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And my wife![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
waxjism commented
My parents had some gay and trans friends when I was an infant and there were a handful of gay and lesbian people in my Unitarian Universalist church over the years when I was a kid - friendly acquaintances but not actually family friends, at least until I was teenaged and got to know my dad's work bff who was gay (he wasn't a dinner party friend because his partner lived 5 hrs' drive away in Atlanta and he spent all his weekends there). ANYWAY, I never knew our queer acquaintances very well (and always was a bit starstruck and curious but too shy to like seek them out and talk to them especially), and I always kind of felt that queer people in general were a lot cooler than me so I always felt a bit let down that I was not as cool as them, and I vaguely felt that if I were that cool surely I would have known about it. I can't actually remember a time before I knew about bisexuality either.
So anyway, I was really lucky in terms of knowing about queer people and knowing some of them. But gay people still were Other to me because they're so fucking invisible and so othered in culture/media that the overwhelming message that "these people are other" was actually able to drown out the completely contradictory facts in my brain (of identifying with them quite strongly obviously myself, hence the curiosity and sort of wistful admiration or whatever)(and also of actually knowing them personally and uh, knowing they were ordinary, non-other people)! Maybe if I'd seen them (us?) in the media more I would have figured it out before age 19? I'm not really sure. But hey, even if not, it still would have been nice.
My liberal parents did their best, but to be exposed to anything gay or bi in the media you would usually pretty much have to go hunting for it. They own thousands of sff books that overflow their whole house, but after decades of voracious reading they came up with a list of probably fewer than 10 gay-protagonist sff books when I asked them a few years ago. Partly this might be them not necessarily remembering the titles/authors for all the ones they've read, not having had a particular interest until ten years ago.
I kind of wanted to write a conclusion but then my brain sort of wandered off. Hopefully tomorrow this will still look like everything I wanted to say.
“We’ve certainly made some hints to the possibility of Stiles being bisexual.”
Jeff Davis (x)
original post
And my wife
waxjism commented#when I was a teenager #no one on TV was like me #I didn’t even know bisexuality was a thing #outside of crappy porn
#and that's why it took me #until I was 23 #to know how it was possible #to not be gay and not be straight
My parents had some gay and trans friends when I was an infant and there were a handful of gay and lesbian people in my Unitarian Universalist church over the years when I was a kid - friendly acquaintances but not actually family friends, at least until I was teenaged and got to know my dad's work bff who was gay (he wasn't a dinner party friend because his partner lived 5 hrs' drive away in Atlanta and he spent all his weekends there). ANYWAY, I never knew our queer acquaintances very well (and always was a bit starstruck and curious but too shy to like seek them out and talk to them especially), and I always kind of felt that queer people in general were a lot cooler than me so I always felt a bit let down that I was not as cool as them, and I vaguely felt that if I were that cool surely I would have known about it. I can't actually remember a time before I knew about bisexuality either.
So anyway, I was really lucky in terms of knowing about queer people and knowing some of them. But gay people still were Other to me because they're so fucking invisible and so othered in culture/media that the overwhelming message that "these people are other" was actually able to drown out the completely contradictory facts in my brain (of identifying with them quite strongly obviously myself, hence the curiosity and sort of wistful admiration or whatever)(and also of actually knowing them personally and uh, knowing they were ordinary, non-other people)! Maybe if I'd seen them (us?) in the media more I would have figured it out before age 19? I'm not really sure. But hey, even if not, it still would have been nice.
My liberal parents did their best, but to be exposed to anything gay or bi in the media you would usually pretty much have to go hunting for it. They own thousands of sff books that overflow their whole house, but after decades of voracious reading they came up with a list of probably fewer than 10 gay-protagonist sff books when I asked them a few years ago. Partly this might be them not necessarily remembering the titles/authors for all the ones they've read, not having had a particular interest until ten years ago.
I kind of wanted to write a conclusion but then my brain sort of wandered off. Hopefully tomorrow this will still look like everything I wanted to say.
