I didn't "come out" as a kid, in part because there were bigger crises in my childhood. I just was, & later found my "people" among those who grieved the limits of so much LGBTQ+ activism.
Queerness asks big questions about why society is the way it is. Why can't we choose who's with us in hospital? Why does a certificate decide so much? Why are human rights contingent on label status?
*Society* still needs to come out (of its old shell).
And we will welcome it when it does.
@MLClark I never considered there was an actual word outside of insults for what I was until I read my dad's medical textbooks when I was 11
I grew up hearing jokes, and being bullied. F*g was the preferred insult before they'd beat the hell out of me
I didn't know what to do, didn't have the language to define what I can easily define now, but somehow the kids saw it, and there was nothing but hatred
Now, after seeing slow progress for years, I see things coming back around to hatred again.
🫂 Thank you for sharing that pain, Rebecca. So much hard living in just a few lines.
Queer folk make the easiest scapegoats for people who in times of scarcity and uncertainty seek power by promising a return to order.
Between climate change, demographic shift in the US, and the rise of emboldened nationalism from both, we're living in a perfect storm of excuses for hate and violence to that end.
These will not be easy days, or years.
But we will meet them all the same. 🫂
