me was very, very painful and will now mercifully deliver us all to the part where I decided to turn things around and fight hilarity with hilarity.
The fact of the matter was: I was much funnier than Chuck. Even though I was too inward and awkward at the time to let anyone else know it, I knew it. It galled me to be on the outside of the joke, looking in at its heart and soul, which was ironically enough, my own victimization. The Golden Gay God of Comedy may have ruled the school with his nonsensical and pitiless jurisprudence, but it was plain to me that he had a very sub-par servant in Chuck “Smith”. I mean, really: calling a lesbian a lesbian? It was the most uninspired put-down, ever. The personal disappointment was bad enough, but how was I expected to hold my head up amongst the pregnant fat boys or the portable special ed students?
Which brings me to the book One Teenager in Ten: Writings by Gay and Lesbian Youth. Published in 1983 by Alyson Press and edited by Ann Heron, the book was packed to bursting with the testimonies of people like me. One Teenager In Ten had unceremoniously arrived at the Library of my Iowa High School one spring day, innocuously packed in a cardboard box along with over a dozen paperbacks of sundry and disparate subject matter. As was my duty as the President of the Student Librarians and the Gayest of the Gay, I had glued the pocket in the front cover myself, and never dared to ask where it came from or who had ordered it. I snuck it home without committing my name to the check-out card and read it in one night.
The very existence of this book was an enormous comfort, because it was tangible proof that even though I was by myself in my Iowa High School, I was by no means alone. The book also gave me a sense of perspective. As bad as I had it, there were others who had it even worse. They would escape their own Chuck “Smiths” at the end of a school day, only to be harassed by their own families and members of their churches. Some had been institutionalized. Others had attempted suicide. For the first time in my life, I counted myself lucky to be the beloved daughter of 2 unrepentant hell-bound atheists for reasons other than not having to wear a dress for Easter. But as valuable as a source of solace One Teenager In Ten was, the book actually turned out to be an even better blunt instrument of pure comedy vengeance.
On the night that I had temporarily stolen One Teenager In Ten from the library, the Golden Gay God of Comedy came to me in a dream. He took the form of a paisley-clad Prince, tottering in the sauciest pair of F Me Pumps I had ever seen in my life. He wagged a sassy, lace-encased finger at me. “You’ve abused your post as The Gayest of the Gay,” he scolded in a surprisingly deep voice, “A crime most uncool and worst of all–unfunny.” He regarded me with those Bambi eyes ablaze within their Mabelline confines, so I knew he meant business. “Someone needs that book much more than you do,” Prince admonished me, and punctuated his disapproval with a nut-cracker split on the foggy floor below us. He sprung up before me, did a cyclone-spin, swept the curtain of curls out of his right eye, and said, “Someone named Chuck ‘Smith’!” He departed into the clouds with a chirping little shriek. I believe it went something like this: “Owwww—ahh!” which I took to mean “Don’t get caught!”
So the next day, I kept the book and returned the card to the library. I’d never seen Chuck’s handwriting, so the Golden Gay God of Comedy had guided my hand in the forgery of his signature: the plodding jumble of widely-spaced upper and lowercase letters you might find on a “No Girls Allowed” sign. I stamped the due date on the card and filed it away accordingly. And I waited.
Which brings me to Study Hall. Located at the left corner of the right-hand serif perched at the top of the U-style-layout of my Iowa High School, the Study Hall was ensconced in the end-of-the-line Gay Ghetto also inhabited by the Library and the Band Room. The white ceramic bricks that comprised the entire school were never whiter or shinier than in the Study Hall. Like teeth. Were we trapped inside the mouth of the school, I would often wonder. We were made to sit at desks set in skittish rows, and expected to ignore the lumpy loudness of the biggest hits of last year emanating from the Band Room next door while we ostensibly caught up on our studies. The clock on the wall was perpetually set on Anchorage time, and every minute was a shiny white eternity. It was the perfect setting in which to contemplate suicide. And receive overdue notices.
They were delivered from the Library next door, every Wednesday, and handed out to the offenders trapped in the Study Hall. The overdue notices looked harmless enough: innocent white pieces of paper, lovingly cut into slips. But the dot matrix derision they harbored left a stinging welt. “You have betrayed the trust invested in you by the Library, as well as the entire intellectual community of this Iowa High School,” the notices announced, “and therefore all will know your shame!” That was how I took it, anyway. Nobody else seemed to mind much. I had Study Hall with Chuck (naturally) and I would sit in the back of the room, watch as he writhed in boredom over his unopened books, and instead of suicide, I would think about One Teenager In Ten. And I would quake with suppressed laughter. It was an excruciatingly delicious wait for Wednesday. No matter what happened to me in the hallway or what would be thrown at me in Study Hall, I had something to laugh at and something to live for: Wednesday.
The only thing that trumped waiting for Wednesday was, well, Wednesday itself. The look of utter bafflement on Chuck’s face upon being presented with that first overdue notice is perhaps the most cherished memory of my youth. A cow confronted with a curling iron, a chimp with a chess set, a trout with Tommy Tune tickets– none of them had anything on Chuck’s goggle-eyed bewilderment. Stunned, he hesitated for a moment before accepting the notice. He blinked as if to shake it off, and regarded the slip of paper with the puzzled disgust one might exhibit upon being bestowed with a piece of freshly-wiped toilet paper.
The notice in and of itself was clearly an effrontery. Chuck would never do anything as gay as set foot in the Library, let alone check out an actual book. That stuff was strictly for fags. He protested loudly to no one in particular but to everyone all at once: “This is STUPID! I don’t go to the stupid Library!” He let out a gasp of exasperation and rolled his eyes.
And then he read it.
A funny thing happened next. No, make that a fucking hilarious thing: Chuck lept from his seat with such violence, I had to look twice to make sure it was still just a desk, and not the lap of Liberace. As his empty desk spun into the next row, nearly hitting a cheerleader, the Band Fags next door presciently pumped out a cumbersome cover of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.” The Study Hall monitor shouted his name over the blaring tuba breakdown and demanded he return to his seat, but there was no stopping Chuck from storming the Library to defend his heterosexuality. But it was all in vain, as his name was clearly committed to the checkout card, in all its childish glory.
And thus, the Golden Gay God of Comedy was at last properly served. For several weeks afterward, I basked in a sunlight that rendered an otherwise unfunny, and frighteningly confusing world somehow worthy of a ridicule most amusing.
Afterword: I’ve grown up to inhabit a world that is in many ways both better and worse than the one in which I grew up. It’s a world in which same sex couples can wed (coming to a state near you!) and gay soldiers can serve their country with their heads held high (at least for now!). It’s a world in which, a gay-centric show like “Glee” not only exists, but thrives commercially, a world where an out lesbian is poised to take the daytime talk throne currently held by Oprah Winfrey. All of these things were just unthinkable back in 1985. Yet it’s also a world in which young gay people commit suicide to escape homophobic bullying. I survived 1985 thanks to One Teenager In Ten and a mean streak. The mean streak I was born with, but One Teenager In Ten came courtesy of my Iowa High School. It was just one book, one miniscule instance of forward thought and inclusion on the part of my school board, but the difference it made in my life cannot be understated. It afforded me the strength to stand up for myself and survive to adulthood. I can’t help but wonder how many lives could have been saved if that one miniscule instance of forward-thought and inclusion had mushroomed beyond that book in that tiny Iowa high school. I’m of the belief that the inclusion of the gay perspective in sex education would help eliminate the confusion and irrational fear experienced by both gay and straight students. Homophobic bullying and its tragic aftermath are the results of a fearful and narrow-minded educational culture. I truly believe the Chuck “Smith”s of the world would be better served by a book like One Teenager In Ten instead of overdue notices, which in a way, they have been receiving pretty much all along.
American educational reform, it seems, is powered by an arthritic hamster running on a primitive wheel made of third-world wicker. Thanks to the machinations of the Religious Right, it will very likely be a cold day in Satan’s codpiece before we’ll see true reform in our lifetimes. In the meantime, there is Scarleteen. Scarleteen is an online sexuality resource for young people, providing free, inclusive, comprehensive and positive sex education, information and one-on-one support to millions. Running strictly on private donations, Scarleteen does so much for so many with so little. It may have even saved a few lives along the way.
Please consider supporting this amazing resource with your donation.
In hindsight, I knew when I was around ten or eleven that I was queer: that I had and was experiencing growing sexual and romantic feelings for people of all genders, not just those of one of for those of a different sex or gender than me, feelings I'd continue to have throughout my teen years and my adult life to date. I didn't have the language for it then, though, even though there were queer adults in my orbit I could have gotten it from, adults I naturally gravitated towards without realizing a big part of why was because I saw myself in them and I really needed them. Looking back, others identified my orientation before I did: a homophobic grandparent, an uncomfortable parent as well as a comfortable and readily accepting parent, and, most important to this particular tale, a group of teenage meanies in the blessedly brief time I spent in a suburban public high school in the 80's who sometimes whispered but other times yelled, "Dyke!" or "Lesbo!" as they passed me in the halls.
In that high school, I had a tiny but great handful of friends, all of us outcasts in one way or more: because we were queer, because we were punk, because we had less money, because we were just different and either showed it outright or couldn't pass as "normal." When any of us got harassed, we often had each other to blow off steam with, to find solidarity with, but we couldn't always be there for each other, and even when we could, that didn't make the harassment and bullying any less scary nor did it sting any less.
I remember a particular bunch of girls, junior cheerleaders, especially their nasty ringleader. Jill was the one who instigated most of the harassment, who'd walk by me the most often and bark homophobic slurs, who spread the most gossip about me, even though I'd never done anything to her, or even had any interaction with her at all outside her bullying that I could recall. Heck, I never even talked back when she harassed me: usually I simply scurried into the bathroom or a classroom, flew out unto the smoking lot trying to puff out my upset, or just pretended I didn't hear her and kept on walking. When my boyfriend violently and unexpectedly committed suicide, it was probably Jill who started a very deeply painful and fast-spreading rumor that I'd shot him myself because I was really a deranged, man-hating lesbian.
I'd made myself go to school the day after he died because I was worried I wouldn't be safe for myself home alone. As awful an environment as that school had been for me, I didn't anticipate that even after something so terrible had happened to me, I couldn't count on it to be safe for just one day, or that such a terrible tragedy would be seen by anyone as an opportunity to bully me more about my orientation, of all things. The suggestion that I'd done something so terrible to someone I loved so much, and was reeling so much over the loss of, to the point of being catatonic was beyond outrage; even knowing full well it wasn't true, even knowing the likely source knew nothing about me, it made something already so traumatic so, so much more painful. Maybe to Jill and those like her, any of this seemed harmless or minor or even funny, but it wasn't any of those things for me.
Luckily, I was able to get out of that school shortly thereafter. I switched to a small performing arts school in Chicago, where there were just as many queer kids as straight kids, where queer teachers were out, where I was in a safe community where sexual orientation and all kinds of other perceived weirdness was pretty much a total non-issue. A place where everyone was generally wonderful to each other, perhaps because so many of us had been treated so badly by others in other places before. That school, for so many of us, was our safe haven, and it was very much mine.
Around a year later, I was out with a bunch of friends, including a girl I really liked, at an all-ages club on the north side of Chicago. It wasn't a queer club specifically, but it was a place more meant for misfits of every variety than for girls like Jill; a place where it was also safe to be queer and out. I felt able to be who I was there, including being the girl who really liked this other girl and wanted to keep my lips attached to her face as much as was humanly possible.
So, when I was inside the club making out with my I-so-hope-she-becomes-my-girlfriend and I heard someone behind us squeal, "Oh my GAWD, it's that fucking dyke! I knew it! DYKE!" I was pretty surprised. When I turned around to see that it was Jill and her mall-haired gaggle of flying monkeys, I was even more surprised.
But perhaps the most surprising thing of all was that what she said didn't hurt, not even a little. It wasn't scary. It didn't make me feel small.
It was pathetic, really. It felt like merely a statement of fact, said in such a way that made her look like an idiot, and in a place where the only person who got outed was her: as a bully and a jerk. She was trying to announce to the world I was queer, which seemed a mighty silly thing to do when no one could announce it more than I already had with my lips and hands all over another girl in a public place. Not only did I not care if everyone in the club knew, I knew that what she'd telegraphed most was not how I didn't belong, but how she didn't; not how I wasn't okay, but how she wasn't; not how outnumbered I was, but how outnumbered she was. I wasn't in her space anymore: she was in mine. She hadn't made me unsafe or unwelcome: the only person she made unsafe and unwelcome in that moment and place was herself, made so by herself. I didn't feel embarrassed myself; even despite strongly disliking her, for a nanosecond, I actually felt embarrassed for her.
I grinned. My girlfriend and our friends grinned and then we just laughed. I gave Jill a thumbs up, and then the girl I was with decided she'd had enough of the unwanted interruption and pulled me right back to what we were previously doing, with Jill's continued whine of dykey-dyke-dyke waning like a car running out of gas and feeling more like a cheer for my home team than a jeer. Getting very well kissed while someone (someone who is NOT being kissed, thankyouverymuch) weakly calls you a dyke, The Smiths blaring in the background so you're thinking that in that moment, maybe even Morrissey is happy for once? It really takes the edge off.
It took a while for things to get better for me in a bigger way, but that was the first moment where I remember strongly and firmly feeling that it was going to get better, that it already had, and that it would keep getting better; that people like Jill were going to have less and less impact on and power over me and everyone else as time went on. You know, just writing about all of that brought sharply back how much it hurt: it's gotten better enough for me since then that without dredging it all up again, I earnestly forgot just how very painful it was. It getting better can not only make your present life a lot better, it can also make the times it wasn't better hurt a lot less and have a lot less impact. It gets harder to remember the bad stuff when the better stuff has been so great. And once it has gotten better, even when the jeers or the harassment or the bizarre accusations still happen, it gets a lot easier to brush off and a lot harder to let it get you down.
Admittedly, when it came to my orientation (as opposed to other areas of my life and person), I didn't have it as bad as some other kids I knew, certainly not as bad as most queer people in the many generations before me, and not as bad as plenty of young people today still have it. Not everyone has queer friends or friends at all, not everyone lives in or very near an urban area, not everyone is afforded an opportunity to find a school like I did, not everyone has at least one supportive parent, not everyone even knows one other queer person, and not everyone has even one place they can make out with -- or even hang out with -- someone of the same-sex or a similar-gender and feel or earnestly be safe.
It turns out that Dan Savage and I grew up in and around the same neighborhoods (and now live in the same far-flung state, how weird is that?). Dan, like I did, found that it got a lot better, and Dan, syndicated sex columnist and the editorial director of The Stranger, just started a new project, It Gets Better, to help support young people in knowing that it can get better, and for so many of us, has gotten better, something it can be so hard to know or believe sometimes. Like Dan, I really feel confident saying that for however bad it is now, the chances are extraordinarily good that it will get better.
Billy Lucas was just 15 when he hanged himself in a barn on his grandmother's property. He reportedly endured intense bullying at the hands of his classmates—classmates who called him a fag and told him to kill himself. His mother found his body....
I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.
But gay adults aren't allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don't bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.
Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don't have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.
If you haven't taken a look at the videos in the project, you really should, whatever your age or orientation. They're powerful, positive and full of love, hope and all the other good stuff everyone needs. If you are queer and young, know that a lot of those powerful-sounding, happy people looked and felt a whole lot like you do once, and as much as it hurt like hell to get through it, they did it, and they want to do what they can to help you get through it, too. Dan took the time to answer some of my questions about the project this morning, and here's what he had to say:
Heather: In your own life, before it really did start to get better, did you have any cues or glimpses that it might get better you didn't recognize at the time?
Dan: It turns out there were gay people in family's orbit—priests, mostly, and a couple of waiters (my mom and dad ran a restaurant for a while)—but they weren't open about it front of us, "the children," because... well, you had to be discreet, right? Because then they would've been shoving it down our throats, etc., etc. And my parents believed, at the time, that they could protect us from becoming gay—me, the momma's boy, in particular—by keeping information about gay people, and gay role models, away from us. They were, as it turns out, pretty spectacularly wrong, huh?
The first clues I got that it wouldn't be so bad came when I was old enough to explore the city on my own. I grew up in Chicago and by the time I was 15, in 1979, I was riding my bike through the gay neighborhood, and I could see gay men and women. But this, of course, was back when gay neighborhoods were still pretty marginal, and most people who were gay were still closeted. So I wasn't seeing a representative sample of gay men and lesbians. I was seeing guys with huge mustaches on their way to the baths. And that wasn't what I wanted for myself. I remember thinking, "But this is all I can have," and being depressed.
Heather: I know I deeply benefitted by changing my community and my school, something I was lucky enough to be able to do. But I also was able to recognize that the problem WAS my community and my school, and not me or my orientation, something not everyone can recognize, especially without family or other supportive people around who are accepting of every orientation and sexual identity. For those who have really internalized every negative message around them, for whom positive messages don't seem real or are hard to hear, what can you offer?
Dan: Look around, look at the people who disprove the lies that you've internalized. Either they're crazy — all those openly gay, happy, successful people out there — or the people who told you being gay is a sin are crazy.
You know, I've always said that what saved was a little voice inside myself that kept saying, "You're fine, Dan, everybody else is fucked in their fucking heads." I don't know where that voice came from. Maybe my mom, maybe my dad, maybe even my Catholic education. I kept saying to myself, "Being gay hurts no one, so it can't be wrong. I don't want to kiss boys who don't want me to kiss them, so where is the harm in this? How can it be evil?"
Heather: Of the videos done for the project so far, which are your favorites?
Dan: Oh, my god. The one with the two guys who realize they're making a video for 15 year old boys and they need to think about what interests them. And suddenly there are really hot gay boys in the room dancing around in their underwear. The one made in SF with crowds of people chanting "IT GETS BETTER!" The one with a gay couple with a daughter named DJ. My son is named DJ. The rural lesbian farmer. The gay Muslim teenager. And on and on.
Heather: You're a writer, so video isn't usually the way you do your thing. Is there a reason you picked video as the medium for this project?
Dan: Yes, because I wanted to show them our lives. And kids use YouTube and understand social media. I wanted adults to talk to them about their lives, to share pictures, to look into their eyes and say, "It gets better."
Heather: I do agree that it usually does get better over time, often a lot better. But in the meantime, what do you suggest for young people trying to cope with the fact that it's not better yet, or where it feels like it's going to take an awfully long time for things to get better, or like they never might?
Dan: You know, if you're in an impossible situation—violently homophobic parents, small town, anti-gay peers — don't kick down the closet door and wind up on the streets. Wait it out. Find the stuff you enjoy, for me it was reading and theater, and pursue that, your interests, while your straight peers are pursuing each other. Instead of bemoaning what your life is like at 15, start laying the groundwork for the life you could have just a few years later at 18.
Leave the house, get involved with something, anything, that you find rewarding. It might be working in a foodbank. A lot of gay kids excel at non-team sports: biking, tennis, swimming. Whatever it is, go and do that. You'll be healthier for it and you just might meet some other gay kids.
Heather: How can young people act in their own interest to MAKE it better, both queer young people, but also young, straight allies? What about older LGBTQ people for whom it is now better: how can all of us best help young people for whom it's not better yet?
Dan: If you're going to a public school, form a GSA. If you're discriminated against, reach out to the ACLU for help. They do amazing work with and on behalf of LGBT teenagers. You have rights. Look around your school for straight allies and friends. If there isn't a community for you at your school, try to make one. If your school environment is so hostile that you can't make one, go find one outside of school.
And if you're being bullied at school and at home and at church, and in despair, reach out to the Trevor Project for help and support. And remember: it ends. School ends. It gets better.
You can also reach out to the people who are posting videos at the It Gets Better Project. If you post a comment to a video, it goes right to the person who posted it. That's one of the really amazing things about IGBP. Mormon teenagers can reach out to the gay Mormon adults whose videos they've watched online, gay Muslim teenagers can reach out to the Muslim gay adults, young trans kids can reach out to the trans adults, and on and on. It's linking people up, giving them help in addition to hope.
Heather: What can we tell schools, specifically, about making it better now? So many schools still are not safe spaces and still outright refuse to be safe spaces, not just peers, but administrations, too.
Dan: Make it better or we're going to sue your asses and it's going to cost you money. Really, that's what it's going to take.
Heather: Which is something young people can do: again, for students in the United States, that's the right time to contact your local ACLU branch and they will help. For students internationally, Amnesty International is a good place to start.
How do you feel about the fact that one way for queer young people to protect themselves is simply not to come out? Do you think the downsides of staying in the closet are worth the protection it can offer?
Dan: I think it's really irresponsible to tell all queer kids to come out without first advising them to take a long, hard, cold look at their particular circumstances. If a 14 year comes out because he's been told that he must, or should, or that's how it gets better, and is thrown out of the house, what then?
Some kids are just not in situations where they can come out. Most of the kids who are being bullied to death were the ones who couldn't hide. I'm sure there are other gay kids in those schools, gay kids who can pass for straight. Would we advise them to come out?
Heather: Working with young people internationally, I have to know that there are many for whom it won't actually get better unless they emigrate elsewhere or completely divorce themselves from their families and cultures, something that's a lot easier for people of privilege to do than for those without. I don't know about you, but I always struggle to know how to best support young people in whole countries or cultures in which the treatment they get in high school really is indicative of -- if not more benign than -- the treatment they'll get after high school. Obviously, just saying, "You need to move far, far away," is only so helpful. Any ideas? (Besides an underground railroad, which I think about every day, but can't visualize how we'd do it yet. Unless you have ideas about how to make that happen.)
Dan: We've seen some gay and lesbian people from repressive societies successfully claim asylum in countries that recognize the humanity, if not the full civil equality, of LGBT persons. My heart aches for LGBT kids condemned to grow up in Iran or Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately the best advice — even though it's not always realistic — is to get out. Flee to a country like the UK or the US or Canada, come out, and file for asylum.
Check out the project. Make your own video if you can, or make your very own project to be supportive: this doesn't just have to come from adults, after all, and hopefully we don't have to tell you about the power a peer talking to another peer can have, something often even more powerful than what older adults can offer.
If you've been at Scarleteen before, you've already identified one safe space for you online. If you're new to Scarleteen, welcome in! Know that this is a safe space for you and we'll always be committed to keeping it that way. Most of our staff and volunteers are queer ourselves, and our straight staff and volunteers are fantastic, supportive allies, as are many young adult users and members of our community. We're not only committed to helping things get better for you and helping you make them better as much as you can, but to listening to you, holding your stories, and giving you whatever support you want that we can give while it's still not better at all. But this isn't the only safe space, nor the only resource available to queer youth. Want some more?
Online, you can check out:
There are some great hotlines that you can use when you need to talk to someone:
Want some books to help you through it? See if you can't find a copy of:
Time for another installment of Building Bridges, where we facilitate, then publish a conversation between two people in different life stages who have something with gender, sexuality and/or relationships in common. This time, our intergenerational pair is two women who have had their sexual orientation and identity shift for them during the course of their lives.
Amy, 24: I came out as a lesbian at 14 and was, as I call it, "a Professional Gay" for a long time. I interned for activist organizations, ran the GSA at my high school, got a scholarship from a local LGBT organization for my activism and went on to a women's college where I eventually became co-chair of the LGBT organization on campus. I was, as a friend once said "her definition of gay."
Looking back, I struggled with liking guys for a long time, which sounds so backwards in the way that people think of sexual orientation transitions. I felt a strong connection and loyalty to the LGBT community that I basically grew up in and was afraid that by liking guys I was betraying them. Eventually I started to wonder - if I was okay with dating people who identified as male, why was I not okay with all people who identified as male? I started "experimenting" with people-with-penises when I was 21 and started actively dating them when I graduated college at 22. I'm currently involved with a person-with-a-penis and we've been dating for almost a year now.
Candice, 39: I have been in a continuous committed relationship with the same (cis)man since I was 16. We've been legally married for something like 15 years (it all runs together at this point) and have an 8 year old son. Despite my first sexual experiences being with girls and the crushes I had on female friends, until I was in my early 20s I very strongly identified as straight. I think that the when & where of my childhood had a lot to do with that. Growing up in the 70s and 80s in a very Baptist city in the deep south meant that until I was in high school, I honestly wasn't even aware that people had anything other than hetero relationships. Even when I learned about homosexuality, I never considered identifying as gay, partly because I was strongly attracted to boys but also because to do so wouldn't have been safe, socially or physically. The only openly gay student at my high school was beaten up and bullied out of the school - talk about a powerful lesson in staying silent.
My sophomore year in college I started hanging out with a group of people that included most of the non-hetero students at the school. They were generally considered the "freaks" on campus, but they felt like home to me. For the first time I felt able to think of myself as something other than straight but I wasn't sure what exactly I WAS. I loved my boyfriend, I was attracted to girls...I started thinking I was bisexual because that seemed to fit best. Unfortunately, the lesbians I knew (and the gay men, to a lesser extent) were painfully scornful of bisexuality and although I privately identified as bi I was publicly silent on my exact orientation and simply presented myself as being in a relationship with a man.
Who I'm attracted to has changed several times in my adult life...I've had times where I was intensely interested in women and not at all in men (THAT makes a committed relationship with a man a challenge, let me tell you!) and times when I've been very into men and not particularly noticed women. My relationship with my husband has both affected and been affected by this in complicated ways. Currently, I am very much enjoying sex with a man while also "not-dating" a woman I consider my "not-girlfriend" and being very frustrated by the sex we are not having. (And yes, my husband knows this. Like I said, it gets complicated). At this point in my life I'm most comfortable identifying as queer - it's the only orientation that seems to offer enough room for the different ways I feel at different times and it has less personal baggage for me than "bisexual".
Amy: My social group is very hmm "non traditional" (aka not any different from anyone else, just more open about it) in regards to sexuality - kinky people, swingers, polyamorous, queer... the kind of people who go to sex education events for fun and lust a little after Tristan Taormino (whose book, Opening Up, is a fantastic one on open relationships. Minus the attempt at history in the introduction. My background's in history and that intro made me want to scream for proper citations.) I'm also in a non-monogamous relationship, but I know from talking to married folk that nonmonogamy is a different ball game when marriage and children are involved.
You noted your not-girlfriend and ongoing attractions outside of your marriage. Have you and your husband considered any of the various forms of non-monogamy?
Candice: Yes, absolutely. I'd say that at this point, we are tentatively poly...it is a long, tricky process renegotiating some of the most basic terms of such a long relationship. I have a much easier time with the idea of nonmonogamy, perhaps because there is no way that any one person can be both male & female & satisfy everything I want. I've also never thought that sex and love were necessarily always bound together...that idea never made sense to me. My husband is naturally monogamous so it's been a real challenge for him. I am incredibly grateful that he is willing to be flexible and work towards ways for both of us to have our needs met.
The not-girlfriend bit is because, although they are a poly couple, her husband isn't comfortable with her starting another relationship right now. Oh, ironic Universe, I shake my fist at you!
I wonder how it feels for you, Amy, to have access now to "heterosexual privilege." I know there are many times when it makes life less superficially complicated for me, even when I feel guilty about sliding through peoples' perceptions because of it. Does it make you mad when that happens? Does it sometimes feel like a relief (even if you don't think it should)? How has having a male partner affected how you move through everyday life?
Amy: On my OkCupid profile, one of the things I note is that I spent a good chunk of my life immersed in the queer community. That's part of my history and it's shaped how I approach relationships and life in general. I do not think I could date someone who did not have some form of "alternative sexuality literacy." Male, female or somewhere in between, they need to have had some interaction with the queer community and they need to be comfortable with their sexuality.
In my daily life, heterosexual privilege doesn't really come up - as noted, I tend to surround myself with people where sexuality is a very fluid thing and more tied up with actions than identities. I have noticed that because I no longer actively present as a soft-butch lesbian and because I am presenting as more femme, that the way other people interact with me - from bartenders to people at happy hours to men who hold the doors for me outside of office buildings - is different. Also, I haven't been sir'd in years. But that's more of a presenting thing than a who I'm dating thing. (I think I can provide an entertaining contrast picture somewhere, along with Venn diagrams. THERE COULD BE A FLASH PRESENTATION... only I'm not that motivated).
However, with family, I have embraced the heterosexual privilege of being open about my love life. My grandparents, who never met any of my girlfriends, will be meeting my boyfriend this fall. Being able to talk casually about someone who is such a large part of my life without having to filter them out or call them "my friend" is such a relief. It doesn't make me angry, it just makes me sad.
Do you think that you would have been out as bisexual if the members of the queer community you were exposed to had been more accepting of bisexuals?
Candice: I've thought about this question a LOT. I wish that I could say "Well, of COURSE," because that is who I want to have been. The honest answer, which I like a lot less, is "probably not."
I was painfully uncomfortable with myself on so many fronts back then...I don't think I could have overcome my own fear of being identified as "wrong" or "different" and been open about my sexuality. That said, I think that I would probably have worked through my issues with sexuality a lot faster if I'd been in a more supportive and accepting community. As it was, the community I was in certainly reinforced my belief that it was not safe to fully express who I was.
The first question I had reading your introduction post was how the LGBT community you were originally a part of reacted to you coming out as bisexual. You said that you were afraid that you would be betraying them by dating guys...did they see it that way as well, or was that more your own imagining?
Amy: I think that a lot of it was my own imagining, but it wasn't unjustified imagining. The group of lesbians that I used to hang out with in college and I have more or less fallen out of friendship - whether that's because of the natural order of growing up or because we didn't have anything in common besides liking women, I don't know.
I think I've actually had more trouble with the LGBT community about being bisexual and poly. I think that if I was bisexual but dating a woman, I'd still feel more... accepted, than the fact that I'm about to hit the year mark with a man and still open to dating women.
One of the largest fights I've ever gotten into (and this is including the dinner time arguments with my father, who thinks Rush Limbaugh is a liberal) was with a lesbian who informed me that she didn't think poly people should raise children. Her arguments were such that you could take out "poly" and replace it with "lesbian" and it would be the exact damned argument that is made against gay people raising children. The hypocrisy of her (and two other lesbians that chimed in) made me unspeakably angry.
How has growing up in a conservative Christian environment influenced your own relationship with religion?
Candice: My own family is very Christian (I swear every other relative I have is a minister) but also quite liberal so even though I was surrounded by churches that condemned anyone different, I was raised in Christianity that was loving and tolerant, if not always affirming. Although I'm not a Christian myself, I have great respect for the teachings of Christ and for the people who follow and live his teachings.
Which isn't to say that I don't carry scars from and bitterness towards the many many people who call themselves "Christian" but practice intolerance and hatred. I choose to think that most do so out of ignorance and indoctrination rather than informed choice (that's cheerier than thinking that so many people are just hateful), but I still avoid them. I try hard not to pre-judge people, but anyone calling themselves a Christian has some proving to do before I really trust them.
One of the things that is most difficult for me right now as I try to forge more connections in my local queer community is how many people make assumptions about my sexuality based solely on the fact that I am holding a man's hand or (more rarely, but it happens) the fact that I am fairly femme and wearing very traditional engagement & wedding rings. I often feel that if I were alone, or with female friends, or if I were more butch, I might be treated more as "one of us" from the outset, rather than having to explicitly say "I'm-married-to-a-man-but-that-doesn't-mean-I'm-straight" (it's kind of a one breath phrase for me now).
Do you find yourself having to work a little harder to be accepted as a part of the community now that you are partnered with a person-with-a-penis?
Amy: To be honest, I haven't been as active with the mainstream LGBT community so I can't really say that I have to work harder. The more general sex-positive community has been where I've focused things of late - and there's significant overlap with the queer community and the sex positive community. But because I'm not coming at it from a different angle I think that the queer community I interact with has different expectations of me which makes it so much easier for me to be partnered with a person-with-a-penis.
I had a hard time coming to terms with being bisexual - from the gays and lesbians who said that bisexuals were cheating, as it were - they they had it easy - to my own mother who seemed to be (relatively) okay with me being a lesbian but several times said things about bisexuals like, "Why can't they just choose?!"
On a different note, where'd you go to college? Do you think that if you had gone to a different college your sexuality would have been influenced? I went to a small Southern women's college - Hollins University in Roanoke, VA - that was a little bubble of liberal in a large sea of red. Having been out as a lesbian during the application process, I would not have gone to a particularly conservative institution, but I wonder sometimes if I would have ended up differently if I hadn't attended a liberal women's college.
Candice: I went to Transylvania University in Kentucky. It's a great school, academically, and I had an scholarship I couldn't say no to. When I was there, the student body was overwhelmingly white and upper/upper-middle class; over 80% of students pledged greek. A lot of my experiences there were great (I don't want to sound like I'm dissing the school) but as a whole it wasn't very tolerant of diversity.
I feel certain that a different school would have influenced my sexuality, or at least my expression of it. I desperately wanted to go to Oberlin University, which is radically liberal, and I have no doubt that had been able to afford it my experience would have been very different, if only because there would have been more than 10 openly queer people on campus.
I love the phrase "Professional Gay!" I know exactly what you mean by that. I'm wondering how you felt your role changed when you changed how you identified yourself. Did your focus in the various activist organizations change (i.e. did bi issues become more apparent or important to you once you identified as bi)? I imagine that if you saw yourself as "Professional Gay" you might have felt a bit lost when you let go of identifying as gay...did you? Or did you feel like letting that identity go freed you up to explore other ways of being in and presenting to the world?
Amy: I think that letting go of that identity freed me up to be more multi-faceted in how I present myself to the world. As I noted, I'm still active with the "sex positive" community (I do things like go to feminist conferences called Sex 2.0, which is an unconference in its third year that covers social media, feminism, and sex positive stuff), though I'm not really an activist any more. When I say that I mean... I am not in my face about it anymore. I just am who I am and I'm open about it, which is often its own form of activism because that's periodically a very difficult thing to do. Trying to actively change people's minds is too exhausting and generally ineffective. I used to say when I was a leader in the LGBT organization that the most effective form of activism that you can do is to be out and honest about yourself, whomever that is. The more people who know that you're queer [or whatever] the more they make the connection between "this cool person I know who happens to be queer" and LGBT/queer rights. It personalizes the issue for them, so it's more "If I vote against LGBT rights, that means that my friend Susie can't marry her partner of ten years, Mary" and less of an abstract "other."
Anyway, what I am saying is that I didn't lose anything. I was scared to let go of that identity, but I think that my personal activism just shifted a bit and I got to become a more interesting human being as a result. Because people who are Just Gay or Just Mormon or Just Goth or Just [insert any identity] are kind of boring.
As a queer parent in a heterosexual(ish) relationship, how do you think you'll handle your son's sexuality when he gets older?
Candice: My son and I already have amazingly open discussions about lots of aspects of sexuality. My mother and I still can't talk about sex, and I was determined not to repeat that dynamic with him, so I've talked to him about bodies & sex (at an age-appropriate level, of course) from the beginning. It seems perfectly logical to him that some people like the opposite sex and some like the same and he's very indignant that gay marriage isn't legal (it's adorable to hear him rant about it). He knows that he can ask me anything, and so far is comfortable doing so.
As for my own sexuality, it hasn't come up yet, but I'm sure that at some point it will. I doubt he will explicitly ask me, so sometime in the next couple of years I'll drop it into a conversation. I'm sure he'll have some questions about how it fits into my relationship with his dad, and I'll explain as far as I think is appropriate. I'm a little nervous about coming out to him but honestly I don't think it will be that big a deal to him.
We hear a lot about generational divides. What we hear less about are the bridges: how people of different generations can and do connect; how we can support and help one another and each offer the other things of great value. Just as often as a given experience, or even life as a whole, is different for people of one generation and those of another, there are also some things that are or have been the same, and all have our own wisdom to share, whatever our age may be.
People of different generations are not incapable of connecting or understanding each other, despite the way so much media can often make it sound that way, or the despite day-to-day frustrations and challenges we have probably all experienced with one another when trying to connect. To find out more about the series, or to volunteer to pair up, click here. To see other pieces in the series, click here.
Today we have one more another installment of our first-person profiles of queer people of color. If you're queer and of color, we're hoping this series can illuminate some of your own diversity, allow you to feel less isolated and know you're not alone. Queer youth (and queer people on the whole) are often isolated. That isolation hurts and can and does do very real damage. LGB young people who are also oppressed, marginalized and rendered doubly invisible because of race tend to face even greater challenges and isolation.
No matter who you are or what your deal is, we think you'll find these profiles challenge many perceptions and may make you reconsider or refine ideas or questions about orientation and race. It can also help you and others grow your compassion and your care, better understanding that every kind of marginalization and oppression both does very real harm and always has the capacity to do so, especially if it goes unseen and unheard.
Color/race you are/identify with: South Asian
When did you realize you were gay, lesbian or bisexual? I was at university, aged around 21. I developed a huge crush on one of my straight female friends. All of my friends, except one, seemed outwardly straight at the time. I think I'd been questioning my sexuality since I was around 13. I've only had one brief sexual experience before and this was with another girl, when we were going through puberty. Ever since then, I had some inkling that I liked girls and their bodies.
How did you feel about that realization? It was very scary and isolating. I didn't tell anyone initially. Then I started secretly going along to a 'Rainbow Youth' group (after walking past the door five times, finding it too hard to go inside). I attended on and off for 2 years but I didn't tell anyone there how hard it was for me to come every week and I didn't cry. I just tried to fit in. It was hard because I wasn't interested in the drinking and bar scene. Because of this, combined with study and family pressures, I began to feel overwhelmed, depressed and alone. I called the Gay helpline one day and spoke to a young Indian man. Among other things, he told me that he thought he could never come out to his parents. I found this even more depressing.
Have you been able to come out? One day, while at university, I went to talk to my professor in charge of student welfare as I needed some stress leave and wasn't coping. As I sat there crying and talking about feeling lonely and how I hadn't dated anyone before, he seemed to read between the lines and asked me if I could be gay. After talking to that first person, it became easier to tell others. It's been a very slow process for me though. I told my GP and my counsellor first. I told one of my South Asian friends; she was really caring and supportive about it. Six months later, I told another two friends. A year later, another two friends. To my extended family, most of my friends, the South Asian community where I live and to my work colleagues, I remain in the closet.
How supported do you feel by your own family and your community of color? Although I think of myself as South Asian, I was born overseas and have always lived in a Western country. Our family still carries many of our traditional values from back home and we have a large community here. I came out to my parents around 3 years after having my own realizations. The impetus for this was that they had started to look for marriage partners for me. I dated one man that they introduced me to for a few months. At the same time, I was secretly trying out different queer groups and it was a really confusing time. I knew that I had to tell them. That conversation and the conversations that followed were so tough. Remembering them still upsets me and that first day, I almost had a car accident afterwards. My mother thought I had thrown out all of my values and had no concern for us as a family. My dad thought I was unnatural and that I had no concern for my mother's health. You see, my mother told me that I had made her suicidal and that she must have burned someone in a past life to deserve a daughter like me. It was a huge guilt trip which effectively silenced me. One of the most hurtful parts was telling me not to associate with my South Asian female friends and not to have too much contact with my nieces and young cousins, not to stay at their houses overnight. My parents were afraid I'd pass on my lesbian perversions to them. Those kind of responses amplified the shame I already felt inside. Even now (2 years later), if I come out to someone, I have the urge to add "I'm lesbian......but, I'm still a good person, please keep me in your life!". Part of me feels like I need to be an 'extra good' daughter to make up for the gayness. Our current situation is that they are aware of my feelings but we don't talk about it at all. I also try to be as discrete as I can about discussing with other family members or people who know my parents so as not to make it awkward for them.
It's hard because although they don't support this part of me, my family has been so loving and supported me immensely in other areas of my life. I owe much of my success to them. I will always be grateful to my parents and I want to be here to support them as they age. I know that they only want me to be happy. I guess they feel that getting married to a nice South Asian man and having children is the only acceptable route to that happiness. Unfortunately, they are still looking for potential marriage partners for me.
My community would not be supportive of my coming out and I do not feel safe to do so. I expect that if my sexual orientation becomes widely known, I and perhaps even my family will become distanced from the community. I will not be welcome in their homes. I know one other gay man in our community and I hate how people denigrate and shame him behind his back. Of course, another barrier is my own internalized homophobia. Sometimes my own shame isolates me from the community and makes me feel like I can't face them as an unmarried woman. Although they would not support me as my authentic self, it is still scary to think about the possibility of losing them. If I were still living in the country my parents came from, I am aware my situation could be much worse.
I belong to one community group working in the area of domestic violence prevention and intervention among ethnic minority women. On my first day, I remember testing the waters, asking about whether they offered specific support for women belonging to sexual minorities. I'll never forget how kind that Indian lady was. She asked me whether I was enquiring for myself and when I affirmed I was, she smiled and told me that they had had many lesbian staff members and clients and that I was very welcome there. Just that sentence made a world of difference to me.
How about by the queer community? ell, to an extent I have felt supported. The problem is that the queer community where I live is predominantly white, and tend not have familiarity with issues such as my marriage predicament. Sometimes I do feel pressure from the queer community to come out, as if that will be the solution to all of my problems. I do have some wonderful white gay and lesbian friends though who make an effort to listen and understand. One woman in particular is my mother's age and her advice and sharing of her life experience has really helped me through the hard times. Also when I watch her with her partner and her kids, I feel optimistic that maybe that kind of future is also possible for me. I love meeting other queer people of colour, particularly from the South Asian community, but I don't often get this opportunity.
How has managing your romantic/sexual relationships gone? In what, if any, ways do you feel being a GLB person of color has impacted your relationships? I haven't had any romantic relationships outside of the dates with South Asian men that my parents have set up for me. In an ideal world without prejudice or discrimination, I dream of having a long term relationship with another South Asian woman who speaks my mother tongue and shares my religion (Buddhism). I don't know if that's possible and it doesn't leave alot of potential partners to choose from. Sexually, I've been quite inhibited in the past and and I struggle with feeling shame about my desires but I'm working on that. I grew up with the values that I needed to be a virgin until marriage. Although I'm an adult now it's still hard to reconcile that with my sexual orientation.
What do you feel are particular challenges for gays, lesbians and bisexuals of color? Where would I even start to talk about this? I can point you to a resource that I particularly like and can relate to- "Brown Like Me is a short documentary brought to you by the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention (ASAAP)s Queer South Asian Youth (Q-SAY) project. This short film captures the experiences of 6 queer-identified South Asian youth living in the Greater Toronto Area who speak candidly about identity labels, homophobia, coming out, pride, resiliency, and family."
We're all so different from each other and I feel I can only speak for myself. For me, the biggest challenge is avoiding isolation and othering within various communities. Finding a place where I am understood and emotionally safe. Meeting other queer people of colour. Meeting potential partners. Thinking about childbearing outside of a heterosexual model. Dealing with my own internalized prejudices. Fighting stereotypes. Wow, I find myself dealing with stereotypes regarding my age and appearance, my gender, my ethnicity, my immigration status, my sexual orientation..sometimes all within the same day. That can be really tiring! It has also made me strong though.
How do you feel others can help with those challenges? Don't assume. Don't assume that because I'm brown, I'm straight. Don't assume that because I'm brown, I don't speak English or that I'm a refugee. Don't assume that because I identify as gay, I am on my way out or that I won't get married to a man. If you're not sure who I am and what I stand for, please ask. Appreciate and learn about diversity in all its forms, whether it's about different cultures or about sexuality and gender. Be inclusive; don't make me feel alone.
If you're white and I'm telling you about my family and community, I'm taking a big risk and trusting you. If you're brown and I'm coming out to you, same deal. Please don't call my culture sexist or uneducated, don't make jokes about "arranged marriages" and don't deny my orientation or demand that I come out to the world; instead, ask me about my experience and how you can support me. Be an ally whenever you can. When you hear homophobic or racist comments, you need to stand up for us. Sometimes it's hard for us to speak up for ourselves and we need you to be our voice too. Be aware that we are here. Don't ever tell me that there are no queer people at your school or in your community or in your country! We may not always feel safe to be out, but we are everywhere. In return, we have so much to offer. We understand acutely what it is to be part of multiple minorities.
Does one kind of bias you face -- racism vs. homo/biphobia -- feel larger, more oppressive than the other? HAll bias can be large and oppressive, but in my life, I've been lucky not to face too much racism. At the moment, homophobia, both external and internal, feels more oppressive. (I also agree with Ellaris' wise answer to this one).
What do you feel like GLB people who are not of color don't get about the differences being GLB of color? What about hetero white people: what do they miss? There's no simple answer. Just that my experience of sexuality and coming out can't be equated to anyone else's, whether they are white or of colour. The more that we ask questions of each other and make an effort to understand our mutual differences with respect, the easier it will be.
Want to be part of this series and share your experiences and ideas about being gay, lesbian or bisexual and of color? We'd love to include you and get your voice out there. Drop us an email and we'll send you the questions!
Here's another installment of our first-person profiles of queer people of color. If you're queer and of color, we're hoping this series can illuminate some of your own diversity, allow you to feel less isolated and know you're not alone. Queer youth (and queer people on the whole) are often isolated. That isolation hurts and can and does do very real damage. LGB young people who are also oppressed, marginalized and rendered doubly invisible because of race tend to face even greater challenges and isolation.
No matter who you are or what your deal is, we think you'll find these profiles challenge many perceptions and may make you reconsider or refine ideas or questions about orientation and race. It can also help you and others grow your compassion and your care, better understanding that every kind of marginalization and oppression both does very real harm and always has the capacity to do so, especially if it goes unseen and unheard.
Color/race you are/identify with: Black
When did you realize you were gay, lesbian or bisexual? I was 15.
How did you feel about that realization? I, personally, felt fine about the realization. I hadn't dated any male or female at the time yet and knew that I didn't have to in order to be queer.
Have you been able to come out? I came out willingly to my school friends, and to my older sister shortly after I realized I was queer. I was only bullied very little at my predominantly white high school, partly because the other students were terrified of me.
I knew my own parents were no good to come out to. My mother is super-religious, and my step-dad has mental-health issues that make him speaking with him about any topic difficult, if not impossible. However, I was outed to my mother by a co-worker of hers a few years ago. I confirmed her questions about it and we haven't spoken about it since.
How supported do you feel by your own family and your community of color? My family is supportive of my life, as long as they get to ignore the queer part. I know they can't handle it so I don't talk about it with them. As for my community of colour, the only one I've ever really been a part of is my mom's church family, and I know they wouldn't be able to handle it either.
How about by the queer community? As a bisexual, I can't say I feel particularly supported by the queer community.
How has managing your romantic/sexual relationships gone? In what, if any, ways do you feel being a GLB person of color has impacted your relationships? It hasn't, really. I think my poor record with relationships is more just a personal thing.
What do you feel are particular challenges for gays, lesbians and bisexuals of color? Many of us are from very religious backgrounds. They do not accept us, and are very slow to change. They will fight us until they die, so I feel that our best bet is just to let a couple of generations pass, unfortunately.
How do you feel others can help with those challenges? I have a pretty pessimistic view of this particular challenge. Many of us are forced to choose between being honest with our families, or having families.
Does one kind of bias you face -- racism vs. homo/biphobia -- feel larger, more oppressive than the other? Homophobia is more oppressive to me because it separates me from my own family. After all, they are the same colour as I am.
What do you feel like GLB people who are not of color don't get about the differences being GLB of color? What about hetero white people: what do they miss? I think queer white people sometimes don't appreciate the privilege of family acceptance. Of course, I know that not all white queers enjoy that privilege, but as far as I know it seems almost non-existent among black communities.
Want to be part of this series and share your experiences and ideas about being gay, lesbian or bisexual and of color? We'd love to include you and get your voice out there. Drop us an email and we'll send you the questions!
Time for another installment of our first-person profiles of queer people of color. This one is from someone older than the age group we serve at Scarleteen, but who came into hir sexual identity at 20. I think it's valuable to have a look at someone with more years to process all of these issues than our readers have usually had.
Again, even if you're not of color and queer, not LGB or not of color, we think it's vital to cultivate an awareness of what it means to be not just a member of one of those groups, but of both. If you are queer and of color, what we're hoping this new series can do is help illuminate some of your own diversity, allow you to feel less isolated and know you're not alone. Queer youth (and queer people on the whole) are often isolated. That isolation hurts and can and does do very real damage. LGB young people who are also oppressed, marginalized and rendered doubly invisible because of race tend to face even greater challenges and isolation.
No matter who you are or what your deal is, we think you'll find these profiles challenge many perceptions and may make you reconsider or refine ideas or questions about orientation and race. It can also help you and others grow your compassion and your care, better understanding that every kind of marginalization and oppression both does very real harm and always has the capacity to do so, especially if it goes unseen and unheard.
Color/race you are/identify with Multiracial, South Asian/white
When did you realize you were gay, lesbian or bisexual? Age 20
How did you feel about that realization? Just fine. It was almost a nonissue. The only people I didn't tell (for the first seven years) were my parents.
Have you been able to come out? Yes. With my parents it was tricky, but with everyone else it was easy. I was raised Unitarian Universalist, so I was lucky to be operating without a lot of religious and cultural baggage. My friends were more queer than straight; my college was offering queer studies classes. I'd been an out-and-proud ally for years, so it was a smooth transition. Literally, I woke up one morning and thought, "Oh look, I AM actually attracted to women. Cool." I never worried about telling my friends, or even my then-boyfriend. Everyone took it in stride.
How supported do you feel by your own family and your community of color? My own family tries. Really they do. I don't think the level of cluelessness is off the charts, but it's not much more than average, either. My community of color? I live in the rural northeast. Being queer and South Asian isn't easy; being queer and mixed is harder,because any community can put it down to the OTHER identity group. That said, my Indian grandmother has been incredibly supportive, and no one has written me hate mail or disowned me. I'm very grateful for the internet, and for the time I've spent in larger cities. Both give me a sense that there's someplace I might sort of fit in. However, I'm acculturated white and I don't speak any language other than English, so fitting into South Asian communities has always been tenuous for me. Mixed communities of color are easier because the standards of cultural inclusion are broader. I definitely feel more brown than white, but I'm most at home in multicultural groupings. The experience of being mixed is pretty specific. I'm often not x enough: not Indian enough, not brown enough, not queer enough. That's another layer of struggle.
How about by the queer community? It's way easier, if you're talking about white queer community. There is some exoticization (is that a word?) but not too much in our generation -- fewer and fewer people fetishize being brown. It's much worse in generationally mixed groups, where the older members of the group have the same race issues that most people of our parents' generation have. But no one has told me I'm too brown to be here. I do get criticized for my choice of "queer" over "lesbian" and end up doing a lot of explaining about gender continuua and the changing face of queer identities, but I don't think that's because of my race. Sorting out what problems are endemic and which are specific to my identity stack is one of the harder tasks that I only sometimes engage with.
How has managing your romantic/sexual relationships gone? In what, if any, ways do you feel being a GLB person of color has impacted your relationships? Because my mix of races is fairly unusual, there's pretty much no chance of a same-race relationship for me. Every one involves some measure of education about stuff, and some sense of cultural distance that must be bridged. It's more work, but it means we assume less, so maybe there are fewer major explosions. Maybe. You know that "whoosh" of relief from knowing everyone around you gets it? I have had that maybe once or twice in my life. Sometimes I'm really, really tired.
What do you feel are particular challenges for gays, lesbians and bisexuals of color? I hate trying to generalize from my experience to everyone's, but having a place where we can just relax and be ourselves seems most consistently difficult. Every identity is another limiting factor -- if you're like me, a mixed-race (South Asian), queer (bisexual), liberal religious, gender nonconforming (boyish with girl bits) person, it can be almost impossible to have a place where everything is already explained, where nothing has to be justified or detailed.
Sometimes I wonder what it's like to be in a relationship where race never enters the equation, but when I take a hard look at it everyone has cultural barriers to overcome unless they work really hard to only date people exactly like them. Because I grew up UU, the racial barriers seem huge and the sexual orientation barriers seem much smaller. UUism has its own issues with race and class with which we struggle, but we have worked hard and succeeded in some measure on issues around sexual orientation, and it shows. On the other hand, sometimes we think we're more progressive than we are.
How do you feel others can help with those challenges? Anytime people are more accepting and more educated, it helps. People of color can stop drawing the lines quite so tightly. In general, when the communities are more inclusive, they are less likely to exclude people who walk the borders. It sounds obvious, but it seems like maybe it's not. Being aware, self-educating, and doing the ally work is all good stuff. If you're queer and white, don't equate your experience of oppression with mine; don't try to set up a hierarchy either. But keep asking who's not at the table, and if I'm not, or if I'm the only one, pay attention. It's the little things. Like this one dance class I took where a woman who was there with a guy kept correcting the instructors from "ladies and gents" to "leaders and followers" over and over and over, which meant I didn't have to, nor did I have to wince. That's ally work. Even more? Do it when I'm not there, just because it's the right thing to do.
Does one kind of bias you face -- racism vs. homo/biphobia -- feel larger, more oppressive than the other? Can you talk about how? It all depends on the moment and the location. Context is everything. Whatever group isn't the majority is the one that feels bigger. Being in a room full of queer people of color is a strange kind of heaven.
What do you feel like GLB people who are not of color don't get about the differences being GLB of color? What about hetero white people: what do they miss? Everyone gets or doesn't get a different thing. Some hetero white folks are
educated and aware and on top of things; some aren't. Some people are seriously homophobic. Some are seriously racist. I do feel like that Onion article about a more virulent racism was spot-on; I think we're moving in that direction with homophobia too -- it's going underground. As a culture we haven't really figured out how to manage this second-generation prejudice yet for any group. As someone with educational and class privilege I can say that it's pretty easy to miss the depth of struggle involved for someone trying to work around/overcome prejudice; it can seem like no big deal until you get in the trenches. I don't think anyone's really immune to that.
Want to be part of this series and share your experiences and ideas about being gay, lesbian or bisexual and of color? We'd love to include you and get your voice out there. Drop us an email and we'll send you the questions!
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