The 2000s Made Me Gay, Grace Perry

Coming from a reference group where everyone’s first queer movie was either Rocky Horror or Brokeback Mountain, it’s fascinating to talk (in person!) to gay teenagers who grew up with Korra and Stephen Universe and She-Ra. 

The sheer culture clash of trying to explain that Brokeback Mountain was received as and treated as a punchline. Two men fall in love and one gets murdered for it. Considering the time this movie was made, that isn’t a spoiler: that’s an inevitability.

And all the popular culture at the time would only reference it to laugh at it.

by Laure S

me, rewatching my favourite media for the hundredth time: it’s about the comfort. it’s about the nostalgia. it’s about lacking the necessary emotional bandwidth to take in and process new things in this year of our lord 2021

look it , look it ོ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ོ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ོ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ོ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ོ ⠀⠀⠀ ོ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ོ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ོ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀it's freakin bats ོ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ོ ⠀⠀ ⠀ོ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ོ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ོ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ོ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ོ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ོ

i love halloween

fuck it. be creative even if you never really *make* anything. write out plot synopses of stories and then move on. design OCs you'll never use. make mood boards and concept art and don't do anything with them. life's too short to forget everything that inspired you and creation doesn't have to be "complete" to be worth the time you put into it.

Increasingly seeing posts by queer children and teens about how they've gotten kicked out for coming out to their parents and you can't convince me there's no coincidence btwn that and this very white American cisgay narrative of "coming out" and how it's the one thing that really proves you're LGBT but like babes..... we don't owe anyone that. Your identity is your business. Your safety is your primary concerns, especially as a minor and an 18/19 year old, is needing time in a stable(ish) living situation and to get a bit of financial freedom and also prepare adequately emotionally to deal with the consequences of outing yourself to your parents and/guardians. We live in a society. the outcome is overwhelmingly going to be negative and I hate that this idea is pushed soooo hard in tv shows and books geared towards child and teen LGBTs

This probably isn’t necessary to tack on but...

I BEG that if you really really want to tell your parents/family that you’re a part of the LGBT community, don’t come out to them unless you’ve confirmed two things:

1) They have shown and told you that they are accepting of queer people and it’s not performative.

2) They have told you, specifically, that if you were part of the community they’d be okay with it. (Because supportive ‘ally’ parents can still flip shit if it’s their child).

I did not come out to my parents until I was 19. I only told my mom, who assured me the two things above, and I begged her not to tell my dad until I was 22 and I could actually move out if needed since he has been openly homophobic. (I didn’t even want to tell it to him. I wanted her to do it, because I was scared of getting hit).

It’s perfectly acceptable to never tell them (even if they’ve shown their support), or to wait to tell them when you have a safety net in place in case shit hits the fan. Please stay safe. You don’t owe anyone anything.

I feel the need to share my own story, just to really drive this point home.

I grew up in a homophobic, painfully religious household, and I was homeschooled K-12. So you can imagine how little of an escape I had, and how little chance I had to learn about things not controlled by my mother.

I didn't figure out gay people even existed until I was 13, and it took another two years for me to find out there was anything other than gay and straight (aka the BTQ+ part of the acronym).

I figured out my own sexuality at 19.

I didn't come out to anyone for two years. Anyone. At all. I had this blog, which has never had anything that could tie me to my irl self because I was petrified of being outed, especially to my mother. Eventually after two years I came out to my best friend via tearful text word vomit essay, thankfully to open arms and full support and acceptance, as well as complete understanding as to why I hadn't come out yet and full support of helping me stay closeted.

I played that role for another two and a half years.

When I finally did come out to my mom, I was away at college, and I did it through an email (very modern-day Fun Home of me, I know). I had spent the last seven or so years slowly, subtly, trying to get my mom to be less homophobic. We had got from immediate vilification "gay is a sin" to uncomfortable silence, and I wasn't sure it would ever get any better.

So, before I sent anything, I told my friends what I was doing. Two friends were ready to take me in if I got kicked out, and a third was ready to help drive me to wherever if I needed a ride. I spent a week drafting the email, and cried the entire night I sent it because I was so scared.

In my case, I got lucky, and it ended up working out. But remember, it took four years of work after I came out to myself, and an additional 3/4 years when I just thought I was an ally before it was even a little safe for me to come out. And it took an additional three months to tell my extended family.

Coming out is never mandatory. Ever. Even if you know it's safe. Even if you know you could do it and get only positive responses. And especially if that's not the case.

No one is owed your truth. And more important than anything is your safety. You are valid in your truth even when no one but you knows about it. And the rest of us want you to be safe until you can get out and be independent, because we want you in this world with us. You will always be part of the community, even if you can't post. Even if you can't go to meet ups or pride. Even if you can't fully engage with us online because someone is always watching. One day you'll be free of that, and we'll be here to celebrate with you when that time comes, because visibility does not determine your place in the community. Your place is immutable. You belong here. So stay safe until you can come join us at the table, okay? Your chair will be waiting for you.

If I'd come out when I was in middle or high school, I have no doubt that I would have been sent to conversion therapy. I would have been kicked out of my private Christian K-12 school. My education, as well as my mental health, likely would have been irreparably damaged.

I didn't start coming out to friends until the end of undergrad. I didn't start dating women as well as men until graduate school. I didn't come out to my parents until I was nearly 30. I'm still not out to the majority of my extended family because I know most of them would take it badly and I don't want to deal with that stress. I have an older family member who's in their 50's who is out to no one in the family except for me. In every other aspect of their life, they're out and have been for decades. But they don't intend to ever come out to family and are perfectly happy living that way.

I had this conversation with a student one time and she asked me if it was weird that, at this point, hundreds of my undergraduate students knew about my sexuality (I taught classes on queer literature and was the faculty advisor for the LGBTQ student club) while most of my extended family had no idea I was bi and likely wouldn't if I ended up with a man as my forever-roommate. It didn't bother me then and it doesn't now. If anyone ever asks me, I won't lie. But I also won't volunteer information that I know would cause not only me but my parents by extension a huge amount of stress and potentially a massive familial fallout. I see these people a couple times a year. There are plenty of other things I don't tell them for similar reasons. The omission doesn't feel inauthentic or like a personal betrayal. It feels logical. Prioritize your safety and comfort.

so they put up these new signs at the ima and they make the whole thing feel very alice in wonderland kind of

but the ones with words on them are really great

Literally, my internal monologue when I’m outside.

Me when I get access to a label maker

That was horrible

Definitely not the roll I was expecting...

.

maybe just maybe.... never experiencing romantic love isn't a bad thing besties

even if you are someone who wants a romantic relationship, not experiencing one isn't a death sentence. its still perfectly possible to lead a happy and fulfilled life without romantic love so maybe we should stop acting like it isn't.

i keep seeing ppl tagging this as like "but I'm sad" or "fuck you I want a husband" and like... ok? you can want a relationship. but it's not going to fix you, and if you expect someone to come along and make you happy you are Not going to have a good time, and probably gonna hurt your partner/s in the process. romantic love is not a magical gateway to happiness, and there is nothing bad about never experiencing it.

Not experiencing romantic love is neutral at worst, you've just been brainwashed into thinking you need to be in a relationship to be whole and happy. the only person who can actually make your life better and make you happy is yourself.

I find it endlessly fascinating that most humans just want someone who will get up in the middle of the night to close the windows with them when it starts down pouring. We want someone to dry our dishes after we wash them. We just want another person to do mundane activities with. We want to tell someone how the copy machine broke at work and we want to listen to how Debra is causing office drama again. We just want something so simple. We want human connection and honesty and to be bored with someone else instead of bored alone. 

Animal Reviews!

Source: facebook.com

ahem. @piratejenne

the reason bisexual and nonbinary people get so much hate is because we challenge the idea that people can be separated into little boxes to stop them from mixing with and “corrupting” the others. doesn’t matter which bathroom i use, if they’re marked with a binary gender then i’m gonna be in there with people who aren’t my gender. doesn’t matter who i date (or don’t), there’s always the potential that i could date someone with a gender different from previous partners. we are living breathing proof that any attempt to contain human gender & sexuality is doomed to failure and i think that’s very sexy of us

someone made the extremely valid point in the tags that this also applies to pan people, agender people, and aroace people, which it absolutely does. what’s up my pals, let’s be queer and do crimes destroy the cisheteropatriarchy together

hello yes this is an excellent example of what ‘queer’ actually means and why it’s important. queer means ‘does not fit your standard boxes, society, whatcha gonna do about it?’

I forget where it was but I saw jeans for sale and like they were labeled as “girlfriend cut” instead of ‘boyfriend’ and like the irony to me is that the term “boyfriend style jeans” was originally done as this weird way to heterosexualize the dangerous idea of women wearing slightly loose pants so you knew you weren’t a dyke but like apparently the use of the term “boyfriend” was like too much of a gender confusion crisis for the buyer so they had to change it *again* as opposed to just calling it “loose fitting” to begin w and now it has fully no-homo’d itself into a corner and it just sounds like yr stealing yr jeans from some butch girl yr dating

My fave quirk w boyfriend jeans is that time the gap didn’t realize that having jeans that were “boyfriend” cut and “pegged” style would turn out greater than the sum of its parts

sometimes book less about you reading it and more about it being your companion

“i should bring a book” i say not because i plan on reading it at any point but because i need to have someone on my side in the grocery store soup aisle

i was put on this earth to eat bagels and be gay