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What has being LGBT taught you?
What are some of the lessons you've learned about life, love, gender, personhood, etc. because of your LGBT identity?
What wisdom can you share with others here -- whether they share an identity with you or not?
Also, "LGBT" here is being used as an umbrella term as it is in our community name of ~lgbt. It applies to any and all minority sexualities and gender identities. You do not have to be listed in the initialism to answer!
I usually just say I'm queer but context seems important for this thread in particular, so: I am a transgender woman, demisexual, homoromantic.
To be resilient, to pick my battles carefully, and that I'm the only one that can fight the battles of my own life. The cards I was dealt fucking suck, but I still have to play my hand to the best of my ability because I am the only one who can fix me.
That being LGBT+ is a huge disturbance to my life as I had to teach myself everything because my reality and world was turned on its head overnight.
Education on LGBT+ people is sorely lacking - both in public schools and in media in general. Being in a queer relationship was full of difficulties that you won't ever hear about in movies that 99% of the time only feature cishet romances, and even if there are gay and lesbian ones, they are more or less written the same way with only one or two tropes of no nuance added on top... I highly doubt that a movie will ever feature two extremely dysphoric transgender people trying to be intimate and failing. The last season of Sex Education kind of tried though it was still stereotypical as hell.
Being different is no longer an insecurity of mine - never will everyone like me, and I don't have to care about that.
That transness is so atypical in the grand scheme of things, and requires so much strength to get through, so "normal-people-problems" hardly faze me now.
LGBT+ communities are not always inclusive, they might be inaccessible or cliquey to the point that there is only one right answer to being queer. Gatekeeping can really get out of hand especially if it skews younger (teens and 20's), where being a hypersexual creature is the only way to be truly included. You might be different from 90% of the population, and therefore not fit in the regular "society" box - but some LGBT+ communities require you to then fit into their box instead which is tragically ironic.
To not make being queer your whole personality. Around the time I came out, it was the only thing I thought about up until about a year into my medical transition. Being trans is not a phase of course, but the obsession with my transition genuinely was. I am thankfully able to resume living a normal life but it was kind of a "now what?" moment when I realised that all that's left except for expensive and out of reach surgeries is to simply take my meds every day.
How privileged it is to be able to live like my true self because I just so happened to be born in arguably the most progressive place on the planet.
Bloody hell, I would've figured it out years earlier if society's idea of how to depict trans people wasn't drag queens. grumble
Yeah, most people seem to not understand why good representation and education on LGBT people (or any other minority group) can matter. I might have been able to transition when I was young (or at least right at 18) if I knew what I was feeling was perfectly fine and that I was allowed to actually do something about it instead of just wish I was a girl every day from age 5 to 24 without knowing I was allowed to transition. If I had any education on LGBT people and a single person to talk to that wouldn't bully or abuse me for being queer, I could have maybe saved myself an extra decade of depression. I'm happy now, but it just pains me to know how many unhappy people are out there that just need to be told that it's okay or just need to be educated on LGBT issues. Thankfully, it's getting better with younger generations, since nearly everyone can now find a community to help them from a younger age.
Or Ace Ventura, serial killers in horror movies, Chandler's "dad" in Friends... There are probably more examples but we were (are?) the butt of the joke for decades. A writer on Friends later said they regretted it, but the damage is done.
At least now there are things like Euphoria which while there's a lot of criticism about that show, they really nailed the trans character. I highly recommend watching Hunter Schafer's solo episode - it's really good even without context. Also my favorite short film The Real Thing which is what made me finally realise and admit it to myself. Can't help but imagine how many years of my life I wouldn't have wasted if I'd watched something like that on TV growing up.
I feel this one. I promised myself at the start of my transition that ultimately being queer should be the least interesting thing about me. Not that I try to downplay it or never talk about it, but that there is so much more to me than my gender and sexuality. I'm still inside the first year of medical transition, but I'm already feeling that kind of "now what?" moment as well. After spending so long figuring out gender and literally having it be all I could think about for a couple of years, now that things are just gently progressing my brain has relinquished so much anxiety and worry that I have all this new headspace for reorganising my life. It transpires that structures and routines I had almost unknowingly put in place to deal with constant depression and dysphoria are no longer necessary.
So relatable. I was unable to live an actual life for that period because I just couldn't go outside since I didn't pass. I then moved to another city and decided that there would never come a better time than that - so despite only passing about 50% of the time, I just went with it. But it was a huge mistake because it only made me worse. I had never had anxiety and panic attacks before in my life, but it started happening because of the stares I was getting - like some people would literally turn their head and truly stare at me.
I then got the infamous bangs and now I 100% pass.
It's still unfathomable to me that a simple haircut could change my life so much. But little by little, I realised that I was no longer worrying about how I looked when I went outside. I still have social anxiety etc. but like I mentioned above, it's at a level that it's within the range of being a normal-people-problem. A level that I can actually work with, deal with, and move on from. I had zero hopes for the future before this, but now I do.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
I've been letting this marinate in the back of my head for a few hours, because when I first saw the question I knew that it was a great open question to ask, but I've been struggling with how open the question is. How many hours have I spent in queer communities, learning from the experiences of others? How much has questioning my own identity caused me to seek out others and listen to their stories to try and find the best language to describe myself? How many hours have I spent educating myself through the books by queer theorists, writers, spiritualists, scientists who study sexual and romantic relationships, and psychologists who study human behavior? How can I even begin to distill any of this down to something bite sized and inherently queer?
I'm not sure that I can put together something akin to meditations by marcus aurelius yet focused on the queer experience, but I can definitively say that being queer provided me an excellent vantage point through which to challenge the assumptions I had about the world and really plug me into just how diverse people really are. I really like the word queer. Queer means that something is strange, odd, weird, abnormal, or different enough to justify it's own word. I like the word because being queer and identifying as queer and exploring queerness all feel like opening a door to the mysteries of the world. When you open that door you are truly transported somewhere magical - a place where people do things that you never imagined were possible. Following queerness has brought me so much joy because you can find some of the strangest people with the most outrageous ideas about how they should live their lives and for me, this exposure not only taught me so much about everything I took for granted and shined a light on all the lies I were taught were truth, but this expansion of my world was also incredibly grounding. The ways in which I felt odd or different because I was slightly queerer than my average peer felt a lot less like mountains and started to feel a bit more like hills. For the ways in which I truly was quite out there, it felt less alienating and less like it mattered, because in the grand scheme of things there were so many other fascinating individuals out there. In fact, in many ways it felt more okay to celebrate that diversity. After all, who writes a book about the most normal individual ever? Strong protagonists are not normal - weirdness and oddity make them interesting and these characteristics should be celebrated!
I think the most fascinating and important lesson that queerness taught me is a lesson on perspective - specifically the perspective that a curiosity about queerness brought to fruition. The wisdom that I wish to share is that I think true curiosity is both a virtue and valuable skill. The desire to explore and learn from the world while simultaneously doing your best to remain open minded to the possibilities that exist will make you into a more compassionate, loving and kind person.
To be cynical.
I know the above comments are more... but as a gay, anarchist activist with years of organizing and street level activism experience with LGBT+ but also homelessness, harm reduction and general anti-capitalist movement and the intersectional perspective that participating in those brings I can simply say that I'm more cynical and even more untrusting of larger organizational structures and society as a whole (you'd think the anarchist part woulda finished that off huh?).
In short, see MLK Jr's letter from a Birmingham jail for my distrust of the society I find myself.
Sure, individually you meet some people that aren't intending to do you harm directly but at the end of the day we're all continually supporting and perpetuating systems of oppression that no one seems to be taking seriously. The rates of rape and murder of indigenous women/girls, the gun crisis amongst youth, the wealth inequality, the nationalistic fervor, the religious dogmatic hate...
I just don't see it getting better and despite how some may feel the polling amongst Gen Z is consistently disheartening. Increasing rates of "traditional values", increasing rates of distrust of "feminism". Sure Gen Z is increasingly identifying as LGBT+ (which I'll happily accept) but overall the way American society is swinging and the way the corporate interests have captured every movement, agenda and almost every political interest; religious infiltration of the courts and governance and the general burnout from the yoke of the grind/work/capitalist culture we have I don't foresee it getting any better (or at least not significantly in my lifetime) and possibly getting much much worse.
Sorry, just the reality from an "on the ground" activist/educator/organizer. We're disheartened out here and we don't feel like the rest of America can or will come to help. Just doing our best, making sandwiches and feeding people best we can when we can but it's getting worse by the day. More LGBT+ youth (hell, just more people as a whole!) on the streets, more suicide attempts by youth (especially LGBT+ youth - in fact in the time it's taken me to type all this 5 LGBT+ youth have tried to commit suicide) and a society that is increasingly divided and online spaces pervasive with anti-trans/anti-progressive agendas.
So, yeah...being LGBT+ has taught me to be cynical.
Anyone would have a hard time staying positive if they dealt with the things that you have, and had those experiences. So I think becoming cynical is only natural.
I have never seen anything like what you describe here in Denmark - not that homelessness doesn't exist but it is nowhere near what the US has, nor do we have gun problems or as extreme a conservative movement. So thank you for this perspective and you shouldn't have to apologize for sharing.
That I'm still me, and my existence helps to exemplify asexuality and aromance rather than the other way around. In other words, just because there are parts of me that may not fit within the expectations of what an asexual/aromantic person is like does not invalidate me identifying my orientation as such. Rather, it expands upon the shallow, narrow expectations of asexual/aromantic people's traits and now becomes the problem of anyone who wants to resist this expansion. I am not responsible for other people's misguided (and sometimes willfully so) expectations of who and what I am.
So, while I do like cake... pie, lemonade, fried chicken, dirty rice, chai tea, chicken alfredo pizza, and more, are other things I'd prefer over sex and romance. :)
This one took me a while. You really have to scrub through your whole life to find answers. A few days ago I wrote a reply here mentioning existentialism and authenticity. I think existentialism is essentially a queer philosophy. One of the core ideas is learning how to be your true self, and that’s basically the quintessential queer experience. When you realize you are part of a sexual or gender minority, you realize that you cannot comply with society’s expectations and roles, and are forced to adopt your own.
From that point of view, it also lets you see a lot of the parts of society that are sick and broken. First you will see all the ways society is hostile to you. Then you see the ways it is hostile to straight people. at some point you begin to see the ways that it happens to other kinds of minorities as well.
But perhaps it is a bit foolish of me to consider this to be a universal queer experience. There are a number of people who will do anything to fit in with the people who want to oppress us. I suppose it is more accurate to the people who hold queer philosophy rather than gender and sexual minorities as a whole.
On a much more personal note, it wasn’t until I finally admitted to myself that I was gay that I finally learned how to love people. I really hated humanity as a kid. I was very poorly adapted to society and was constantly bullied. The main motivation I had for coming out was that I would think about the future and only see loneliness and it was too painful to bear. Coming out to me meant that maybe at least I wouldn’t be alone. Even though it was supposedly the harder path, it was basically the only option I could see working out. I probably would have killed myself otherwise. You can probably see why so value authenticity so much.
My eternal ambiguity about my gender or sexual preferences is itself OK. Embracing fluidity has made me a good bit happier about my general wishy-washiness.
To put it broadly, the importance of being myself, not just in terms of being LGBT, but in terms of my entire personality and interests! With the power of retrospect, I can see just how un-genuine some of my friendships were when growing up. I'd change who I was so that I could actually be friends with certain people/friend groups, instead of finding people I truly fit in with.
For example, with my main circle of friends I had in high school and early college, I was completely devastated when they eventually ghosted me, but in retrospect, it was the best thing that ever happened to me, as it allowed me to find different friend groups that I fit in with more. These new friend groups allowed me to be myself, which eventually led to me exploring my gender and feeling safe in coming out to them as trans. That was 7 years ago now and I'm more "myself" than I ever was. No more hiding and if anybody doesn't like me for who I am, then I guess we just won't be friends and that's okay!
Being LGBT has taught me a lot on how important it is to just be your genuine self in all aspects, not just in terms of gender or sexuality. You may lose some friends or family along the way and that super sucks, but for many, you'll come out the other side with more genuine friendships and with people that truly love you for who you are, not just people that hang out with you when they're bored. My current friends love me for who I am and I love them for who they are and I can't believe that I was denied that for the first 25 years of my life. I know the same thing happens to many non-LGBT people as well, but it took me discovering my gender and sexuality to start being my true self, start being happy and confident with my self, and start making some genuine friends.
Being queer taught me the value of safe spaces. Before I realised I was trans, I had never understood the concept. I and all of my friends and family were friendly, accepting people. I had trans friends and family, I had gay friends and family. The need for safe spaces was completely alien to me because as far as I was concerned, the world (or at least, my country) was a safe space. It wasn't until I began experimenting with my gender and coming out that I realised what a boon safe spaces could be. Somewhere to be yourself without fear of retribution, attack, or rejection. Somewhere you didn't have to worry about remembering who knew you by what name and pronouns, or where they wouldn't ambush you with questions about heterosexual relationships. Somewhere that no matter your presentation or your sexuality, you would be accepted.
Cis, male (and let's be honest, white) privilege meant that I had never had to worry about feeling in danger simply because of who I am. I wasn't at risk of assault or abuse, and I could go about my life however I wanted. I had never truly put myself in the shoes of a queer person to understand why they would want bars and cafes and book shops and clubs and societies for their own. I assumed that because I regarded myself and my social circle as a place of allyship, that it would be representative of the whole country (I wasn't naive enough to think that the world was so secure).
Coming out as trans helped me to figure out that safe spaces are a benefit for a huge number of reasons. Being able to experiment with presentation semi-publicly but away from the prying eyes of people who I feared might reject me was paramount to the success of my early transition. Before I felt ready to go fully out and about as a woman, having locations where I knew that queer people like me could expect to be safe and secure was crucial. Now I'm less bothered about using them, because I'm more secure in myself, and even though I don't pass, I'm content to just exist in the world and go the places that I want to. But sometimes, when I go to a new town or city, it's really nice to know that there exist places where I can just be me without worry.