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Queer youth
Sep. 27th, 2009 06:17 pmComing Out in Middle School
(I don't think this will go into the archives)
“When I first realized I was gay,” Austin interjected, “I just assumed I would hide it and be miserable for the rest of my life. But then I said, ‘O.K., wait, I don’t want to hide this and be miserable my whole life.’ ”
I asked him how old he was when he made that decision.
“Eleven,” he said.
--
I'm a very easy audience for stories about queer youth. Almost anything or everything about them touches me deep inside. I'm not even sure why, because I didn't put one and one together until my late teens myself and so these stories of finding oneself and navigating school as a queer kid are not my own. Well, there's not part of my individual history, anyway, because in so many ways they are mine. Over the years, I have heard them from so many people, I have lived them through friends, I have told them to countless people - these are narratives that I know so well, struggles that I understand so much.
I still remember at the MAG when we weren't sure what to do because the organization had originally been created for youth 16-25 and kids younger than that started to show up. Already we were surprised, and we weren't that much older. We welcomed them, obviously, and we continue to do so. I'm the one who welcomed the first 15-year-old that came in, and I still think of him so fondly today.
We live in such a heteronormative world - heterosexuality is everywhere, in what we say, what we see, what we hear - and to think that these kids at 10, 11, 12, already have enough strength and maturity to say they will not put up with it, they will not let it decide what feels good and what is right for them. I can't begin to explain how much this article makes me want to be more than a reader. I know I already am, in a way, because of the volunteer work I still do with LGBT youth and young adults, but I want to be even more, I miss the involvement I had with the MAG. I miss helping create a space where LGBT youth - where they, where we - could come together and find friends and talk and laugh and be happy. Being part of this community, once you scratch beyond the self-hatred and the prejudice, it's a beautiful thing, and I want to keep celebrating it, I want to keep helping youth find it.
There are things that interrogate me and bother me in the article, almost all of them having to do with different expectations for girls and boys. But regardless, the stories of these kids are heart-warming and heart-wrenching, and I hope I will keep being close to these narratives for a long while. Not just as a reader, not just as a researcher - but as someone who is part of a support system that celebrates kids who are different and wonderful and feisty and funny.
(I don't think this will go into the archives)
“When I first realized I was gay,” Austin interjected, “I just assumed I would hide it and be miserable for the rest of my life. But then I said, ‘O.K., wait, I don’t want to hide this and be miserable my whole life.’ ”
I asked him how old he was when he made that decision.
“Eleven,” he said.
--
I'm a very easy audience for stories about queer youth. Almost anything or everything about them touches me deep inside. I'm not even sure why, because I didn't put one and one together until my late teens myself and so these stories of finding oneself and navigating school as a queer kid are not my own. Well, there's not part of my individual history, anyway, because in so many ways they are mine. Over the years, I have heard them from so many people, I have lived them through friends, I have told them to countless people - these are narratives that I know so well, struggles that I understand so much.
I still remember at the MAG when we weren't sure what to do because the organization had originally been created for youth 16-25 and kids younger than that started to show up. Already we were surprised, and we weren't that much older. We welcomed them, obviously, and we continue to do so. I'm the one who welcomed the first 15-year-old that came in, and I still think of him so fondly today.
We live in such a heteronormative world - heterosexuality is everywhere, in what we say, what we see, what we hear - and to think that these kids at 10, 11, 12, already have enough strength and maturity to say they will not put up with it, they will not let it decide what feels good and what is right for them. I can't begin to explain how much this article makes me want to be more than a reader. I know I already am, in a way, because of the volunteer work I still do with LGBT youth and young adults, but I want to be even more, I miss the involvement I had with the MAG. I miss helping create a space where LGBT youth - where they, where we - could come together and find friends and talk and laugh and be happy. Being part of this community, once you scratch beyond the self-hatred and the prejudice, it's a beautiful thing, and I want to keep celebrating it, I want to keep helping youth find it.
There are things that interrogate me and bother me in the article, almost all of them having to do with different expectations for girls and boys. But regardless, the stories of these kids are heart-warming and heart-wrenching, and I hope I will keep being close to these narratives for a long while. Not just as a reader, not just as a researcher - but as someone who is part of a support system that celebrates kids who are different and wonderful and feisty and funny.
