The whole concept of the LGBT+ community has been somewhat blurred to me for years. Who can claim to be a part of it? How do I know if I'm actually bi if I haven't ever dated anyone; do I just think I'm bi, and is that enough? And am I, in fact, bi at all? How do I fit in, am I accepted?
These are all questions I've been asking myself for some time now. This autumn three places on the internet have helped me to understand the community as well as myself a lot better. They are as follows:
- Gay YA is a blog and a website about LGBTQIA people in young adult literature. I came across them during bisexual awareness week and since then, they have also participated in asexual awareness week and trans awareness week. I've learned so much and read so many important and intelligent posts.
- Quilt Magazine is a site for LGBT+ representation. They also have very good articles regarding the community.
- Morgan York's blog post has probably been the single most effective thing. More on that next.
In her long but thoroughly interesting post Morgan York talks about gender identity, sexual identity and how everyone should be welcomed to the LGBT+ community without questioning their right to be there. She also explains some of the terminology that had previously been unclear to me and she had a huge impact on how I see myself as a part of the community.
For years, I had identified as bisexual. As I said, I haven't dated anyone ever, but I've been interested in and attracted to more than one gender. Still, I wasn't sure if I truly fell into the LGBT+ spectrum and I often thought of myself more as an ally. Why was that? I didn't think I was bi enough, or something. First thing I learned from Morgan York's post, that changed my way of thinking: I am definitely enough. No one can tell me otherwise.
I always thought I was bisexual because that was the term I was familiar with. But as the Gay YA and Morgan York invaded my life, I learned a new term: pansexual. It means a person who can be attracted to men, women, and other people of other genders or with no gender at all. First I rejected this; I had claimed the label bisexual and I was familiar with it. The more I thought about it, though, the more I felt that pan is actually what I am. I'm interested in people. Cute people, intelligent people, all sorts of people and I don't care where they fall on the gender spectrum.
Slowly but steadily I have claimed my newly-found label and started to like it. I feel comfortable in my own skin and head and a little giddy because I have met the nicest and cutest person (who probably is waay ot of my reach for multiple reasons, but who cares.) All the awareness weeks have certainly made me very aware and taught me a lot of new terminology and other super interesting things. My trans friend gets to start their process in the spring and I'm so happy for them.
All this has come down to one thing: I want to write about it. About taking the first steps into the community, about finding out things about yourself, about falling for someone and about wrapping your head around the fact that your friend is still the same person but how awesome they are because they had the guts to come out to you and a bunch of other friends.
I want to do it well, too. I want to avoid any problematic narratives and ways of thinking. This is what scares me a bit: I've read a ton of material on why this and that is problematic, and while I feel smarter now, I'm also afraid of doing just the wrong thing anyway. I want to do it and I want to do it right. There's little point in writing queer representation if I just make myself part of another problem.
But yeah. This is a story idea I'm rolling around in my head right now. If I get it written at some point, I'll probably post it here. I really wish that will happen. Also, if there's something inaccurate in this post or the story, please let me know. I'm still fairly new to all of this and might get something accidentally wrong.
