I’m a Gen Xer. There wasn’t a single gay or trans person in any of the schools I went to all the way through high school. That I knew of. I sometimes wonder who was and either kept it hidden or didn’t even know themselves because it wasn’t considered an option a possibility.
I’m a millennial and grew up in the Seattle area. In my very big highschool (graduating class of i think it was almost a thousand people), there were like maybe 4 flamboyantly gay guys, all in drama/choir. And zero trans people.
It wasn’t even until nearly the end of my senior year that I even considered the possibility of myself being queer. I think if I had one or two more years in school, maybe to grades 13 and 14, I would have made different friends and learned a lot more about myself, sooner.
Same here. Not one person felt safe enough to come out at my high school. That first get together after starting college was incredible: the people who started queer relationships that first semester weren’t always happy (I mean, that’s fair given how bad dating can suck), but they were finally getting to live the way they should’ve had the freedom to their whole lives and it showed.
It’s stupid and funny how ready my classmates were to accept LGBTQ+ relationships, but only after graduation. If we’d just extracted our heads from our butts, we could’ve made the environment our friends needed to be more fully themselves while we had the time with them.
i mean, so many people faced a lot of shit for coming out in the 80s and 90s. it wasn’t until after a lot of people had come out and fought those battles for us that society in general became more accepting
Yeah, that’s what I’m sayin. We were their classmates. We the ones who made it hard by attacking and verbally abusing them and contributing to a culture where the word “queer” was a slur, not just a descriptor with 0 inherent right/wrongness to it. Then, what, graduation rolls around and a magic switch gets flipped and suddenly we’re not a bunch of dry-roasted shit on toast people? It was so fucking disrespectful, stupid, and just plain wasteful of the time we could’ve spent together with them feeling confident in living their regular lives. We missed out on some of the best parts of the people we called our friends because we didn’t build them a safe environment. There weren’t that many parents teaching their kids that people are just people regardless of what their bodies look like, who they’re attracted to, or how well their insides match their outsides. This is, objectively, some pretty basic, don’t-be-a-garbage-species shit. We’ve been learning and re-learning this lesson for generations in America between waves of immigration from different parts of the world, the personhood and rights of Black Americans, and the recognition/rights of sexual and gender minorities and it just feels like maybe we should dispense with the bullshit already. Learn the lesson one last time and move the fuck on. Don’t we have better things to do?
Children are psychopaths. And growing up and being a royal asshole to people, then becoming self aware and realizing how you’ve hurt… Basically your community that you’ve lived most of your life so far with, can be a pretty sobering experience.
I don’t know how old exactly you are, but when I was growing up, there was this absolutely stupid fad of calling anything you didn’t like “gay”. Like, oh, your pet bird died? Aww, that’s gay, I’m sorry for your loss. The umpire made a bad call again? They’re all so fucking gay.
It wasn’t even until recently that I realized how homophobic my brother has always been. I remember him talking about how his teachers had began punishing kids for saying stuff like that, for using gay wrong, and how he would retort by saying “no, i mean they’re gay like ‘has sex with men’.” Teenagers can be such little shits, ya know?
Surely you knew one or more guys who were overly excitable/dramatic or one or more girls who were like… the opposite of feminine? I knew them, I can think back now and see in my head the faces of the ones I would suspect, lol. I recently had one of them reach out to me through Facebook (I’m not on Facebook but my SO is) and sure enough, she has a wife now and I just thought “yep, that tracks.”
Yes, there are some I suspect may have been gay and/or trans in hindsight, but at the time it didn’t cross my mind. Transgender wasn’t even a word I’d be exposed to until decades later. It’s also important to note that I went to DoDDS schools (American schools overseas, in this case Germany, for the dependents of military servicemembers) for most of my school years, which would have made keeping such things hidden even more likely.
Like when I was a kid, i remember reading one of my mom’s old college textbooks about human sexuality or something from the late 70s or early 80s. I remember specifically looking up sex and gender (there were no signs!), and the options laid out were stuff like transvestites and closed gay people and people who were mentally convinced they were trapped in the wrong body. Like men in dresses doing it to advertise to other men secretly behind their wives’ backs, or in private, masturbating to themselves. (We NOW know that books like these were actively part of the problem)
And I was just like, ewwww no, because there was ALREADY a super negative stigma to me that I didn’t ever want to be. Like I remember being on the school bus thinking that I wasn’t going to allow myself to be gay. “I can’t be gay. I can’t be gay. I’m not going to be gay.” I would tell myself, in the same fashion of wishing for something or sleeping with the picture of something under your pillow to make it be true.
It wasn’t until years later, after years of being accused and bullied and teased by ALL of my friends for being gay and into men (I wasn’t), and trying out all of the porn and thought experiments to try to figure out what was wrong with me (nothing was ever right, I slept with several people and it always felt meh and wrong. I thought I might be into men, but no that felt off too), that it hit me. Nothing ever felt right until I thought of myself and was seen as a woman. Then, suddenly, sex felt (in my head, before action) appealing, socializing felt appealing, and living felt appealing. It was like a pressurized case of my entire life’s memories and possibilities was unlocked and everything started streaming out. I was seeing signs, interactions, reasons, explanations, loss, potentials… I cried for days, not knowing exactly what to do, and held this information to myself for years, and one or two of my closest, accepting friends for a few more years, and didn’t tell anybody I grew up with at all, because they were part of the source of the walls I was living in and the problem. A lot of those people, I even considered family at the time.
And now, in my 30s and rapidly approaching 40, I’m trying to cope with the loss of my teens and twenties, and, at least for a brief time, was really proud of younger generations for making it better for each other, so that people wouldn’t lose out on some of the most important times of their lives that your 20s are so important for. I do mean sex, drugs, self discovery, travel, meeting people, partying, falling in love, learning, being confident, growing. Because doing all that in your 30s is possible, but we all know the new stigma of the trans woman dressing like a slut in her 30s and it being “cringe”. That’s a shitty stigma, it’s just more of the same ignorance and attempts at oppression, just later in life. She’s trying out things that she didn’t get to when she was an actual teenager. Her hormones are on blast, let her be fucking happy and discover herself. At least she has the courage to, unlike the little shits who say everything is cringe.
I am still finding myself. I’m still exploring options. I’m exploring realities. But it’s hard. Politics, loss of family and friends and possibilities and career options and confidence, and it’s all at a strange and hostile time in history. Yes things could be worse, but they could also be better, too. I shouldn’t have to worry about going outside or what I say or think or do or who I love. Nobody should have to worry about who they are.
Fist bump for “mother’s outdated psych textbooks”! Mine were about what I guess we’d call now atypical and neurodivergent child development. Lots of use of the R word. 😬
Also, I’m glad you figured yourself out, or are on the path to it (it’s a journey and I’m not sure how to know when it’s done). From experience: life is more comfortable when you’re not trying to fit yourself into a box of the wrong shape, even if politics makes it wicked scary, at least you’re not fighting your own brain as much.
As someone slightly older than you: don’t forget your stretches and exercises. Sunscreen is your friend. (All that’s supposed to be reassuring and friendly)
[not the person you replied to]No worries. Especially with some is the less well-known identities, if you don’t know it exists you can’t know it’s an option to identify with it.
For me, being asexual was a possibility and identifying as asexual was an option, neither of which I was aware of in high school.
I’m a Gen Xer. There wasn’t a single gay or trans person in any of the schools I went to all the way through high school. That I knew of. I sometimes wonder who was and either kept it hidden or didn’t even know themselves because it wasn’t considered
an optiona possibility.I’m a millennial and grew up in the Seattle area. In my very big highschool (graduating class of i think it was almost a thousand people), there were like maybe 4 flamboyantly gay guys, all in drama/choir. And zero trans people.
It wasn’t even until nearly the end of my senior year that I even considered the possibility of myself being queer. I think if I had one or two more years in school, maybe to grades 13 and 14, I would have made different friends and learned a lot more about myself, sooner.
Same here. Not one person felt safe enough to come out at my high school. That first get together after starting college was incredible: the people who started queer relationships that first semester weren’t always happy (I mean, that’s fair given how bad dating can suck), but they were finally getting to live the way they should’ve had the freedom to their whole lives and it showed.
It’s stupid and funny how ready my classmates were to accept LGBTQ+ relationships, but only after graduation. If we’d just extracted our heads from our butts, we could’ve made the environment our friends needed to be more fully themselves while we had the time with them.
i mean, so many people faced a lot of shit for coming out in the 80s and 90s. it wasn’t until after a lot of people had come out and fought those battles for us that society in general became more accepting
Yeah, that’s what I’m sayin. We were their classmates. We the ones who made it hard by attacking and verbally abusing them and contributing to a culture where the word “queer” was a slur, not just a descriptor with 0 inherent right/wrongness to it. Then, what, graduation rolls around and a magic switch gets flipped and suddenly we’re not a bunch of dry-roasted shit on toast people? It was so fucking disrespectful, stupid, and just plain wasteful of the time we could’ve spent together with them feeling confident in living their regular lives. We missed out on some of the best parts of the people we called our friends because we didn’t build them a safe environment. There weren’t that many parents teaching their kids that people are just people regardless of what their bodies look like, who they’re attracted to, or how well their insides match their outsides. This is, objectively, some pretty basic, don’t-be-a-garbage-species shit. We’ve been learning and re-learning this lesson for generations in America between waves of immigration from different parts of the world, the personhood and rights of Black Americans, and the recognition/rights of sexual and gender minorities and it just feels like maybe we should dispense with the bullshit already. Learn the lesson one last time and move the fuck on. Don’t we have better things to do?
Children are psychopaths. And growing up and being a royal asshole to people, then becoming self aware and realizing how you’ve hurt… Basically your community that you’ve lived most of your life so far with, can be a pretty sobering experience.
I don’t know how old exactly you are, but when I was growing up, there was this absolutely stupid fad of calling anything you didn’t like “gay”. Like, oh, your pet bird died? Aww, that’s gay, I’m sorry for your loss. The umpire made a bad call again? They’re all so fucking gay.
It wasn’t even until recently that I realized how homophobic my brother has always been. I remember him talking about how his teachers had began punishing kids for saying stuff like that, for using gay wrong, and how he would retort by saying “no, i mean they’re gay like ‘has sex with men’.” Teenagers can be such little shits, ya know?
Surely you knew one or more guys who were overly excitable/dramatic or one or more girls who were like… the opposite of feminine? I knew them, I can think back now and see in my head the faces of the ones I would suspect, lol. I recently had one of them reach out to me through Facebook (I’m not on Facebook but my SO is) and sure enough, she has a wife now and I just thought “yep, that tracks.”
Yes, there are some I suspect may have been gay and/or trans in hindsight, but at the time it didn’t cross my mind. Transgender wasn’t even a word I’d be exposed to until decades later. It’s also important to note that I went to DoDDS schools (American schools overseas, in this case Germany, for the dependents of military servicemembers) for most of my school years, which would have made keeping such things hidden even more likely.
oh cool my grandpa was stationed at oberammergau when my dad was in elementary school. sometime in the 60s. you weren’t there around then, were you?
Nope, before my time. I was in Germany from '83 to '94. Otterbach, Weiden, and Bad Soden.
Option? More like reality, no? I don’t think sexuality and identity are options, do you?
I think they meant as a figure of speech.
Like when I was a kid, i remember reading one of my mom’s old college textbooks about human sexuality or something from the late 70s or early 80s. I remember specifically looking up sex and gender (there were no signs!), and the options laid out were stuff like transvestites and closed gay people and people who were mentally convinced they were trapped in the wrong body. Like men in dresses doing it to advertise to other men secretly behind their wives’ backs, or in private, masturbating to themselves. (We NOW know that books like these were actively part of the problem)
And I was just like, ewwww no, because there was ALREADY a super negative stigma to me that I didn’t ever want to be. Like I remember being on the school bus thinking that I wasn’t going to allow myself to be gay. “I can’t be gay. I can’t be gay. I’m not going to be gay.” I would tell myself, in the same fashion of wishing for something or sleeping with the picture of something under your pillow to make it be true.
It wasn’t until years later, after years of being accused and bullied and teased by ALL of my friends for being gay and into men (I wasn’t), and trying out all of the porn and thought experiments to try to figure out what was wrong with me (nothing was ever right, I slept with several people and it always felt meh and wrong. I thought I might be into men, but no that felt off too), that it hit me. Nothing ever felt right until I thought of myself and was seen as a woman. Then, suddenly, sex felt (in my head, before action) appealing, socializing felt appealing, and living felt appealing. It was like a pressurized case of my entire life’s memories and possibilities was unlocked and everything started streaming out. I was seeing signs, interactions, reasons, explanations, loss, potentials… I cried for days, not knowing exactly what to do, and held this information to myself for years, and one or two of my closest, accepting friends for a few more years, and didn’t tell anybody I grew up with at all, because they were part of the source of the walls I was living in and the problem. A lot of those people, I even considered family at the time.
And now, in my 30s and rapidly approaching 40, I’m trying to cope with the loss of my teens and twenties, and, at least for a brief time, was really proud of younger generations for making it better for each other, so that people wouldn’t lose out on some of the most important times of their lives that your 20s are so important for. I do mean sex, drugs, self discovery, travel, meeting people, partying, falling in love, learning, being confident, growing. Because doing all that in your 30s is possible, but we all know the new stigma of the trans woman dressing like a slut in her 30s and it being “cringe”. That’s a shitty stigma, it’s just more of the same ignorance and attempts at oppression, just later in life. She’s trying out things that she didn’t get to when she was an actual teenager. Her hormones are on blast, let her be fucking happy and discover herself. At least she has the courage to, unlike the little shits who say everything is cringe.
I am still finding myself. I’m still exploring options. I’m exploring realities. But it’s hard. Politics, loss of family and friends and possibilities and career options and confidence, and it’s all at a strange and hostile time in history. Yes things could be worse, but they could also be better, too. I shouldn’t have to worry about going outside or what I say or think or do or who I love. Nobody should have to worry about who they are.
Nobody.
Fist bump for “mother’s outdated psych textbooks”! Mine were about what I guess we’d call now atypical and neurodivergent child development. Lots of use of the R word. 😬
Also, I’m glad you figured yourself out, or are on the path to it (it’s a journey and I’m not sure how to know when it’s done). From experience: life is more comfortable when you’re not trying to fit yourself into a box of the wrong shape, even if politics makes it wicked scary, at least you’re not fighting your own brain as much.
As someone slightly older than you: don’t forget your stretches and exercises. Sunscreen is your friend. (All that’s supposed to be reassuring and friendly)
Yeah, “option” isn’t the best word here - “possibility” might be better.
[not the person you replied to]No worries. Especially with some is the less well-known identities, if you don’t know it exists you can’t know it’s an option to identify with it.
For me, being asexual was a possibility and identifying as asexual was an option, neither of which I was aware of in high school.
What I’m trying to say is words are hard.