My Experiences Being LGBTQ+: Why We Need To Listen to Minority Perspectives

Being queer is something I could talk about extensively, but I often fear doing so around people who do not also identify as LGBTQ+. I fear I will be misunderstood or will not properly explain my points. I fear that I will talk “too much” and be seen as “too gay” and dismissed as a person. However, I believe that exploring my experiences with an audience who does not know them could be helpful and eye-opening. I intend to address how being gay has impacted my life and the bigger societal problems that these experiences highlight. Day-to-day life as an LGBTQ+ person is an often overlooked or unnecessarily censored topic, and I want to address the small ways my life is different because of it. I will refer to myself as queer, but that label encompasses so many different identities and experiences that I cannot share with you. This is how being part of the LGBTQ+ community has impacted my life. I strongly encourage you to read or listen to other queer people’s experiences as they will be different from mine but also incredibly valuable. 

 

To me, one of the biggest and most constantly relevant aspects of being queer, especially when first discovering oneself, is the loneliness. I often enter a room and will immediately identify that no one else is like me. It’s important to note that this experience is not unique to queer people; it is frequently experienced by many other minority groups. It’s a weird feeling, because no one says or does anything to exclude me, and I don’t feel unwelcome, but I still feel different. I doubt the other people focus on it, and they may not even notice, but I am constantly aware, almost to a point of paranoia, that everyone else has something in common that I don’t. It almost feels like being on the outside of an inside joke that everyone else knows but can’t explain to you because it won’t be the same. I can tell I’m not part of the group, but it would be futile to try to join them. I am surrounded by people, and yet I am alone. 

 

Almost every queer person goes through an identity crisis, which is understandable, but the worst part for me was that mine struck in the heart of middle school, when I felt utterly alone. I had plenty of friends, but I didn’t think there was anyone else like me around. I had no reason to believe any of the other kids were going through the same internal struggles as I was; there was absolutely no mention of LGBTQ+ topics in school and all examples of queer characters in media always portrayed either older teenagers or adults. While the difference between straight and gay people, for example, is insignificant to most aspects of one’s character, the divide between myself and other kids felt colossal to me. For a period of time during seventh grade, the feeling was so constant, so intense, that I cried about it nightly. On top of all the standard awkwardness and discomfort that one experiences during middle school, I found myself facing another issue with seemingly no one else by my side.

 

However, the constant alone-ness meant that meeting other queer people was incredibly meaningful to me. The first time I found out a few of my friends were also queer was a major turning point. There were other kids like me. All of a sudden, I started spending more and more time with these people because we had this thing in common. This thing that we had been taught was weird, abnormal, shameful. And we had many of the same experiences. Oddly enough, I could relate to these people more than people I had known for far longer. The day we came out to each other was so significant to me that I still remember the date and acknowledge it yearly almost as a type of personal holiday. To me, my extremely positive response to something that could be considered small illustrates how vital visibility and community is to us as humans: we need to see people like us and know that we are not alone no matter how small or vulnerable we feel.

 

I mentioned that media representation of LGBTQ+ people is suboptimal, and I could write an entire article tackling that topic, but what about when media depicts queer life accurately? It makes all the difference. When I was fourteen, I saw the movie Love, Simon in the theater. I was still in the process of coming out to people gradually as I felt comfortable enough with them, and as the movie follows high schooler Simon Spier’s coming out journey, it was incredibly relevant to my life at the time. I had been wanting to see the movie, and a friend invited me along. I eagerly agreed to come. The movie got so many little things right: the way Simon feels like everyone has this false idea of him in their heads, how he is desperate to stay in contact with the other gay student, the looming fear that everything will change once he comes out. There were definitely ways the movie could have been better, but each endearingly correct detail made me more invested because I knew exactly what the story was meant to convey. I sobbed throughout the second half of the film. Everything the movie depicted resonated so heavily with my experiences over the past year. I had spent so much time struggling in relation to one topic, and here was a movie all about it. Even though the main character is a gay male, quite different from me, this small piece of representation was incredibly meaningful to me in that period of my life. (Author’s note: for another important and interesting perspective on the importance of representation, I strongly recommend reading Emilie Yang’s article, Diversity in The English Curriculum).

 

Media like Love, Simon was crucial to my journey of self-acceptance. I’m privileged to have grown up in a caring and supportive environment, but I was still exposed to homophobic messages perpetrated by society, which I inherently started to believe. This is known as internalized homophobia: when external homophobic messages become part of your belief system so that you begin to dislike and denounce parts of yourself. Unlearning these messages is difficult. One of the most striking moments of my queer journey was the first time I ever told someone about it. I was thirteen, and I explained my feelings to a friend. Immediately afterward, I said, verbatim, “but you know that doesn’t make me gay, right?” There is still something so raw about this statement to me. I was so afraid to associate myself with that word. I had been conditioned to think it was bad, or it somehow made me bad. I still was not used to hearing the word “gay.” It felt like a dirty word to me, or like something I didn’t know enough about. In theory, I knew it was okay, but I had never had enough exposure to queer people or media to truly understand that it can just be something you mention casually. It felt too heavy to connect that word and all its connotations to myself. Fully committing to describing myself that way was overwhelming, and I had to take time to finally become comfortable labelling myself.

 

As I progressively began to accept myself, I became more open with my identity. However, I still felt scared that people’s opinions of me would change. I would like to acknowledge that I am fortunate to live in an environment where my main fear is about what people think, and not of physical harm, as is the reality for many queer teenagers. Before coming out, I was scared that all other aspects of who I was would disappear. I still am scared that people will see me as gay and nothing else. I would so much rather be known as “the smart girl” than “the gay girl,” but not at the cost of hiding my identity. I have had to accept that being open about my identity may make some others uncomfortable, but hiding who I am at all times will certainly make me miserable, and I have learned that I have to take care of myself first. I’d rather inconvenience a few people than exist in confinement.

 

It is important to note that I am a cisgender white lesbian, and my experiences are unique to me. There are other people who use those same labels who have lived different lives from me and would have different but still valuable commentary. Just within the queer community, people have very diverse experiences. I encourage you to listen to them, and listen to other people who aren’t like you. If we surround ourselves with people who are similar to us and will always agree with us, it is easy to forget that others exist or thoughtlessly dismiss them. Listen to the voices you don’t always hear, and give others opportunities to speak when they might get talked over. If you notice that you are always able to share your thoughts and ideas when others are silenced, use your privilege to help minorities speak rather than talk over them. If you’ve learned or become aware of something after reading my short article, what else can you learn from listening to the millions of other perspectives that are out there?