I had a hard time understanding how pride helped people, even as a trans woman.
Like even (nearly) one year I to my transition I still fail to present differently in public because of the shame, I have a hard time with people already and this is a lot, this ruined my motivation to do anything feminine (whatās the point of trying Iāll never look good blah blah) Iām still a bit like this to some extent, but I went to my first pride parade and Iām absolutely stunned, I saw some drag queens and even though they are cis men they manage to look good, they were unapologetic and proud of who they were, and THIS HELPS, heck seing other transfem IRL makes me understand that were all going through something similar and if we wish to be happy and fulfilled we should be out no matter where we are into our transition, itās honestly making me consider coming out to my friends. Because now I see that Iām not a freak and a good amount of ppl are like me.
Also I found out that the cute āmaleā cashier was probably a trans woman and she looks really good, Iām happy for āhimā. :)
Iām in the closet. Iāve only told a small group of friends who are enough degrees of separation away from my family that I donāt need to worry too much about it getting out. I havenāt told my family or most of my friends, considering that a mistake would result in that side of my family knowing. Iām bi and probably nonbinary.
I have some very bigoted family, fuck em. I donāt mind burning bridges with them, even though it would hurt for a little while. This family has cheered for the deaths of queer people, such as Nix Benedict. They have supported calls for genocide against queers, they have a huge amount of bigotry.
However, about 10-12 years ago, there was a debate over the existence of queer people in my family, regarding a string of current events about lgbt rights. My grandma, was the only person on that side of the US who supported the right for queer people to exist. My bigoted family was so upset that they just cut her out. She was blocked by that side of the family on social media, theyād drop her calls, and wouldnāt visit. My grandma was devastated. After the death of my grandfather, she was even more isolated, having nobody within 400 miles who would talk to her. Though she met up with the whole family to mourn for the funeral, she was still isolated for another month after it, until things healed a few months later and she was able to talk with that side of the family again.
I refuse to be the person who is the wedge in my family. I know my grandma good enough that she would still love and support me as a queer person, but I refuse to cause another split in my family that would harm my already very lonely and isolated grandma.
Even as an otherwise militant queer who had no problem coming out in a rough area like where I used to live, I draw the line on harming vulnerable people like my grandma. I just hate this situation so much.
The correct answer (if you were me): Tell the entire family to suck my rainbow-spangled cock, flip 'em every single bird, and get a place together with grandma in SoCal, but not before going on the most epic road trip imaginable. There is a movie script here, I can feel it.
I, late-50s straight cis man, found out that a man that I had worked with for 20 years was gay. I had never given his sexual preference and thought and didnāt care either way. His boyfriend asked me not to say anything at work because he wasnāt out. I said I wouldnāt.
That year we invited them to our Christmas party. The boyfriend came but the guy from work didnāt. The boyfriend said that he didnāt come because he was afraid that people from work would be there find out.
I talked to him a couple of months later and told him that he should come out. I told him that people at work would say either, āI know/I suspectedā or, āI donāt care I just want you to process this paperwork.ā Later he told me that he had come out at work and that I was exactly right about peopleās reactions.
Being closeted to your family is extremely stressful. I hope you find a way to come out and that they accept you.
My daughter came out to me several years ago. I love her more than life itself.
Iām younger and in the same boat Iām a bi person questioning gender, and I remember what it was like 10 years ago, but due to precarious family politics Iām stuck in the closet even now. Iām horrified knowing how much worse it was 15 years ago.
I remember taking a politics class in high school around 2015, and even though I lived in a deep blue state at that time, people were debating whether or not trans people should have the right to exist, and the amount of disgust I heard in peopleās voice when talking about trans people is horrifying. I remember being in heated debates on whether or not someone would have the right to refuse service to gay people because of their āreligious reasonsā and just knowing that things were comparatively better when I had my political awakening around then is not a very good thought. I feel bad for more elder queers who had it much worse.
Although I wouldnāt realize I was bi for a few years, I ended up finding that whole situation pretty radicalizing, and it pushed me towards more militant queer activism. Peopleās existence is not up for debate. Respect existence, or expect resistance.
I might show up to pride as the strangely militant straight cis ally, but I refuse to let queer rights erode to the point that it was at a decade ago, and Iāll fight for a future that I can eventually come out in, and one where people are not confined to the closet.
Idk about the heartwarming part In very few places would his job be safe How many friends would have dumped him, family, etc? I too am glad he got to have a partner but when do you think they got to have any romantic dinner? Hold hands in public? Kinda sick of the well-meaning stuff, which is also condescending.
I mean, sorry to make you feel bad about what you feel is sympathy. I really do hate shitting on someoneās good feelings. But maybe reconsider āheartwarmingā :/
I can see the tragedy and the beauty in the situation at the same time. He spent 25 years with someone he loved, despite adverse circumstances. Thatās beautiful and heartwarming.
He had to keep that love, and a big part of himself a secret until he died. That is a tragedy. Both things can be true at the same time.
For young LGBT+ people in conservative cultures, hiding is still a reality. Only dumbass conservative would be surprised that there are āmoreā gay people in places where such a thing is not punishable by hospitalization or death
Iām in my early 50ās, and knew 2 Vietnam era vets who were gay, but had to pretend to be straight back when being gay could literally get you put in prison. As a matter of fact, one of them was dishonorably discharged from the Marines for being gay, and did go to prison. Both had married women, and had kids.
Thereās a fairly well-known story that illustrates this that Iāll paraphrase here.[1, 2]
A Redditor thought that he was being homophobic towards his gay roommate because he got mad whenever he saw his roommate with other guys. Fast forward a couple of days and after discussing this with several Redditors and his sister he finds out that what heās feeling isnāt homophobia, but rather jealousy. Eventually him and his roommate talk it out and they end up in a relationship.
Had this happened a couple decades earlier their story would have likely gone very differently. For starters the gay roommate probably wouldnāt have been out about being gay and might have been acting in a more stereotypically āstraightā manner to not raise suspicion. Had the straight guy found out that his roommate was gay there would be a higher chance that he was homophobic, and even if he wasnāt heād be far less likely to question his own sexuality after thinking of himself as straight for his entire life. Their story only ended the way it did because they live in a time where homophobia is less prevalent in society.
As societal acceptance increases more people who experience same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria are willing to explore and adopt a non-heterosexual and/or trans identity, and more people are willing to tell that to a pollster as well.
The life expectancy of queer people also appears to be smaller for a variety of reasons, although the gap with cishet people seems to have reduced over time.
Oh, the homophobia is still there. A man recently murdered his Uber driver because he thought the driver was taking him a secret Homosexual Society to indoctrinate him. Schizophrenia may have had something to do with it, but maybe not.
Iām in Australia, and āgay panicā was still a reasonable defence in having a charge of murder downgraded to manslaughter until four years ago in my state.
We can thank conservatives for making sure as many gays died as possible during the AIDS epidemic. I remember them openly celebrating that āGodās Willā was being enacted on earth as Reagan worked hard to stop any research, education or prevention from taking place.
Conservatives are a vulgar, sadistic, demented kind of evil. There is no place in a modern society for hate-based ideologies like conservatism.
I am 51, bi, and to this day I am not comfortable discussing my sexuality. I donāt think young people understand how different things are now when compared to just fifteen years ago.
Yeah, Iām in my 30s and I remember how wildly different it was when I was young. Thereās still a lot to be done but seeing the general shift toward acceptance is nice (where I am at least).
Itās odd how much things change and how much they stay the same. An interesting, difficult to notice language shift amongst kids is the complete absence of context for some pejorative uses of āgay.ā For instance, the catchall rejection āno way, thatās gayā would elicit confusion first and possibly indignation after. However, other pejorative uses of āgayā still exist, for instance conflating homosexuality with femininity, with femininity having a negative connotation. Itās a partial extinction of meaning and I kinda love it.
All of that to say, the future is looking up in select ways and Iām all about those minuscule victories.
I came out when I was 14 - 26 years ago (albeit as bisexual, because I didnāt know the right words yet) and I felt safe enough to do it because I knew my parents would be supportive, but in the broader world, what I mostly got was, āyouāre saying that for attention,ā and a lot of gross comments from teenage boys, and that was far less awful than what queer boys got, if they were even able to be out. And then Matthew Shepard was killed the next year a couple of hours from where I lived and it was like oh fuck, maybe Iāll just stick to boys because itās not as safe as I thought.
I know kids arenāt always safe now, either, and no one in the LGBTQ+ community is safe in many parts of the world, but it really is so different already. We just have to make sure they know how much better it is, and how much better it still could be, and donāt get complacent, because we could be back to hiding the love(s) of our lives very quickly.
Everything that wasnāt Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Clint Eastwood, Chuck Norris, et all, was considered effeminate: āgayā. Using words like āeffeminate ā: āgayā. Guys piercing anything other than their left ear: āgayā. Not being cool: āgayā.
Yep. I lived as a teenager through that era. It was all pervasive on the male identity.
If you go through my posting history, youāll see that I know a guy who is my age who is still stuck in that mindset. Heās 53, but still likes to brag aobut fistfights in his 20ās, and presents this āIām the most Badass who ever Badassed in historyā persona that was normal at the time. Itās like heās still 15 in his mind, which he certainly is. Itās pathetic.
He also still thinks Hair Metal is the best music ever made, Steven Seagal is a badass, and everything in life can be broken down into the dichotomy of itās either BADASS or PUSSY. Itās interesting if it wasnāt so annoying, and obnoxious. I used to feel sorry for the guy, but over time learned itās just malignant narcissism and psychopathy. Itās a good thing heās mostly all mouth, or he wouldāve been at Charlottesville or the Capitol on Jan 6. It wouldnāt surprise me if he eventually shot some place up, because of the āBlue Haired Feminazis and the Libcucks.ā Because Fox, Matt Walsh, and Ben Shapiro told him what to think.
I am gay. I have a gay friend who uses that term in a ātaking it backā sense.
I love my friend and respect him but it hurts so bad itās to hear that. Itās honestly triggering to me because it reminds me of middle and high school.
I wish he wouldnāt use that term but maybe it is okay if we really are taking it back.
I have talked to some elder gays who seem to feel the same way about other terms like ālesbianā so maybe it really is a generational aversion to the slur of the time.
I donāt like feeling genuinely upset but I am willing to endure it if it means progression for LGBTQIA+ ppl.
Anyone who has a thought about this pls reply. Would really love to hear non-straight folks opinions on it, but even willing to hear straight folks opinions as long as they are respectful and non-violent. ā„ļø
I feel like itās been taken back for a while already. A gay community in the states has a dance party they call āf@g bashā which made me wince the first time I heard it. But if anyone has a problem with it I havenāt heard about it and itās been ongoing for several years.
Younger person here. I donāt like the word lesbian. The only reason we donāt say āgay womanā is that a bunch of old farts didnāt think women could really be gay. Itās misogynistic. TERFs have been using the word to enact violence on trans women and as far as Iām concerned they can have it. Let it be a symbol of misogynistic transphobes. The discourse over bi lesbians is intolerable too, the generation Z lesbians on Shitter donāt know the history of the word and exclude bi women just to be assholes.
Queer person checking in. I too dislike the F-slur because like you say, it takes me back to the worst periods of my life when that was the worst thing you could call a person.
When I was a kid, the common way to express that you didnāt like something was to call it gay. And usually it had nothing to do with gayness either, itād be like āYou signed up for soccer instead of hockey? Thatās pretty gay.ā āMath class is gay.ā āHomework is gay.ā
Even before I knew I was queer that bothered me. And the funny thing was if you called someone out for it, theyād weasel out of it by saying they didnāt have anything against gay people, you just call things gay if you donāt like them. They just didnāt see how that was wrong which made it even more frustrating to me. Like, they admit that gay = bad but then say they have nothing against gays? Well, what more can you expect from children?
Nowadays it doesnāt seem like things being gay is so bad. Iāve definitely proudly called things gay, and it feels like the word āgayā is being taken back. So with time maybe that can happen with the F-slur, but for me now itās still a super triggering thing.
At least gay has some positive etymological history as well as negative. F-- only has two meanings, and the vastly more common one is incredibly violent. The only thing Iāve seen remotely close to trying to ātake that word backā is maybe Martin in the Simpsons in a throw-away gag about his pure nerdy naivete. And thatās not particularly close.
I think I remember that bit, Martin was trying to convince us that āapes together strongā but the boys werenāt having it. He used the two-syllable pronunciation too, which Iād relate to using the N-word with a hard R.
I donāt really relate that bit to ātaking the word backā though because I guess I donāt think of Martin as being gay. I mean, heās 10 years old so he probably isnāt really anything yet. Then again, he is often shown to be effete and Iām sure some of the kids have called him gay before.
To me that joke was all about shock factor. It was like saying āHey, look at this dirty word we just got away with saying on television! Itās not dirty because we used it correctly, instead of the way you expect to hear it!ā
Ok, if I may make a jovial tangent for a moment: I love that you used the phrase āelder gaysā. It evokes imagery of this high council of gays where they hold tribunals and wear robes, and have stereotypically gay music playing in the background as if it were your own version of Gregorian chants echoing through the hallowed halls of gaydom.
Queerphobia is still baked into our language. These days itās all the rage to call people ānarcissistā as an insult. Narcissus the Greek boy was put to death by the gods for not dating anyone. The word is aphobic and pedophilic.
The story is that he was so vain that he fell in love with, or was so horny for, his own reflection that he died.
Some versions have him starving to death because looking at himself was a higher priority that eating, others have him kill himself because he couldnāt marry/fuck himself. Nothing to do with him ānot dating anyoneā.
I think he was a teen in the story, but since no one was fucking, I am not so sure it was pedophillic
Yeah Iām in my 40ās, nonbinary but AMAB, but I didnāt really understand it until relatively recently. Iāve always known I didnāt fit into the male āmouldā, but nobody knew what the fuck ānonbinaryā was in the 80ās (let alone here in Finland, which is still really conservative compared to the saner Nordics) so naturally I just got beat up for being āgayā even though I was never attracted to boys or men. I even dressed in gender-conforming ways but I was never a ārealā man for many boys and men, which naturally meant that they had to correct me with violence.
The conservative pieces of shit who insist that all these ānew gendersā and sexual orientations are just a recent invention and in the good old days men were men and women were women are the same ones who were beating us up and even killing us just a few decades ago (not that theyāve stopped doing thatā¦)
I didnāt just suddenly decide to become an enby; Iāve always been one, but I didnāt even have the words for any of this until this stuff became more mainstream. And then they have the gall to act like this is all a choice, like Iād fucking choose to be something that means bigots will literally want to murder me for it. When I thought I was a man they insisted I wasnāt a real man, and after I went āyeah youāre right, Iām not a manā they insist Iām a man. Canāt fucking win with them, can we?
Iām noticing quite the same with vegetarianism. I became vegetarian around 15 years ago, when it was still a marginalized group of people. Somehow also particularly as a man, my eating habits felt like a personal affront to other men, at least based on their reaction.
I generally donāt tell people these days, if I can avoid it, despite having had multiple colleagues that were openly vegetarian/vegan. Like, at one point, I felt like the outsider, because I had three veggie colleagues discussing veggie food and I felt like I couldnāt participate without blowing my cover, so to speak.
Fucking ridiculous, the amount of emotional abuse one goes through, for not wanting to eat meat or liking humans.
lgbtq_plus
Hot
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.