I turned 62 today. Thanks to the internet I discovered what Asexual was (when I was 50). I know if Id had the information when I was younger I think I would have come out in my 20's. I grew up knowing I didnt like boys or girls (in that way). I was always the perfect 3rd wheel for my friends to take on a date, lol
I think that might be me as well. 50 years old and never been in a relationship - and it doesn't really bother me. I've had crushes, but it never went beyond that so...?
So, I’m a 74 year old female bi and I lived through the AIDS epidemic in California losing men to death whom were dear friends and in one case, a partner to me. This man and I were in a non-monogamous relationship for 17 years until his death from AIDS. We deeply cherished each other and managed to trust our love even though both of us had frequent, regular sex with other partners. Looking back I can only marvel. We had stopped our (highly satisfying) sexual relationship about five years before his death because both of us had committed to monogamous relationships. Which undoubtedly saved my life. And he told me “At least there is one person I love whom I am not killing.” These words still break my heart.
That’s so heartbreaking that he passed without forgiving himself and instead blaming himself. No one was at fault for AIDS. I am sorry for your loss ❤️
My grandma is bi and I'm the only one who knows, because I came out to her first and she was always scared of judgement. She even was in a relationship with a girl for 2 years in the 60s!
That’s really heartbreaking. I was a huge supporter of LGBT people back when I was a teenager 2002 - 2009 and somewhere along the way I became bigoted towards them 2010 - 2019 and was not supportive as I should have been. I would never want someone I love to feel ashamed or embarrassed to be themselves around me so I reverted back to my old days of acceptance and love. I wish you and your grandmother the best. She’s lucky to have you as I’m sure you’re just as lucky to have her. ❤ best wishes.
@@mainemade73 It took a lot of work and facing my past. I didn’t really start working on myself until 2019. I’m glad too because when you’re a kinder person, you can appreciate life more. I feel a lot of guilt about my past because I hurt people I cared about but I’m just taking it one day at a time.
I feel like the bisexual community might contribute a large amount to the sudden jump in lgbt+ statistics ( I am not trying to undermine any other sexuality btw) because I feel a lot of bisexuals would have hidden it an gotten with people of the opposite gender and told everyone they were straight even if they knew they like the same gender too, but nowadays people feel more comfortable identifying as bi and feel they do not have to hide their attraction to the same gender (for most people, although unfortunately some people do still have to hide their same gender attraction from others around them)
@@sqiudy-catmedland1421 I honestly can't believe that that many people are straight! It was standard for the Greeks (2,5k years ago) to be bi/attracted to more than one gender. Where did all the bi people go? Thus making me think that big parts of society seemingly still hide a part of their identity.... I'm not saying being straight/gay is invalid, I'm gay myself lol
The same reason why there's suddenly more lefthanded people. When you stop punishing and criminalizing people for being different they come out. It's incredibly simple.
Good. Your blissful ignorance means that the leftie agenda is working. We become stronger each day as we keep spreading lefthand propaganda and you do nothing about our satanic schemes 🌝🔥
Regarding fewer older queer people: in addition to stigma, legal complications, and self-denial, one more sad fact (added: that Jessica addresses from 10:30 onward) is that we tended to not live as long as straight people of comparable other demographic traits, and IIRC this difference has still not entirely disappeared. Especially AIDS took away a swath of our elders.
I don't think those of us lucky to have been born after the worst of it realise just how horrendous the death toll was. A lot of the men involved in dog shows in the US were/are queer, when people talk about things like you couldn't go to a show without being told another breeder or handler was dead every single week
@@jdwrink There's a lot of queer people in general, although it varies by breed as you can imagine. Some of the "macho" or "country" breeds have a lot of very conservative people involved. Although I know a transman who breeds and works rottweilers, he's very much the exception in that breed
My sister was a baby boomer and didn't come out until her mid 30's (early 90's). Unfortunately she was only able to live openly as who she was for another decade before illness took her from us. The thing people need to remember is that until very, very recently, if you came out and lived openly as LGBTQ+, you risked your job, your home (yes, people were evicted for being gay...especially at the start of the AIDS crisis), your family and friends, your medical care and sometimes your freedom. So many people lived secret lives just so they could have the same rights as everyone else. Now with all of these hate laws being passed as quickly as they can be (thankfully the courts are striking a lot of them down) a certain group of people are trying to drag us back to those bad old days. It won't work, but it does piss me off that we have to fight this same fight again.
I used to be worried if polyamorous people would have protections by the time I got older. Now I'm worried if our lgbt+ kids will be safe in school. Or if trans/nonbinary people will be allowed to exist in public.
Yes exactly!! Say this!! My Boomer aunt (now in her 60s) never formally came out at work or to the whole family, as the community we're from is so rural and conservative, and her job was in civil service. It was an open implied secret and she had to live her entire life so quietly. She always called her girlfriends her 'friends' or 'colleagues'. Breaks my heart to think about it.
The sad thing is those times are in the living memory of some of those pushing for those laws. Being a teen in the late 80s/early 90s, I remember watching the hateful rhetoric being splashed on the evening news regarding the AIDS epidemic and how gays "deserved" it. I have no wish to go back to those times.
the scary thing is it will work unless we fight back. fascism is on the rise and i cant believe it. crazy times were in. we gotta stick together because we outnumber the people filled with hatred.
The sort of good news is: the cat doesn't go back into the box easily. Also, the number of allies and queers in general are higher than they have ever been. We outnumber the conservative religious types who want to oppress everyone not cishet and "normative". The bad news is, you must be active. Vote all the time and get younger people aware of the tactics Religious Right used to put rheir own into power in the 60, 70s and 80s. They are losing ground but we MUST push back harder and show them their opressive beliefs aren't going to rule us.
I’m part of gen z but I grew up in a very homophobic and transphobic family but once I was outside of there there was this openness of my fellow lgbtq+ peers and it actually helped me unlearn a lot of it quicker than expected. The internet was as a very important part of this too
I work with a huge amount of teens in Canada in a warehouse, girls are super girly and hetero always looking for bf and stuff, the guys I feel them more passive than when I was a teen but still hetero and fighting for popularity, so where are the lgbtq? where I have to look for? is just an american thing, if so, how can we explain this?
@@DDXXI-z9b LGTBQ+ is massively promoted in the US to the point where it starts to devolve into unusual stuff, as a result many young people with developing minds get filled with mostly nonsense and would feel the need to be gay or something. People may call me a homophobe or whatever but I’m speaking objectively that many young people are swayed to be lgbtq by so many things.
@jessicaoutofthecloset holy sh*t. You are the first person I have ever heard of who has observed something I have been telling others for years. That there are two types of people, those who bad things happen to and they want it to happen to everyone else because it's not fair, and those who bad things happen to and they want to make sure it never happens to someone else, because it's not fair. I base this off of differences between myself and my mother. Considering that I'm watching your channel you can probably guess which camp I fall into. Thank you for adding that part to your video. I felt crazy because no one else seems to notice it about our world. ❤
@@Bugg...0_oLots of other people see it too, and you’re not crazy 😊 💜 and also I think a lot of people feel that way but don’t know how to put it into words, unfortunately. I do think the duality is represented in the huge number of videos about gentle parenting, healing from/dealing with abusive people, and other therapeutic concepts. Cheers 🍻
As a very young millenial asexual, no way I would have figured that out without the internet. Even with it, I spent ~10 years waiting to catch up with my peers/wondering what was wrong with me because I was just not presented it as an option.
Similar for me as aroace born 1994. You only need to add that there is still almost zero awareness for aces and aros in Germany. If my proficiency of English was not near native level, I would never have found out. Even online information about these groups in German is almost nonexistent. And what little there is is far from being an accurate description.
Same. I even got married because I thought I would "learn to" enjoy sex, "like everybody else." Like, seriously, after we had sex the first time, my husband and I googled what might have gone wrong, and google said "the first time" can be unpleasant, but practice will fix it. I didn't realize "sexual attraction" was a real thing until years later, when I learned about asexuality. Prior to that, I thought people talking about their sexuality were just talking about preferring the physical sensation of penis vs vagina rubbing against their genitals. Until I had it explained to me, I even didn't realize there was a feeling (like appetite) that came BEFORE the physical act of sex. I never felt physical attraction to my husband, and I didn't realize I was "supposed to" feel anything just by looking at someone. I thought people choosing partners based on looks were just shallow.
One point that I would like to add: we don't have data on the number of Queer people who took their own lives because they lived in such a bigoted world ❤ we only know that even in our relatively different world this is still an issue.
My mom lost a sibling this way in the late 70s😥 In going through their things after, the family realized they were probably trans. Made mom a bit panicky about the mental health impacts of being LGBT when my brother was 3 and she began to suspect he was gay (correctly, it turns out). Luckily the pediatrician gave good advice when she asked about it.
@@fvbbaby2792@erint5373 Trigger warning: brief mention of the concepts or suicide, physical abuse, religious abuse, I think thats all, no details really. Small town queer here *(see below). In a place where we are taught to love they neighbor as we love ourselves (but are taught to hate ourselves and our neighbors) there are so many families who have that aunt who never married, but moved in with her "friend" later in life, that uncle who everyone suspected, and then suspected suicide when the family's story of how he died wasn't quite right, and so many who just vanished. Either of the last two were never spoken of again. It's like they never existed, and that's how you know. Can you blame them? Maybe, idk. I graduated high school in the mid 2000s. My best friend growing up, they tried to get the demons out of her that were turning her gay. She went through many bad straight relationships after that. I saw a few years ago she had a beautiful wedding to a woman. Idk if they are still together but I hope so. I had the uncle who vanished, she had the uncle who died. I've had my share of bible verses screamed at me by family, and been physically assaulted, but never did they try to exercise demons from me. Considering that, and our uncles, I probably had the better kind of family around here. * I'm sometimes hesitant to use that term because I know how it's been used to hurt others, but considering that I think it's the shortest, most concise way to describe me (and like, it ain't everybody's business that I'm a nonbianary polyamorous pansexual, esp in a place where none of this is accepted but some are more dangerous than others) but considering how often it's been lobbed at me specifically with the intention of hurt (sometimes landing) I feel I have that right to use it. If it is hurtful to you specifically I do apologize. I would never hurt someone on purpose.
@@Bugg...0_o'm a small town/rural america queer who graduated high school a few years ago and im sad to say, it hasnt changed much for small towns 💔 less exorcisms, some more kind teachers from big cities who try to help, but its still pretty lowkey and bleak. have cousins of my mom's generation we refer to as aunts who are "good friends," we were always told as children. i'm lucky my mom's generation grew up during the rights movement. its a taboo, but its not bad in their eyes, just never talked about and skirted around. the grandparents generation, though... not religious, but i've had my share of slurs thrown at me (and im not even out! just a little too queer for comfort... scare me back into the closet i think).
Being in rural America these days, not much has changed. I'm trying not to cry. I genuinely love and care about you. I'm Gen X. We loved each other fiercely but couldn't protect one another from their parents or the hateful older generations. I truly can't count how many friends and friends of friends that are no longer with us. I miss their laughs and smiles. I cherish the memories. A very close friend moved with his partner to the UK in hopes that they would be safer. Tragically, they made a pact to end their lives together. My heart still aches for them. That's just one instance out of too many. Personally, I thought all women were attracted to other women until I was old enough to learn differently.
I was a staunch lgbt+ ally until I realized I was bisexual at a *very* late age (tail end of baby boomer generation). All three of my bisexual children were quietly waiting for me to sort it out for myself 😂. Nothing really changed except now I understand myself better. Talking about all of this openly saves lives. Love your videos! 🌈
That's still very common especially for bisexual women/AFAB people. Bierasure coupled with the idea that girls crushing on other girls is just normal. Its a YA book, but as a bi millennial, Becky Abertailli's newest book talks about it, from her own experience and it is so well handled
im so glad you've found out more about yourself! its never too late to find who you are ❤ i often, as a gay child, wonder about my mom (also tail end of the baby boomer generation)... i'm sure you understand what i mean when i say i recognise some similarities between her and i 😂. i hope the more i am open about my identity, she may do some self-discovery too
Congratulations on the self realization! An online group I'm in did pride stories for pride month, and I saw 4 women in your age group all see themselves in those stories and realize that they're bi - and that's just the ones who processed it and posted about it in on the group page! Welcome to the rainbow. All the best to your beautiful bisexual family
I'm Generation X and bisexual. I was raised in Arkansas in the 80s and 90s. I was raised to believe anyone not straight was gay and anyone gay was wrong. Period end of discussion. So when I was attracted to other females, I suppressed those feelings. I dismissed them as fleeting moments. I was still attracted to males. So there was no reason to have to deal with the issue. Or so I thought. Years of therapy and going to college have helped me see that my upbringing was wrong, not me. Others, who fit a similar demographic, may have entered straight marriages and stayed in them. (I left mine). So they may know somewhere in them that they have these thoughts and feelings. But they still identify as straight because they have always been in straight relationships. And sadly many still believe that LGBTQ+ is wrong. Admitting they have those feeling is equivalent in their minds to admitting they've done something wrong.
It makes me sad whenever I see someone try and claim that being gay/trans/etc is a "choice". It always makes me think back to before I realized I was bi/trans and I just didn't understand why other people got to do that stuff and why I lived out in the country where "we don't do that" as my dad said. There's got to be so much unnecessary pain for those people to suppress themselves that much for so long Send you hugs and bugs❤
AZ chica here during same period. I didn't care about the internal homophobia or what people thought of me. Back then there was only binary choices you were gay or straight, no inbetween. If you liked the same sex, you were gay, didn't matter if you liked the opposite sex too. Many of my friends in HS/college were gay & we marched for AIDS (the quilt thing and I recall the fear in my male friends during that time too). I didn't fit in as fully gay, but neither fully straight. It was not until louder voices had the convos in the twenty teens (2010) that I found the label and could use it as my own & was a correct description. Anyhoo, love this vid and giving so many of us voices and how to see ourselves even if we tend to be on the older end of the spectrum(gen x)
Gen X cis/ace here... long journey because I knew I wasn't gay, but I'm not "straight" either. Discovering Asexuality was a huge revelation, after years of emotionally painful experiences I finally understood I wasn't broken!
Honestly I'm a bi teenager nowadays and if I'm being honest this might have happened to me if I had been born 30 years before, which is kind of crazy to think about. I'm pretty much only so comfortable with who I am because of the environment I grew up in.
I had a very eye opening conversation a few months ago. My grandpa and I were looking at pictures of our family on vacation. And we would visit these friends of my grandparents multiple times. They were both women but I never questioned their relationship to each other because why would I? I assumed they were friends and that maybe their husbands had passed away or that they were simply both single. As we were looking at these picture my grandpa said:”Oh remembers these two? They were apparently in a relationship with each other.“ He just said it so casually but for me it was so eye opening and just outright amazing. I never had any queer people surrounding me growing up. But that made me realize that maybe I did but just did not realize it… I hope they are thriving and happy they must be over 75 now
I’m a lesbian gen x and came out in 1995 at 15. I’d say the world wasn’t very accepting back then. My family wasn’t very supportive and then went through times of being more accepting later… but 4 years ago my mother stopped talking to me because I had a baby with my wife who I’ve been with for 10 years. I haven’t spoken to my mother since.. I want to though. It breaks my heart that she feels that way but what can I do? I see the anti trans and anti Lgbtq rhetoric and violence resurgence happening very quickly. I live in Oregon apparently a very accepting state, and this month alone we have had several acts of violence ant threats to lgbtq community. We had proud boys show up to a high school pride even where children and families were present and the proud boys showed up heavily armed. Then just this week someone threw bricks and rocks through windows with rainbow signs including one of our lgbtq friendly churches. My friends bookstore also damaged. All of these laws policies and politics polarization around lgbtq issues has emboldened people to commit acts of violence and make threats. It’s become pretty scary especially with people brandishing weapons and guns lgbtq events. Who knows if that will turn into another massacre on lgbtq people.. I am afraid to bring my 3 year old to a pride event for that reason. I love her more than my own life and don’t ever want to put her in danger. I love learning about our history in this century and before. It fortifies me to know what others have gone through before and had the courage to be themselves and fight for their right to a dignified life. I’m so proud of them and I am proud of all of us in the lgbtq community. The fight is definitely not over and we need to stick together and vote and support each other.
I agree with your mother , i would not deny a child the human right to know and be raised by a biological parent intentionally . I would not use a surrogate either. ...most pride events are too sexualized for 3 year olds are they not ?
That photo of the choir is even more poignant when you remember that the photo, taken in 1993, shows 115 members with their backs turned; currently the choir's AIDS obituary list is over 300 long, so one turned back represents more than two deaths. Very powerful, very moving and very important to remember the devastation
I'm a Baby Boomer who didn't even know I was transgender or bisexual until I was diagnosed by a therapist in 2005. Until then, I thought I was a straight ally, from high school to college. I came out in 2006 and have lived as a female ever since! I had to fight off several gay-bashing attempts in my first year with pepper spray. I scared off a skinhead, a couple in a passing pickup truck, and 4 hip-hop thugs in an SUV. After that, nobody attacked me again! Cops call me "ma'am" and treat me like a lady! I now live with two roommates: a bisexual transgender ex-drag queen and a gay leather man and furry. Teens and little girls think I'm cool, compliment my clothes, and take selfies with me! Cosplayers complimented my outfit the other day at an anime convention! I met several crossplayers! I played Uno with two non-binary people in pink maid costumes!
@@kowynniea lot of therapists help people find their identities, since soul-searching like that can be too scary to do alone. along with that, in order for trans people to be allowed access to medical care and access to transition, we need to have a therapist diagnose us as being trans. along with that, it was only a few decades ago that being gay was considered a mental disorder and was diagnosed by therapists. overall, a lot of people have simply never had the safe space to question their identity, and therapy offers that space.
i would be interested to also discus the statistics of suicide. and also discussing the fact that many gay people from the older generations shut down their orientation and tried to live heterosexual lives, only to face depression, divorce, and misery.
and woah. the effect of AIDS on the current population is devastating. it's not that there are no gay people my age and older than me, it's that so many of them died when I was a kid. yikes!
I am 61 and I am one of those who hid from myself and lived a hetero life. I was told that girls crushed on girls all the time and that I was straight. Well, I know better now but because of circumstances, I am still trapped in the closet.
When my eldest came out as pan and NB, my mother basically told me everyone has the odd same-sex attraction, that time she kissed her girl friend, etc., but that didn't mean you had to be *gay* . You just had to make up your mind not to pursue those relationships. So basically, there are gay, pan, bi, aro/ace, etc in older generations who just identify as straight. If you accounted for AIDS deaths, the higher incidence of stress-related and poverty-related illnesses & deaths (including alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, heart disease, diabetes, etc.), and hate crimes, then tested the living population for *actual* orientation vs identity, you'd probably find at least a quarter of all people of all generations were/are LGBTQ+. The cisheteronormative agenda has just done a bang-up job suppressing that fact via law, cultural shaming, discrimination, medical malpractice, neglect of public health, and outright murder.
Gen X here. I was so sheltered and my access to information was so restricted, I had no idea there was any such thing as queer. But even then I was kissing girls when boys still had cooties. I learned there was LGBTQ in high school (1970s), but we didn't call it that, just gay. I didn't begin to explore until I was in my 20s. And I'm bi! Or pan, because I don't choose my partners by their bits. So now I identify as bi/queer, and have for the last 30 years. I lived through the AIDS epidemic and lost several key people in my life. It wasn't until HIV/AIDS was recognized in the straight community that research and treatment started. I watched helplessly. And then we come to now - I live in Florida. I want to leave the country, but I'm too poor to do that. Plus, few countries are welcoming to people from the US who do not have a high paying job waiting, or have a large amount of wealth. Jessica, you are a spot of sunshine in my day, even when you are not feeling good.
Hi neighbor! I'm an elder millennial married to a Gen Xer, and we live in GA. Leaving the country isn't financially available to us either. My best advice is to look for communities with large Quaker populations. Decatur, GA, or specifically City of Decatur, is SUPER accepting of LGBTQ individuals for this reason. There are good people here in the US. We just have to work hard to find each other.
Re moving out of the country (or even out of Florida), yeah. :( Yet again, us poor and disabled people are stuck without viable options. Best of luck to you. I hope some good things also come your way.
As another bi+ Gen X Floridian, I feel this. I've been looking for jobs outside of Florida with little success so far, but so many of my friends, especially trans friends and those with trans kids, are planning to leave or have already left the state. It's getting dangerous and frightening to live in Florida right now.
My mom has said a few things about her attraction to women, but she "shut that down." She talked about how hard it was growing up as a tomboy. She also talked about how mental illness was stigmatized in her day. When I first came out to my parents, I didn't really do a good job of it. I was 14 and really, really drunk after sneaking out with a friend at a slumber party to drink with other friends. I just screamed, "I'm going to hell because I'm gay," as my parents drove me to the hospital. Dad said, "You're not going there today" because that was his sense of humor. Mom insisted that I attend Catholic school for high school (the next year) because public schools "made it cool to be gay." Odd that we were Methodists, and she made a point to tell me I was baptized by a closeted gay minister (not sure of the current United Methodist stance, but then you could be gay and part of clergy, but if you were out you couldn't get paid). Maybe I should have clarified "Bi" instead of "Gay." A month later, I started dating the boy who would become my husband, so I feel like mom would add that "just a phase" argument. I am polyamorous, and with my boyfriend's consent, I started dating women. I told my mom about a woman I was going on a date with, and she insisted on calling it "going on an outing." I'm happily married with a baby on the way, and I'm not currently dating, but open. I am working on my relationship with my mom, but considering cutting her off. I don't know if I want her to have a relationship with my children, I have told her I'm pregnant, but I have not told her she is going to be a "grandmother."
it's so sad, your mom basically discriminated against herself all her life and then went on to do the same to you... I cut off my mom (though for different reasons), it's not easy but sometimes it's just best. I hope whatever you decide you're at peace with your decision. Congrats on the pregnancy! Your baby will be lucky to have such an open minded parent in you
Officially the current stance of the United Methodist Church is, as it has been since 1972, "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christianity". They're trying to change that but homophobia is still quite well-entrenched and it's literally tearing us apart. Separate from this, disputes about how accepting to be of trans clergy or trans people _in general_ in the church are also contributing to the split. Which means I have a dog in this fight.
@@fnjesusfreak That is in direct contrast to the Methodists her in the UK (where the denomination was founded) as the real Methodists are very open and accepting. I attended the school that John and Charles Wesley (the founders of Methodism) started in the 90s and there were several openly gay teachers.
@@SevCaswellYou might be interested to read more about some of early church history there. The Wesley brothers spent time in the colonies early on, apparently specifically drawn to evangelizing Native people. The Methodist movement developed there at the same time as in Britain, and John actually ordained a bunch of new American ministers on his own authority after independence. Half of my family comes from the former colonial branch, yeah. An awful lot of members are far from pleased with the United Methodist organization's continuing position on this subject. It's really not compatible with the overall emphasis on social justice, and hopefully this will turn around ASAP to be more in line with the British Methodists' approach.
@@jadsel The school I went to was founded in 1748, and John Wesley left England from Pill just outside Bristol where my god mother lives. He spent a lot of time preaching temperance in the Bristol area and also founded a free school for both boys and girls in the slums of the city, as well as the boarding school for the sons of his ministers next door to it (that moved to it's current location in Bath in 1852)
as a trans women it feels like i came out at the wrong time with all the anti trans bills and rhetoric, but it feels more like the best time everyone has been amazing and supportive and i feel like if i came out 20 or 30 yrs ago it would be a world away from what i have experienced
same! Im in my 30s and i only started coming out as trans 4 years ago. I was soo scared about how people would react, but literally everyone I know has been wonderful and im soo much happier and been living my life more since then than I can literally ever remember. Im in the UK so the anti trans laws aren't actually here yet in force, although our healthcare already sucks, but the way we are talked about in the media and by the government are really scary. But in my real life its like a different world. And its wonderful I don't know how I would have coped coming out 20 years ago. I can't imagine I would have been able to find the same community or felt soo generally accepted
The fact that they're trying harder and harder with anti trans rhetoric means that they're losing control of their narrative and they're scared. If we as a society can push past this resistance and keep going then hopefully we'll get to a point were trans people are more accepted in society and the bills that they're trying to ram through will be repealed/rejected.
I started 8 years ago or so. At least you probably dont have people asking if Caitlyn Jenner inspired you.... There is good and bad at everytime but we are moving towards more justice not less.
Yes, Boomers and Gen X lie about being gay. Growing up, I remember seeing my aunt light up when she saw her best friend in a way she never lit up for her husband. Her husband lit up for his best friend in a way he didn't light up for her either. I had exposure to lots of happy marriages to compare them too, and it was obvious, even to a young child, that they loved their "special friends" more than each other. They never admitted to having a lavender marriage, but it was obvious they made each other miserable and would have been much happier being their authentic selves. Instead of coming out of the closet, they used a Christian church so conservative it was basically a socially acceptable cult to indoctrinate their kids to be homophobic and now that he's dead she still can't come out because her kids would hate her. It's awful, but yes, they're lying. They're lying to us, and they're lying to themselves.
@@ferideylmaz6114Probably because their reaction and relationship with their "special friend" was different from their other close friends. If they just wanted to get away from each other, then they'd act like that with any friend, but they didn't.
My mother was the baby of the family. My oldest aunt was born in 1909 South Carolina, and she said something to me in the 90s I'll never forget: "There's nothing going on now that hasn't BEEN going on. The difference is now it's out in the open." JAMES
I'm old (and straight) and gay people of my parent's generation (born in the 1920s & 30s) often conformed to the extent of getting married and having families and keeping their sexuality secret. The alternative was being shunned or losing your job or going to prison. My mother's view was not anti-gay per se but she said gay people tended to lead sad and lonely lives, which wasn't entirely untrue. It wasn't that gay people were inherently miserable loners but society in general was very oppressive. One big cultural turning point in my view was 'The Naked Civil Servant' which millions of people watched.
I'm 50 and still live a sad and lonely life 😅 except for my partner, who is the light of my life 👩❤👩 but I could have done with a lot less hardship & lived as comfortably as my straight peers if I could've survived my depression while hiding who I am.
I've been quite focussed on my uncle's story since I was rather young, particularly after I realized that I was a lesbian. He died of AIDS in 1988, aged 26. When I was a teenager, I was super focussed on finding out as much as I could about him. I identified people he knew from newspaper articles (there was public outcry when he was fired from his job as a bus driver at the Olympics), but I quickly discovered that almost all of them had died of AIDS before I was born or when I was an infant. I ended up finding a friend of his who had AIDS but was still living (he passed away last year), and he told all of these stories about my uncle. He was the only one of his friend group (8 gay men) in the 80s to live past the early 2000s. I don't think I can really comprehend the scale of loss.
young lgbt people do absolutely have it better than what older lgbt people went through, but there are absolutely unique struggles that we are going through today. where i live, a bill was passed banning trans care for minors and i have to go off of the hormones that saved my life because of it. and im lucky, i know a lot of kids who are in dangerous situations because of their identities. i also know that most of the kids in my area are still very transphobic and homophobic. i really hope things improve for future generations, and if youre like me youre not alone
Many young LGBT people have been moving to my state for this very reason for years & while the more the merrier, I do wish everyone could just be free to be themselves wherever they want to & I hope things will start to change for the better soon 💗
I’m 42 and just realized in the past few years that I’m on the ace spectrum (specifically demisexual, which I didn’t even know was a thing). Wish I had been exposed to this info sooner because I just always figured there was something wrong with me for being different from all my friends/family 😕. Nice to know I’m not alone in how I feel about relationships
Imposter syndrome is so real… I was 18 when I first really questioned my sexuality. By 19, I quietly identified as Pan. I never said anything, because I wasn’t “queer” enough to do so - I felt the same about everyone, but strongly about no one. It wasn’t until 29 that I discovered the existence of asexuality and it wasn’t until 31 that I realized I was an ace lesbian 😅 and now, a year later, I still pause sometimes and wonder if I’m actually making it all up. Maybe I’m just shy? Maybe crushing on women is just easier? Maybe I just don’t want to be “normal?” The pondering is endless and tiring. So, yeah…imposter syndrome is a stable thing in my life. Not just with my orientation, but also my chronic pain, intelligence, dyslexia 😅😅😅
You summed up how I feel so well! I have been struggling in recent years to admit to myself that I am aromantic and asexual, and as of now I have only told 2 people. I haven't had the courage to fully own up to it or to tell my family because I'm scared of not meeting my family's expectations for me and that I'm trying to steal the spotlight from my sister, who had recently come out as a nonbinary lesbian.
I hear you. I was 27, and I'm still trying to figure out what I should call myself. (Bi-attracted anegosexual? Big shrug there.) It doesn't help that a lot of ace erasure seems to come from the asexual and queer community, gatekeeping the terminology and accusing you of just being confused if you feel an orientation that isn't none. I think that's a big part of why a lot of us asexuals don't feel like we have a right to include ourselves in Pride. If you already feel like an imposter, all the gatekeeping just compounds it. Nobody knows you better than yourself, though, so no one gets to dictate to you how you identify. And it's OK if that changes or becomes more clarified over time. Terminology isn't perfect, or fixed, it's just our best attempt to make sense of reality at any given time, so finding your experience doesn't fit well within the current lingo doesn't invalidate your experience. Anyway, sending hugs.
Sounds like you and I landed on the same square (ace lesbian) by going around the same board in opposite directions ( I never questioned my sexuality until after I'd questioned my gender and started transitioning) 😅
My brother loves to throw this around as if to say that being trans is a fad. He believes that some people are “actually” trans, but that most are just doing it because it’s the new big thing. I have to remind him that these people have been routinely underrepresented as well as abused for their sexuality and gender and they’re finally free to express themselves (for the most part).
I think it's also about changing definitions, especially with bisexuality. Up until pretty recently, most people seemed to think either that bisexuality was a myth, or that the only way to be bisexual was to date men and women in equal measure. Meanwhile the fact that SO many of us have the experience of coming out to our older relatives only to have them respond with some version of "Honey are you sure you're gay/bi, because you know it's only natural [to want to experiment/be in love with your best friend/some other extremely gay thing]. When I was your age, I [did extremely gay thing/had extremely gay thoughts and feelings] but it didn't mean anything because [various old person reasons e.g. it was the 60's, I was at college/war, everybody feels that way]," that I can't help but feel that many many people of past generations found ways to discount their same sex attraction even to themselves, or even if they believed and were accepting of bisexuality, genuinely thought that their feelings or experiences weren't enough to qualify them as anything but straight.
That’s sucks that bisexuality was SO ostracised back then, or it was like a myth. It’s funny kinda because now, the largest group in lgbtq is the b so! But still biphobia and bi-erasure is still BAAD. like, did you see the kit Connor stuff that happened a while ago?
Thanks so much for this video -especially mentioning the pandemic of HIV. I lost so many friends then in the 90s and really didn't deal with it and when the current pandemic came and more friends died it stirred up all the terrible things caused both times by conservatives down playing the horrific deaths of people I loved. I have talked to other surviving GenX friends who are LGBTQ and many of us have had the same experience being re-traumatized by the current pandemic and behaviors from those in power. The death tolls plus the fact there are just less GenX people generally have made our age range a bit lonely at times and I'm only 50.
I work with kids and the school-aged summer school kids are so, so open minded. I started explaining my gender and one immediately went, “Oh, you’re trans!” A minute later another one is explaining how “some people dont feel like girls or boys and so they are called they/them!” They decided I’m a they/them now and Im not mad about it 😂
I'm a Boomer with a daughter who is in her 20s. I had about as many LGBTQ+ people in my high school and college years as my daughter has in hers. In my generation, they didn't tell everyone about their sexuality/identification as people today. (The internet has done at least that much good in the world, and made people less afraid to speak up, and more people around them more willing to accept them and speak up for them.) I was very "safe" for those LGBTQ people around me to open up to, but not everyone was. What happened to all those "Gay Boomers"? Huge numbers of the LGBTQ people in my generation DIED OF AIDS. Please never forget that. Never let their memories get swept under a rug, merely for the sake of promoting a debate point. 💔😢
The world can be scary 🥺 Especially when even in a country like Norway, where it has been safe for LGBT+ people in paper for years... There is hate growing to the extent of the horrific attack on queer people in pride month last year. Resulting in casualties, injuries and a canceled parade.😢 Luckily the government is doing what they can to keep everyone safe, but it is scary and reminds us that we need to stick together to stand up for our rights and those who are not free to live authentically and safely.❤
A lot of people also have the internalized biphobia to consider too. Plenty of people, including lgbtq+ people, are guilty of thinking if two people are in a heterosexual relationship then their bisexuality does not count or that they're "straight" because of the relationship they're in rather than who they feel attraction to. I've gotten that before from people. I say I'm bi, and they respond with "but you have a boyfriend" like sexuality turns off once you've entered an assumed monogamous relationship.
Yeah. I'm an older millennial who only few years ago admitted to myself that I'm queer (bi, demi) but because I'm 10+ years in a "straight marriage" I don't feel I belong to the queer community because I heard so many times that I'm "basically straight".
A lot of older people, including us who were born in the early 80’s, we taught being queer was a bad thing and we felt we had to hide who we are. A lot of us had old expectations of what our lives were supposed to be pushed on us from the time we were little, it takes time to work through that programming and realise who you really are. I’m happy that I’ve been able to do that now but it’s hard to figure out who you really are at 40 😊.
FWIW, I'm 60+ and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, and that's not at all a bad thing. ❤ I've literally lived multiple adventures in one lifetime, and I think I have time for a few more.🙂
@@BengtNordsten I’m sure you have more time for some more adventures. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, I’m just happier and cuter now than I was a few years ago 😊.
@@goosie8207 I in my 56 years have learned 'going with the flow' seems to elicit adventures I didn't think of or plan for, to have had some distinctly rewarding experiences. The surprise is the not knowing. But born in the late sixties I know all about internalised homophobia and transphobia for it to be a veritable surprise what I have become. Oh and further to, the group of young translings we support welcome us as elders.
I'm a 38 year old bisexual mom, and I just want to say I'm so proud of your generation! I tried to come out at your age, hit backlash, and went back in the closet for another 20 years.
@@krystlepoulin6382 That's a sad story, but I've got you beat. I'm a 68-year-old baby boomer. I lived in San Francisco from 1980-1989, during the height of the AIDS epidemic. San Francisco would have been the perfect place for me to fully explore my sexuality, but AIDS scared the shit out of me, so I lived my life as an unhappy "straight" person. If it weren't for AIDS, my entire life would have been drastically different. I've always suspected that AIDS was created in a government laboratory because it was the perfect disease for the right wing conservatives to scare off millions of men from exploring their sexuality.
When I came out to my Very Christian Grandmother (TM), I phrased it as “I’ve always been this way, it’s just that now I have the words to articulate how I feel about my sense of self and how I view others”
I absolutely believe that we will also be seeing polling numbers for older people identifying as LGBTQIA+ going up as well, because it seems like every week I'm seeing someone in their 40s/50s be exposed to queer stories and have a "WAIT, you mean not EVERY straight/cis person feels same gender attraction/complex gender experience? This isn't just something that everyone feels and just doesn't talk about??" epiphany. Or, slightly more rarely, the equally precious "There's a WORD for what I am now? I have a community!?" epiphany.
As someone who is 50, I find it wild that anyone is still in the dark since the internet became widely accessible. Speaking only for myself, I was desperate to learn anything I could about what was going on with me & the internet helped everything to fall into place that much more quickly (small town libraries at the time weren't much help to me). But better late than never, I guess. I'm glad more people are finding the courage to look more deeply into themselves & discover who they are & that there's a lot more help for them than I had!
I think we also see more gender non conforming or previous androgyne people come out as non binary. NOT saying that you cannot be androgynous as a man or woman you absolutely can, but I feel a lot of people in the 70s and 80s felt similar feelings that non binary or genderfluid people feel, they jsut didn’t know it was a real thing.
Lovely video as always❤ Just thought I should let you know that BetterHelp is really problematic. Many ppl who've used the service, have said that they had to deal with unprofessionalism, like therapists that were late to appointments but stil charged full price, and one even going as far as to use the toilet while on a video call with their patient. Their aervice really isn't worthy of being advertized.
As someone of a similar age to you "I have seen and read things I did not understand..." is a very apt summary of the internet in that early time. It was truly shocking... And most parents only understood internet safety as "don't share your name or address"
My son is 17 and in the 11th grade of Highschool in Las Vegas, and most kids his age just don't give a f**k one way or another, as most or just whatever makes you happy. With each new generation, things become for accepted and open to the masses, and sexual orientation is no different. When I was growing up in Los Angeles in the 70's, 80's and half of the 90's, I would barely see interracial relationships in the 70's, but as time past, I would see more and more. Of all my friends in Vegas currently, lets say 10+ couples, only one is in a same race relationships, all the others are mixed including mine. In the 70's, that number would have been reversed, as 1 out of 10 maybe would have been mixed. While the LGBTQ+ numbers haven't changed that much over the same time, they have for sure risen over time, and I'm pretty sure people haven't changed, just the acceptance levels have and people willing to put themselves out there more. Cities and regions play a part as well I'm sure, as some things just aren't as open depending on community mindsets.
I mean, speaking as an elder millennial who who only realized their queerness in their 30s...representation really matters. My family was always very LGBT+ accepting. I was always drawn to stories with bi or genderqueer vibes (all 5 that you could find in the 90s, that is). I would waffle OUT LOUD if anyone called me "straight". And yet...I basically never saw any bisexual women (aside from a few villains), or any AFAB people who were not either definitely cis women or definitely trans men either in real life or media. As soon as I DID start seeing that, it was much easier to go: "Oh. They're like me, aren't they?" By contrast, there's a kid in my family who came to the same two realizations between ages 12 and 14 (independent of knowing that I was going through the same process) - and I'm so happy for them!
My oldest first cousin (who is 20 years older than me) came out as a trans woman last year, aged 60, 3 or so years after I came out to my family as being non-binary (no one respects my pronouns or chosen name) so it's good that I am not alone in the family anymore. Given that my mother has always adored her first nibbling (more than me or my sister for sure!) I am hopeful that she will come around, as she is currently working on respecting my cousin's pronouns and new name.
2 years ago, I was having a conversation with my daughter about representation of the lgbtq+ community and the important of being out. My rationale was that people probably already know and loved someone from the community and that being out would lead to greater societal acceptance. She immediately told me she's bi. I hugged her and ordered "Proud Mom" and "Proud Dad" T-shirts.
the hate that the younger generations get from the the media and some people in the older ones is jsut so depressing, I'm a millenial and remeber when it was targeted at us for the most ridiculous things, and now I look at the gen Zers in wonder! It's an awesome generation full of kind and thoughtful humans and still the older generation is loosing their freaking mind over random stuff 🤦♀
I'm 29 now but first came out at 11 😂 More people are lgbt because we are more comfortable and accepting with every generation ❤❤ Also im trans , demi bi
@@ggt47, I am a boomer and realized that I also like girls 'that way' when I was nine. I immediately realized that I had to keep that a secret, because my dad would unalive me if he found out. Additionally, nothing about gender identity or gender roles made the least bit sense to me, ever. Now, pushing sixty, I am happily agender, panromantic, demisexual, and eternally thankful for the younger queer generations who put those words out on the Internet for me to find.
I was having sex with my best friend when I was a young teen, and they turned to me and ask, "Do you think this is wrong?" I was somehow already way past that, "Our parents are always telling us no about something - and they do it - why can't we?" I would have come out but it was 1972 in a very conservative state. Not much has changed, except we talk about it now. GREAT VIDEO! Thank you.
im a gen z who only realised i was trans at 18 (and still in the closet living as cis years later for safety). i didnt know queer people existed until i was a teenager with access to the internet. spent some time denying it because i thought "it must be bad if it was taboo and kept hidden from me!" i grew up rural america. apparently have gay relatives who we were always told were "good friends." i can only imagine how much worse a lack of access to information about queerness could make it for older generations who didnt have the freedom of the internet in their teen years to explore, and had to spend their whole lives living a lie even when they did find themselves. i know that someday i can get out of my living situation and come out, but so many didnt have that option in previous generations.
i think it also stems from being able to give a name to these things since they no longer quite fit the earlier definitions. like the way wisterias used to be categorised in the genus of glycine. the inclusion of more labels under the lgbtq+ umbrella means more people can identify on the queer spectrum. labels don't matter much to me personally, but i can see how they would give a sense of belonging. that being said, i did go through a few years of my life wondering how did people even get crushes and if there was something wrong with me for never feeling that way. so it's nice to be able to place that under the aro-ace spectrum and go "well, i suppose that's not that weird after all". i'm just thankful that my family (so far) is pretty nonchalant about my perpetual single status. i can't imagine that would have been easy in the past where marriage used to be much more of an expectation
I think you would be surprised how many "spinsters" were aro-ace, and while there was definitely judgement, most places did have some options. Like in Western Europe you had Beguines, women who formed groups and swore (temporary) oaths to remain "chaste", and lived together doing acts of charity.
I was born in 1959. Last week I worked the Help Desk at Registration for VIDCON. Watching (and often speaking with) those thousands and thousands of young people who had found THEIR clans, tribes, groups, special someones via a method which was undreamt-on during my own childhood filled me with envy and joy for what they have, sadness for what I did not, and happiness I became part of this amazing THING in the last several decades of my life.
It's incredible for myself to live in a place where even if someone sees my pronoun pin and is like "EWWWW WHAT ARE YOU, PLUARL?" I can just tell them to shut up and walk away unscathed
I’m a 32 year old female on the straight side of things, but in elementary/middle school, calling someone gay was still very much an insult. And I grew up in a pretty liberal area of the world too. I remember questioning my sexuality in high school because I was a late bloomer/shy girl who didn’t get a lot of male attention. But I couldn’t talk to anyone about my questioning sexuality because it was still so “embarrassing”. Flash forward to university where I realized I WAS primarily attracted to men. I think I would have saved me so much heartache and distress if I was able to openly explore my sexuality, talk about it and figure it out in a supportive environment.
"People fall into two categories: 'It was hard for me so it should be hard for you.' or 'It was hard for me so I want to make it easier for you.'" I have been saying a variation of this for years, it's nice to hear someone else mention it as well. A good, fairly comprehensive video all around.
When Jessica mentioned online communities, I got a little sad because I'm a Gen Z queer (aro/bi/enby) and my online community isn't equipped to talk about nonbinary gender-y stuff as often as I need to talk about it. So, this is me reaching out. Here's what I'm going through right now: 1) I'm AFAB, and while I don't want to start T, I do want facial masculinization surgery and probably top surgery at some point in my life. Is anybody else navigating possible medical transition as a nonbinary person? I'd love to talk about it; 2) I'm agenderfluid which means I'm usually genderless (agender) but when I do experience gender, I experience it fluidly between plural genders (genderfluid), and I've recently started tracking my gender changes in a rainbow journal. Has anyone else tracked their gender changes?; 3) I hypothetically love dresses, but I hate that I can't wear them on my man days because I can't wear a dress and still pass for male. I hate how they don't fit my chest right, and they make my hips look wider. Does anyone relate?; 4) I saw my first real rainbow in years earlier this week. This doesn't have to do with anything, I just thought we could all use more rainbows in our lives! :)
Millennial here, guess that means I'm a elder queer contextually. While I'm amab genderfluid/genderqueer there's some input I can give. 1) It's worth checking the state/country laws as transition is heavily impacted with not just ability but limitations to how you transition. Best bet would be somewhere with informed consent model (even if not restricted not every provider uses this). Medical transphobia means cis health professionals really try and conform to binary gender ideas of sex characteristics. Self advocacy is important as is familiarity with your medical rights. While all transition is case by case a lot of people make assumptions as if it's on rails. You can do things and pick and choose procedures even if results are ymmv. Also trying for a therapist who understands your gender and is on your side is important because.... 2) There's the historical standby of well lying. Because some places have set requirements (you must have these proceedures for this legal change etc) in the past and in some places it was not uncommon for non-binary to pretend to be binary to get through the medical hoops and then book it. Not recommended, cuz stressful but you do what you have to. (For others reading and thinking what if they're not sure, when you're considering surgery it means a level of thought and research usually.....) A therapist who's on your side can help with that, though that's not always easy. But is important to try otherwise you'll be in therapy with someone you're lying to to get your required letters for surgery and again even more stress. 3) Of the tiny amount of people who detransition who are not doing so because of transphobia some amount are nb people who had more transition measures than wanted and had to walk it back to a level of comfort. Sometimes this is because of medical professionals not respecting the agency of patients or worse legally not having a choice. Hopefully this isn't you but bringing it up cuz in that case it might be worth the stress of hunting for resources in that direction. (Though beware there be TERFS/ Gender criticals that's been there hunting ground for decades). 4) Speaking from the US one thing to watch out for is insurance and legal requirements about surgery. For example some states require a year of hormones before facial harmonization so depending on your means to pay out of pocket see 3). If your medical team gets it and you're in such a place one way would be to microdose real low (if self administered well it's how low can you go ahem sry i luv puns) so it's on your medical record and can be approved. A understanding medical team makes this way easier. 5) If you've done a lot of research and demonstrate that you understand that research and standards for less... Standard transition care is breaking new ground I've found competent trans healthcare workers are more willing to discuss cuz you're not coming from ignorance. If they say this is kinda experimental and you're reply is I know and that's why I'm signing up health professionals relax. This happens a lot more often in informed consent model. I think that's it?
Wait damn tracking genders. I used to cuz my dysphoria/euphoria would change and if I wasn't conscious of it my mental health would take a hit. After hrt i give less than a damn and present however I feel sometimes not even matching my gender but just cuz it looks good. Talk about gender non conforming lol. I do know my gender changes day by day but I'm aware of it, quick on the uptake and mostly my response is huh neat. * Every trans person I know could use a tailor. Always worth it. Another suggest is "woman's cut" kilts. While not dresses they're more flattering than the typical square cut.
I'm non-binary and I also want to medically transition. I've already gotten a hysterectomy (though that was mostly for medical reasons, the gender reasons were just a bonus) and I want top surgery so bad.
Didn't notice I was nonbinary until I was 35 the disporia was hiding under autism and afab autistic people are wildly under diagnosed. Neurodivergent people are apparently more likely to identify as queer in some way possibly because we are already being stigmatized for something so whats one more thing and diagnoses is getting more accessible.
I think it's also because of how neuroatypical people see (or don't see) rules. Because I feel like like a lot about gender is just (arbitrary) rules. Many neuroatypical people spot stuff like that easily. And also their minds just work simply _differently._ I have (diagnosed) adhd and am fairly sure I'm on autistic spectrum as well and have pretty much zero internal sense of gender. I identify with my sex - but have no idea what gender should feel like. I guess I'm an agender female then. My sexuality is very fluid. I can't a 100% agree on sexuality being an unchanging quality you are born with 😅 For many it likely is - I just think sexual and gender fluidity is also something that varies between people.
@@Pippis78 Agreed and it seems likely to me that for the undiagnosed things like that can get buried under the noise. At least it was like that for me.
@@silentlyjudgingyou Being undiagnosed can make life anyways kind of chaotic and take up a lot of energy and cognitive resources - and getting a diagnosis for neurological stuff can make sooo many things make sense and click into place. Not to mention the effect of gaining a community full of shared experiences, support and shared humour. I got diagnosed with adhd also when I was about 35-38yo and - as is typical - there has been LOTS of unraveling of guilt, poor selfesteem and feelings of being a lazy, shitty failure of a human being. I thought I finally really _GOT_ my gender identity at 31yo when I "found" my identity as a woman through becoming a mother and becoming a huge fan of drag. But alas, now at 44yo I just realized a few months back that "wait... I think I'm agender?" Until 31 I had kinda felt I'm mentally between or both a man and a woman, but haven't had gender related dysphoria though (atleast not great anxiety over it. I have always kinda wanted some male parts and a moustache, but also like the part I do have. Luckily I don't have huge boobs - those I might have a problem with). I did suffer from internalized misogyny until 31. Since I have memory I've been a gender rebel and hated how girls and boys and women and men get treated differently. My sexual orientation I've given up on trying to determine. I really really liked it when I identified as a lesbian and still struggle with apparently not being one afterall 😂😅🤦♀️ I'm going with "who cares"/pan for now.
@@Pippis78 I still say I'm a lesbian I'm fem presenting enough it's just a quick short hand but I haven't even made a solid decision on prounouns yet. I had a full breakdown trying to meet NT standards when I was undiagnosed I now have multiple anxiety disorders.
@@silentlyjudgingyou We don't have gendered pronouns in my native language and home country. I LOVE it so much (everybody is referred to as "hän" - or "se" often in casual speech/slang ("se" translates to "it", which admittedly sounds a bit weird 😂)). It has always felt somewhat uncomfortable and unnecessary to have my sex emphasized every time I'm referred to by "she". But well, it matches my body and I don't think I want to bother with asking people to use another pronoun. And, I mean, I'm proud to be a woman, even though I identify it only as my sex and not a/my gender - if that makes sense?
Apparently the picture of the choir should now have all people wearing black as the 7 remaining members have also now died of AIDS since it was taken. I love that you described it as a hidden pandemic because it really hits home after going through such a public one how terrible it mist have been to go through one that was ignored
Im gen z, and i grew up with a supportive family, but i grew up in tennessee being queer and trans. Thankfully when I was 14 my family moved up to connecticut where people are much more accepting. I've known I was queer since I was 10, and trans since I was 12, but i didn't start transitioning until 15 (im 15 rn). I'm so glad i live in a place where people are so accepting, i wouldn't be surviving where i used to live
During high school, I didn’t know any gay people at all but 40 years since graduation it turns out that they were a few friends of mine who came out later in life.
I visited the Stonewall Inn earlier this month. The memorial garden dedicated to the missingeberation was particularly moving since I also had a godfather who was a gay man who died in the epidemic. I remember his boyfriend who had passed earlier, when my uncle's health started worsening, and the morning that I learned he had died. Standing in the memorial garden, I particularly thought of that couple. I still pray to my uncle, and I'd like tp think that hevwas a guiding force as I found a way to my own queer identity.
Hi Jessica!! I'm a great fan of your content from Brazil!! I'm 15 years old and I'm a lesbian :) I don't know if you're going to see this, but if you for any chance do I really wanted to thank you and Claudia for your content here. I don't have much contact with queer adults in my life and much less sapphic couples. Seeing your love for each other, seeing you build a family feels my own heart with love and hope. I would like to someday also find a girl I love and start a family, I want to be a mother and be who I am, I want to love the way I love. I watch your videos almost everyday because they make me feel lesser of an stranger, I think. I see you and Claudia being such a lovely couple and I wonder if someday I will ever have that too. Sometimes I like to imagine this might be me in the future. Lol. Anyway, thank you ❤
The percentage people in older generations (in the USA) identifying as L/G/B has also increased - in other words, everyone seems to be getting more comfortable with saying it.
First and foremost, that is an amazing dress!!! Secondly, GenXer here - another thing to lend to the idea that our generation hasn't come out of the closet entirely is that so many of us never entertained that we could be anything but cis & straight. So we didn't explore our sexuality or genders, and I often find myself wondering if I would have been non-binary or gender fluid if such a thing had been discussed at all. I did discover I was bi/pan in my twenties because I left the high-demand religion of my parents and found the nicest group of queers who helped me understand some things about myself. It's not just a matter of coming out of the closet in public but having the words & freedom of self-examination to come out of the closet to yourself. I think for many in the older gens, it was just a bit too late & we were satisfied enough in cis-het places in our lives to not bother exploring further. Which is pretty sad, if you ask me. But I love the fact that my son had that freedom and can proudly say he's a gay transman.
As an older person (48) who only realised last year that he's aspec, I think the fact that it's spoken about more is giving people a bit more confidence too. My generation and older didn't have or understand these nuances, or perhaps even think they're broken, not realising they're under the lesser known LGBTQ+ identities. Most of my life I thought I was straight though realising how my experiences were different from my straight friends. Fireworks! I'm not straight. Without making friends of all ages, I might never have figured this out. Of course AIDS was a big thing, but I suspect there are many Boomer and GenX people who are ace, or aspec, and have never had that realisation.
Millenial here, had that same thought about the unmoderated hellscape of the internet the other day, like my major primary school memories include blue waffle and omegle. Kids these days cant have much of a better experience - ive seen the horror films on kids youtube
There is so much Im worried about but the increased attitude of acceptance, equality, and empathy from gen z gives me hope. We Milennials seem to be a widely mixed bag due to coming up in a time when a lot of things were transitioning but Im hoping by the time we could be "the old folks in power" we'll have the grace previous generations didnt to actually share it and listen to the generations coming up instead of snearing and blaming and ranting about things like food prefrences (avacado toast anyone).
What a lovely video 🌹- pleasant AND well-considered! Fifty years ago, even the MERE THOUGHT of "well, I might be..." was radical. It took fortitude and commitment to even examine a MAYBE. And there was the constant awareness that to make a single tentative tiny move toward gay life could easily result in utter devastation of one's life, starting with abandonment by family and friends, excommunication (literal), loss of job, eviction, denial of government services.... You didn't become less than human - you stopped being human, with fewer rights (and receiving less sympathy) than a stray dog - randos could run up and beat you bloody and the cops didn't care (they might join the randos), and if you died you knew you'd be buried very quietly and your name never mentioned again. So if "the kids have it so EASY nowadays" and "they can just 'try it on for size' and change on a whim!!" - well I say GOOD FOR THEM. Bless the young for living under a little less fear, for not needing to fall into a dark depressive spiral just because a total stranger had a nice smile or some TV star seems eminently touchable 😁- for not living in perpetual crushing fear of "well, I might be."
I was a youth adviser in the 1990s, in a community where there was at least an official acceptance of LGBQT+ people. My co-advisor was very out. I didn't count, but there were a lot of out youth, and those who were ostensibly straight were supportive. Echoing the generation gap, many of the older members of the community, while intellectually supportive, had problems with interacting with queer people in a non-awkward manner.
Thank you for bringing up the AIDS crisis. I’m a millennial and know about it, but it feels like “before my time.” You putting it in context here about why it may seem like there are less gay boomers hit hard. It’s like I had those two concepts (less gay boomers and the epidemic) in separate files in my brain and you helped put them together into a more comprehensive file -if that makes sense. My brain looked at it from the fact that it’s more accepted now, but obviously it’s more than just that.
love the video but really wish you didnt do the betterhelp sponsor as they have a very controversial past of hiring extremely unprofessional people, especially homophobic people too + wayy more things i didnt mention, there are a lot of videos on them :/
I am so sorry but Jessica the thumbnail.........the serious expression on your lovely face, the title....."Are people GAYER??" That just absolutely sent me😂😂😂😂😂I'm snorting, my cat is disturbed, I love you. Its a lot safer to be gay nowadays. Its a lot safer to live out and IDENTIFY yourself openly as gay now, in 2023, than it was in, say......1938. Previous generations were just as gay or not gay. But they were taught to interpret their feelings and instincts differently. Religion was more prevalent. Most common Judeo Christian religions consist being gay against God and that muddied the water even more. Basically, the world is exactly as gay as it ever was. But now you don't have to fear for your life if you are. God bless us all.
Thank you for this video! I think it's also the awareness for more identities, especially those not in the LGBT acronym. There were hints I'm aromantic, asexual and genderless at least since I was 11, but I didn't even hear about these identities until much later. I'm currently 30. I started identifying as aromantic and asexual when I was around 23, after I started wondering about it as 19. I suffered from a lot of internilized aphobia, especially arophobia.
One of my moms asked me how my daughter knew she was gay when my mom really had no idea until she was older that that was even a thing that she was allowed to be. So yeah, we had to have this conversation. Thank you for the great explanation!
My father was born in the late 1940s, early 1950s. He is gay but was told he had to have a child. He was out in the late 70s. He was disowned, kicked out of his house and religion. I understand why the older generations didn't say anything and chose to stay closeted. It was very unsafe to be even called anything but "normal".
When I was growing up queer (just 15 years ago) I was so scared that people would cease talking to me when they found out. I'm still not entirely out to everyone who knows me today, as I come from quite conservative community - but things are slowly moving forward in the right direction, younger generation has no issue bringing their same sex partner home and I learned to my surprise, that there are quite a few older queer members of my family, too!
Oh as a Gen Xer I'm upset with that percentage for my cohort. As a Bisexual disabled ciswoman I held back saying to anyone in case of bullying and backlash for my family.
I only realized I was a lesbian a few years ago, in my mid thirties. Apparently, my husband knew I was a lesbian before I did.There's a lot of things that can keep a person from coming to terms with their identity. I wish people had told me when I was younger that sexual attraction and being able to tell someone is conventionally attractive are NOT the same thing.
Thank you for the nod to the generation who sneaked Certain Books in the library (or went there for unfiltered internet). Also the gays run the libraries! I'm in my 40s and I know this now LOL. I was safe there and never knew it
The Indian supreme court is actually having discussions on the landmark decision of legal recognition of same sex relationships!! and I'm praying everyday for it to be passed finally I'm from a very conservative and rural part of India (i can't legally vote yet lol) so I can't contribute much offline without being targeted somehow but I am part of an online safe space for the lgbt+ amd regularly have discussions and debates to defend our community and give us more recognition ❤️ Your channel has been a great motivator for me to keep living my truth and knowing that happiness is achievable 😊 Thank You so much for being who you are and providing your amazing content and education
I've said this many times and I'll say it again - because I'm a member of Gen Z and I've grown up in a time when this kind of thing is talked about, I have a lot of labels - I know that I'm an autistic lesbian with ADHD and OCD. People tell me all the time "Oh, if you'd grown up 100 years ago, you wouldn't identify with all this nonsense!" And in a sense, they're right. 100 years ago, I would think of myself as a scatter-brained, incompetent, lazy, socially inept, oversensitive, constantly anxious woman who can't do anything right and who is deeply miserable and unsatisfied in her marriage to a man. I'd wonder every day what was wrong with me, why I couldn't be normal like everyone else, and why I couldn't seem to be happy with my husband no matter how hard I tried. Today, I get to have these labels, I get to connect with other people like me, and I get to live my best life - and I'm happy. If you think it would be better for me to live without the labels even if it made me miserable, then congrats! I completely disagree.
Actually, back then it would've likely been "neurotic." A very popular catch-all back in the day - before depression existed. 🙄 Sure, there are plenty of "label collectors" running around loose, but most of us are just looking for a handy little map of the neighborhood(s) we've found ourselves in.🙂
As a fellow migraine sufferer I really feel that about the cancellations. I also am in my 30s so have had experience with friends having to hide who they are, but another are now starting to find the courage to explore things & talk. It's still not fully safe for us, but it is a lot safer than it used to be
Imagine learning that women can love each other at the same time you learn men and women love each other instead of through a gay slur learned in middle school .....
Literally the only reference to people being gay when I was at school was boys accusing each other of being queer, gay, homos, and so on. For just about anything. Was anyone actually gay? I really don't know.
I came out in my late 20s in the 90s, which went disasterously. If I were in my 20s now, I might have come out much younger & gotten more support and acceptance. Remember, lot of LGBT people of my generation didn't survive to my age, including lots of my friends and chosen family. I barely scraped by myself. We've always been here and we'll always be here.
I don't think I'd know I'm pan without the internet, I'm also demi, I fall for people I get close to, but without really knowing it was an option to be with a girl I don't think I'd try to get close enough to one to have that bond.... I'm also very shy introverted and exhausted by people, so I really don't get close to a lot of people
If it makes you feel better about trying to get people to say your name properly, I've been asked by people to spell my last name. It's Walker! Thank you for pointing out the AIDS epidemic in the United States and the UK. Here, people are still trying to take us back to the 1920's and Affirmative Action was just repealed today. My child has enough hindrances to education and AA helped me get in to college when I surely wouldn't have been able to without it. Since they are also disabled I fear that's on the chopping block in the future as well.
I am 69 and an Ally who has been fortunate to have several Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Trans persons in my life. My partner is Bi, as is my best friend. My best friend in high school, whom I had fallen in love with, came out to me when we were in college together. I was hurt and angry, but not at him. I was angry with myself for not seeing it. Many of his mannerisms that I never thought of as "typically Gay" screamed Gay to others. So after he came out, I felt like such a fool. But I gradually resigned myself to the facts, and we continue to be very good friends. I just feel fortunate that he is still, as my former husband would say, upright and able to take nourishment. Now, many years later, I have several friends and family members who are somewhere in the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Two of my brother's 7 children, 6 of whom were born female, have come out as non-binary and ACE. They've both changed their names, and one of them is getting married to their partner, who is Trans, on Halloween. They're both in their early 30s, so I'm not sure which generational label encompasses them. And I'm the understanding, non-judgmental auntie that all my nibblings and their friends can come to in a crisis. I just wish my brother and his ex-wife would just get off their Fundamentalist Christian high horse and accept the fact that 2, and possibly 3, of their daughters are finally identifying as they are truly meant to be.
![The History of Queer Coding [CC]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/GsO4fZYHQic/mqdefault.jpg)
I turned 62 today. Thanks to the internet I discovered what Asexual was (when I was 50). I know if Id had the information when I was younger I think I would have come out in my 20's. I grew up knowing I didnt like boys or girls (in that way). I was always the perfect 3rd wheel for my friends to take on a date, lol
Welcome to the ace community😁💜
Happy Birthday! 🖤🤍💜
Yeah, I mean, I crush on people same as anyone but I'm not interested in getting in _anyone's_ pants...so to speak.
I think that might be me as well. 50 years old and never been in a relationship - and it doesn't really bother me. I've had crushes, but it never went beyond that so...?
Happy belated birthday! The internet can be a great source of info! 😉
So, I’m a 74 year old female bi and I lived through the AIDS epidemic in California losing men to death whom were dear friends and in one case, a partner to me. This man and I were in a non-monogamous relationship for 17 years until his death from AIDS. We deeply cherished each other and managed to trust our love even though both of us had frequent, regular sex with other partners. Looking back I can only marvel. We had stopped our (highly satisfying) sexual relationship about five years before his death because both of us had committed to monogamous relationships. Which undoubtedly saved my life. And he told me “At least there is one person I love whom I am not killing.” These words still break my heart.
@jerrihadding2534 ❤🩹I'm so sorry for your losses during/after the AIDS crisis!
Hearing this makes me feel so proud. You really are a strong woman, we need more people like you sharing your experiences online!
Very sad 😢
That’s so heartbreaking that he passed without forgiving himself and instead blaming himself. No one was at fault for AIDS. I am sorry for your loss ❤️
Thank you for sharing
My grandma is bi and I'm the only one who knows, because I came out to her first and she was always scared of judgement. She even was in a relationship with a girl for 2 years in the 60s!
That’s really heartbreaking. I was a huge supporter of LGBT people back when I was a teenager 2002 - 2009 and somewhere along the way I became bigoted towards them 2010 - 2019 and was not supportive as I should have been. I would never want someone I love to feel ashamed or embarrassed to be themselves around me so I reverted back to my old days of acceptance and love. I wish you and your grandmother the best. She’s lucky to have you as I’m sure you’re just as lucky to have her. ❤ best wishes.
I'm glad you returned to Love❤❤❤
@@mainemade73 It took a lot of work and facing my past. I didn’t really start working on myself until 2019. I’m glad too because when you’re a kinder person, you can appreciate life more. I feel a lot of guilt about my past because I hurt people I cared about but I’m just taking it one day at a time.
I feel like the bisexual community might contribute a large amount to the sudden jump in lgbt+ statistics ( I am not trying to undermine any other sexuality btw) because I feel a lot of bisexuals would have hidden it an gotten with people of the opposite gender and told everyone they were straight even if they knew they like the same gender too, but nowadays people feel more comfortable identifying as bi and feel they do not have to hide their attraction to the same gender (for most people, although unfortunately some people do still have to hide their same gender attraction from others around them)
@@sqiudy-catmedland1421 I honestly can't believe that that many people are straight! It was standard for the Greeks (2,5k years ago) to be bi/attracted to more than one gender. Where did all the bi people go? Thus making me think that big parts of society seemingly still hide a part of their identity....
I'm not saying being straight/gay is invalid, I'm gay myself lol
The same reason why there's suddenly more lefthanded people.
When you stop punishing and criminalizing people for being different they come out. It's incredibly simple.
There is another issue. AIDS killed many gay and bisexual men in the 80s-90s. Betting many boomer gays are lesbians
Yep same as we seem to see more autistic people, no we just stopped locking them away and calling them the r word
omg i forgot abt that and its crazy for me to realize people wouldve burnt me at the stake for being left handed LOL
Good. Your blissful ignorance means that the leftie agenda is working. We become stronger each day as we keep spreading lefthand propaganda and you do nothing about our satanic schemes 🌝🔥
@@lemonmeat not burned fir being left handed though but it was associated with intellectual disability and mental illnesses
Regarding fewer older queer people: in addition to stigma, legal complications, and self-denial, one more sad fact (added: that Jessica addresses from 10:30 onward) is that we tended to not live as long as straight people of comparable other demographic traits, and IIRC this difference has still not entirely disappeared. Especially AIDS took away a swath of our elders.
+
I don't think those of us lucky to have been born after the worst of it realise just how horrendous the death toll was. A lot of the men involved in dog shows in the US were/are queer, when people talk about things like you couldn't go to a show without being told another breeder or handler was dead every single week
@@nickywalthat is REALLY interesting. I never realized we had such a presence in the dog breeding community.
@@jdwrink There's a lot of queer people in general, although it varies by breed as you can imagine. Some of the "macho" or "country" breeds have a lot of very conservative people involved. Although I know a transman who breeds and works rottweilers, he's very much the exception in that breed
Unfortunately the mental health impacts are probably responsible for a decent chunk of the continued difference in life expectancy. 😥
My sister was a baby boomer and didn't come out until her mid 30's (early 90's). Unfortunately she was only able to live openly as who she was for another decade before illness took her from us. The thing people need to remember is that until very, very recently, if you came out and lived openly as LGBTQ+, you risked your job, your home (yes, people were evicted for being gay...especially at the start of the AIDS crisis), your family and friends, your medical care and sometimes your freedom. So many people lived secret lives just so they could have the same rights as everyone else. Now with all of these hate laws being passed as quickly as they can be (thankfully the courts are striking a lot of them down) a certain group of people are trying to drag us back to those bad old days. It won't work, but it does piss me off that we have to fight this same fight again.
I used to be worried if polyamorous people would have protections by the time I got older. Now I'm worried if our lgbt+ kids will be safe in school. Or if trans/nonbinary people will be allowed to exist in public.
Yes exactly!! Say this!! My Boomer aunt (now in her 60s) never formally came out at work or to the whole family, as the community we're from is so rural and conservative, and her job was in civil service. It was an open implied secret and she had to live her entire life so quietly. She always called her girlfriends her 'friends' or 'colleagues'. Breaks my heart to think about it.
The sad thing is those times are in the living memory of some of those pushing for those laws. Being a teen in the late 80s/early 90s, I remember watching the hateful rhetoric being splashed on the evening news regarding the AIDS epidemic and how gays "deserved" it. I have no wish to go back to those times.
the scary thing is it will work unless we fight back. fascism is on the rise and i cant believe it. crazy times were in. we gotta stick together because we outnumber the people filled with hatred.
The sort of good news is: the cat doesn't go back into the box easily. Also, the number of allies and queers in general are higher than they have ever been. We outnumber the conservative religious types who want to oppress everyone not cishet and "normative".
The bad news is, you must be active. Vote all the time and get younger people aware of the tactics Religious Right used to put rheir own into power in the 60, 70s and 80s. They are losing ground but we MUST push back harder and show them their opressive beliefs aren't going to rule us.
I’m part of gen z but I grew up in a very homophobic and transphobic family but once I was outside of there there was this openness of my fellow lgbtq+ peers and it actually helped me unlearn a lot of it quicker than expected. The internet was as a very important part of this too
❤
Also gen Z but still stuck in my homophobic family... maybe one day...
I work with a huge amount of teens in Canada in a warehouse, girls are super girly and hetero always looking for bf and stuff, the guys I feel them more passive than when I was a teen but still hetero and fighting for popularity, so where are the lgbtq? where I have to look for? is just an american thing, if so, how can we explain this?
Certified homophobe ✊✨
@@DDXXI-z9b LGTBQ+ is massively promoted in the US to the point where it starts to devolve into unusual stuff, as a result many young people with developing minds get filled with mostly nonsense and would feel the need to be gay or something. People may call me a homophobe or whatever but I’m speaking objectively that many young people are swayed to be lgbtq by so many things.
That picture of the choir in black and white is such a powerful and moving image. ❤😔
🥰❤️
@jessicaoutofthecloset holy sh*t. You are the first person I have ever heard of who has observed something I have been telling others for years. That there are two types of people, those who bad things happen to and they want it to happen to everyone else because it's not fair, and those who bad things happen to and they want to make sure it never happens to someone else, because it's not fair. I base this off of differences between myself and my mother. Considering that I'm watching your channel you can probably guess which camp I fall into. Thank you for adding that part to your video. I felt crazy because no one else seems to notice it about our world. ❤
@@Bugg...0_oLots of other people see it too, and you’re not crazy 😊 💜 and also I think a lot of people feel that way but don’t know how to put it into words, unfortunately. I do think the duality is represented in the huge number of videos about gentle parenting, healing from/dealing with abusive people, and other therapeutic concepts. Cheers 🍻
I got chills when I saw that. I was in Mountain View in 1988 and was sure some of the people in my office had aids.
I was already crying I started to weep. We lost sooo many. Countless amazing talented, loving men mostly.
As a very young millenial asexual, no way I would have figured that out without the internet. Even with it, I spent ~10 years waiting to catch up with my peers/wondering what was wrong with me because I was just not presented it as an option.
Similar for me as aroace born 1994. You only need to add that there is still almost zero awareness for aces and aros in Germany. If my proficiency of English was not near native level, I would never have found out. Even online information about these groups in German is almost nonexistent. And what little there is is far from being an accurate description.
Ace here. Figured it out after finding the term while married. Explained why I had very little sex during the marriage.
Thank you Internet!
Same. I even got married because I thought I would "learn to" enjoy sex, "like everybody else." Like, seriously, after we had sex the first time, my husband and I googled what might have gone wrong, and google said "the first time" can be unpleasant, but practice will fix it.
I didn't realize "sexual attraction" was a real thing until years later, when I learned about asexuality. Prior to that, I thought people talking about their sexuality were just talking about preferring the physical sensation of penis vs vagina rubbing against their genitals. Until I had it explained to me, I even didn't realize there was a feeling (like appetite) that came BEFORE the physical act of sex.
I never felt physical attraction to my husband, and I didn't realize I was "supposed to" feel anything just by looking at someone. I thought people choosing partners based on looks were just shallow.
Asexual has been strangely promoted by the controversial charity stonewall
Gay demi, but same here. I'd be so lost and confused without help from the internet
One point that I would like to add: we don't have data on the number of Queer people who took their own lives because they lived in such a bigoted world ❤ we only know that even in our relatively different world this is still an issue.
My mom lost a sibling this way in the late 70s😥 In going through their things after, the family realized they were probably trans.
Made mom a bit panicky about the mental health impacts of being LGBT when my brother was 3 and she began to suspect he was gay (correctly, it turns out). Luckily the pediatrician gave good advice when she asked about it.
@@fvbbaby2792@erint5373
Trigger warning: brief mention of the concepts or suicide, physical abuse, religious abuse, I think thats all, no details really.
Small town queer here *(see below). In a place where we are taught to love they neighbor as we love ourselves (but are taught to hate ourselves and our neighbors) there are so many families who have that aunt who never married, but moved in with her "friend" later in life, that uncle who everyone suspected, and then suspected suicide when the family's story of how he died wasn't quite right, and so many who just vanished. Either of the last two were never spoken of again. It's like they never existed, and that's how you know. Can you blame them? Maybe, idk. I graduated high school in the mid 2000s. My best friend growing up, they tried to get the demons out of her that were turning her gay. She went through many bad straight relationships after that. I saw a few years ago she had a beautiful wedding to a woman. Idk if they are still together but I hope so. I had the uncle who vanished, she had the uncle who died. I've had my share of bible verses screamed at me by family, and been physically assaulted, but never did they try to exercise demons from me. Considering that, and our uncles, I probably had the better kind of family around here.
* I'm sometimes hesitant to use that term because I know how it's been used to hurt others, but considering that I think it's the shortest, most concise way to describe me (and like, it ain't everybody's business that I'm a nonbianary polyamorous pansexual, esp in a place where none of this is accepted but some are more dangerous than others) but considering how often it's been lobbed at me specifically with the intention of hurt (sometimes landing) I feel I have that right to use it. If it is hurtful to you specifically I do apologize. I would never hurt someone on purpose.
Before white people came over to america it wasn’t even an issue
@@Bugg...0_o'm a small town/rural america queer who graduated high school a few years ago and im sad to say, it hasnt changed much for small towns 💔 less exorcisms, some more kind teachers from big cities who try to help, but its still pretty lowkey and bleak. have cousins of my mom's generation we refer to as aunts who are "good friends," we were always told as children.
i'm lucky my mom's generation grew up during the rights movement. its a taboo, but its not bad in their eyes, just never talked about and skirted around. the grandparents generation, though... not religious, but i've had my share of slurs thrown at me (and im not even out! just a little too queer for comfort... scare me back into the closet i think).
Being in rural America these days, not much has changed. I'm trying not to cry. I genuinely love and care about you. I'm Gen X. We loved each other fiercely but couldn't protect one another from their parents or the hateful older generations. I truly can't count how many friends and friends of friends that are no longer with us. I miss their laughs and smiles. I cherish the memories. A very close friend moved with his partner to the UK in hopes that they would be safer. Tragically, they made a pact to end their lives together. My heart still aches for them. That's just one instance out of too many. Personally, I thought all women were attracted to other women until I was old enough to learn differently.
I was a staunch lgbt+ ally until I realized I was bisexual at a *very* late age (tail end of baby boomer generation). All three of my bisexual children were quietly waiting for me to sort it out for myself 😂. Nothing really changed except now I understand myself better. Talking about all of this openly saves lives. Love your videos! 🌈
That's still very common especially for bisexual women/AFAB people. Bierasure coupled with the idea that girls crushing on other girls is just normal. Its a YA book, but as a bi millennial, Becky Abertailli's newest book talks about it, from her own experience and it is so well handled
im so glad you've found out more about yourself! its never too late to find who you are ❤ i often, as a gay child, wonder about my mom (also tail end of the baby boomer generation)... i'm sure you understand what i mean when i say i recognise some similarities between her and i 😂. i hope the more i am open about my identity, she may do some self-discovery too
Congratulations on the self realization! An online group I'm in did pride stories for pride month, and I saw 4 women in your age group all see themselves in those stories and realize that they're bi - and that's just the ones who processed it and posted about it in on the group page! Welcome to the rainbow. All the best to your beautiful bisexual family
“All three of my bisexual children”
@@SardonyxOrangeyes!
I'm Generation X and bisexual. I was raised in Arkansas in the 80s and 90s. I was raised to believe anyone not straight was gay and anyone gay was wrong. Period end of discussion. So when I was attracted to other females, I suppressed those feelings. I dismissed them as fleeting moments. I was still attracted to males. So there was no reason to have to deal with the issue. Or so I thought. Years of therapy and going to college have helped me see that my upbringing was wrong, not me. Others, who fit a similar demographic, may have entered straight marriages and stayed in them. (I left mine). So they may know somewhere in them that they have these thoughts and feelings. But they still identify as straight because they have always been in straight relationships. And sadly many still believe that LGBTQ+ is wrong. Admitting they have those feeling is equivalent in their minds to admitting they've done something wrong.
It makes me sad whenever I see someone try and claim that being gay/trans/etc is a "choice". It always makes me think back to before I realized I was bi/trans and I just didn't understand why other people got to do that stuff and why I lived out in the country where "we don't do that" as my dad said.
There's got to be so much unnecessary pain for those people to suppress themselves that much for so long
Send you hugs and bugs❤
AZ chica here during same period. I didn't care about the internal homophobia or what people thought of me. Back then there was only binary choices you were gay or straight, no inbetween. If you liked the same sex, you were gay, didn't matter if you liked the opposite sex too. Many of my friends in HS/college were gay & we marched for AIDS (the quilt thing and I recall the fear in my male friends during that time too). I didn't fit in as fully gay, but neither fully straight. It was not until louder voices had the convos in the twenty teens (2010) that I found the label and could use it as my own & was a correct description. Anyhoo, love this vid and giving so many of us voices and how to see ourselves even if we tend to be on the older end of the spectrum(gen x)
Gen X cis/ace here... long journey because I knew I wasn't gay, but I'm not "straight" either. Discovering Asexuality was a huge revelation, after years of emotionally painful experiences I finally understood I wasn't broken!
Honestly I'm a bi teenager nowadays and if I'm being honest this might have happened to me if I had been born 30 years before, which is kind of crazy to think about. I'm pretty much only so comfortable with who I am because of the environment I grew up in.
They "identify" as "straight", because most are closeted bisexuals and stillsecretly have sex with other men(as far as men go).
I had a very eye opening conversation a few months ago. My grandpa and I were looking at pictures of our family on vacation. And we would visit these friends of my grandparents multiple times. They were both women but I never questioned their relationship to each other because why would I? I assumed they were friends and that maybe their husbands had passed away or that they were simply both single.
As we were looking at these picture my grandpa said:”Oh remembers these two? They were apparently in a relationship with each other.“
He just said it so casually but for me it was so eye opening and just outright amazing. I never had any queer people surrounding me growing up. But that made me realize that maybe I did but just did not realize it…
I hope they are thriving and happy they must be over 75 now
I’m a lesbian gen x and came out in 1995 at 15. I’d say the world wasn’t very accepting back then. My family wasn’t very supportive and then went through times of being more accepting later… but 4 years ago my mother stopped talking to me because I had a baby with my wife who I’ve been with for 10 years. I haven’t spoken to my mother since.. I want to though. It breaks my heart that she feels that way but what can I do? I see the anti trans and anti Lgbtq rhetoric and violence resurgence happening very quickly. I live in Oregon apparently a very accepting state, and this month alone we have had several acts of violence ant threats to lgbtq community. We had proud boys show up to a high school pride even where children and families were present and the proud boys showed up heavily armed. Then just this week someone threw bricks and rocks through windows with rainbow signs including one of our lgbtq friendly churches. My friends bookstore also damaged. All of these laws policies and politics polarization around lgbtq issues has emboldened people to commit acts of violence and make threats. It’s become pretty scary especially with people brandishing weapons and guns lgbtq events. Who knows if that will turn into another massacre on lgbtq people.. I am afraid to bring my 3 year old to a pride event for that reason. I love her more than my own life and don’t ever want to put her in danger. I love learning about our history in this century and before. It fortifies me to know what others have gone through before and had the courage to be themselves and fight for their right to a dignified life. I’m so proud of them and I am proud of all of us in the lgbtq community. The fight is definitely not over and we need to stick together and vote and support each other.
❤
I agree with your mother , i would not deny a child the human right to know and be raised by a biological parent intentionally . I would not use a surrogate either. ...most pride events are too sexualized for 3 year olds are they not ?
😟😟
@@non_ideological_transexual7414 You're not wrong there
That photo of the choir is even more poignant when you remember that the photo, taken in 1993, shows 115 members with their backs turned; currently the choir's AIDS obituary list is over 300 long, so one turned back represents more than two deaths. Very powerful, very moving and very important to remember the devastation
I'm a Baby Boomer who didn't even know I was transgender or bisexual until I was diagnosed by a therapist in 2005. Until then, I thought I was a straight ally, from high school to college. I came out in 2006 and have lived as a female ever since! I had to fight off several gay-bashing attempts in my first year with pepper spray. I scared off a skinhead, a couple in a passing pickup truck, and 4 hip-hop thugs in an SUV. After that, nobody attacked me again! Cops call me "ma'am" and treat me like a lady! I now live with two roommates: a bisexual transgender ex-drag queen and a gay leather man and furry. Teens and little girls think I'm cool, compliment my clothes, and take selfies with me! Cosplayers complimented my outfit the other day at an anime convention! I met several crossplayers! I played Uno with two non-binary people in pink maid costumes!
@@kowynniea lot of therapists help people find their identities, since soul-searching like that can be too scary to do alone. along with that, in order for trans people to be allowed access to medical care and access to transition, we need to have a therapist diagnose us as being trans. along with that, it was only a few decades ago that being gay was considered a mental disorder and was diagnosed by therapists.
overall, a lot of people have simply never had the safe space to question their identity, and therapy offers that space.
U can't change gender
Reading your comment made me feel so much joy ! You're living life authentically and children celebrating it with you is cherry on the cake !
i would be interested to also discus the statistics of suicide. and also discussing the fact that many gay people from the older generations shut down their orientation and tried to live heterosexual lives, only to face depression, divorce, and misery.
and woah. the effect of AIDS on the current population is devastating. it's not that there are no gay people my age and older than me, it's that so many of them died when I was a kid. yikes!
basically me.
Me in my 13 year marriage until I put a stop to it and left.
Yeah, I still see some younger folks in these type of situations ! Comphet hits hard we know :c
I am 61 and I am one of those who hid from myself and lived a hetero life. I was told that girls crushed on girls all the time and that I was straight. Well, I know better now but because of circumstances, I am still trapped in the closet.
When my eldest came out as pan and NB, my mother basically told me everyone has the odd same-sex attraction, that time she kissed her girl friend, etc., but that didn't mean you had to be *gay* . You just had to make up your mind not to pursue those relationships. So basically, there are gay, pan, bi, aro/ace, etc in older generations who just identify as straight. If you accounted for AIDS deaths, the higher incidence of stress-related and poverty-related illnesses & deaths (including alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, heart disease, diabetes, etc.), and hate crimes, then tested the living population for *actual* orientation vs identity, you'd probably find at least a quarter of all people of all generations were/are LGBTQ+. The cisheteronormative agenda has just done a bang-up job suppressing that fact via law, cultural shaming, discrimination, medical malpractice, neglect of public health, and outright murder.
Gen X here. I was so sheltered and my access to information was so restricted, I had no idea there was any such thing as queer. But even then I was kissing girls when boys still had cooties. I learned there was LGBTQ in high school (1970s), but we didn't call it that, just gay. I didn't begin to explore until I was in my 20s. And I'm bi! Or pan, because I don't choose my partners by their bits. So now I identify as bi/queer, and have for the last 30 years. I lived through the AIDS epidemic and lost several key people in my life. It wasn't until HIV/AIDS was recognized in the straight community that research and treatment started. I watched helplessly. And then we come to now - I live in Florida. I want to leave the country, but I'm too poor to do that. Plus, few countries are welcoming to people from the US who do not have a high paying job waiting, or have a large amount of wealth. Jessica, you are a spot of sunshine in my day, even when you are not feeling good.
Hi neighbor! I'm an elder millennial married to a Gen Xer, and we live in GA. Leaving the country isn't financially available to us either. My best advice is to look for communities with large Quaker populations. Decatur, GA, or specifically City of Decatur, is SUPER accepting of LGBTQ individuals for this reason. There are good people here in the US. We just have to work hard to find each other.
Re moving out of the country (or even out of Florida), yeah.
:( Yet again, us poor and disabled people are stuck without viable options.
Best of luck to you. I hope some good things also come your way.
As another bi+ Gen X Floridian, I feel this. I've been looking for jobs outside of Florida with little success so far, but so many of my friends, especially trans friends and those with trans kids, are planning to leave or have already left the state. It's getting dangerous and frightening to live in Florida right now.
@@krystlepoulin6382 I have been looking at GA, plus the cost of living is better. Thank you for the referral!
@@resourceress7 Thank you, and to you.
My mom has said a few things about her attraction to women, but she "shut that down." She talked about how hard it was growing up as a tomboy. She also talked about how mental illness was stigmatized in her day. When I first came out to my parents, I didn't really do a good job of it. I was 14 and really, really drunk after sneaking out with a friend at a slumber party to drink with other friends. I just screamed, "I'm going to hell because I'm gay," as my parents drove me to the hospital. Dad said, "You're not going there today" because that was his sense of humor. Mom insisted that I attend Catholic school for high school (the next year) because public schools "made it cool to be gay." Odd that we were Methodists, and she made a point to tell me I was baptized by a closeted gay minister (not sure of the current United Methodist stance, but then you could be gay and part of clergy, but if you were out you couldn't get paid). Maybe I should have clarified "Bi" instead of "Gay." A month later, I started dating the boy who would become my husband, so I feel like mom would add that "just a phase" argument. I am polyamorous, and with my boyfriend's consent, I started dating women. I told my mom about a woman I was going on a date with, and she insisted on calling it "going on an outing." I'm happily married with a baby on the way, and I'm not currently dating, but open. I am working on my relationship with my mom, but considering cutting her off. I don't know if I want her to have a relationship with my children, I have told her I'm pregnant, but I have not told her she is going to be a "grandmother."
it's so sad, your mom basically discriminated against herself all her life and then went on to do the same to you... I cut off my mom (though for different reasons), it's not easy but sometimes it's just best. I hope whatever you decide you're at peace with your decision. Congrats on the pregnancy! Your baby will be lucky to have such an open minded parent in you
Officially the current stance of the United Methodist Church is, as it has been since 1972, "the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christianity". They're trying to change that but homophobia is still quite well-entrenched and it's literally tearing us apart.
Separate from this, disputes about how accepting to be of trans clergy or trans people _in general_ in the church are also contributing to the split. Which means I have a dog in this fight.
@@fnjesusfreak That is in direct contrast to the Methodists her in the UK (where the denomination was founded) as the real Methodists are very open and accepting. I attended the school that John and Charles Wesley (the founders of Methodism) started in the 90s and there were several openly gay teachers.
@@SevCaswellYou might be interested to read more about some of early church history there. The Wesley brothers spent time in the colonies early on, apparently specifically drawn to evangelizing Native people. The Methodist movement developed there at the same time as in Britain, and John actually ordained a bunch of new American ministers on his own authority after independence.
Half of my family comes from the former colonial branch, yeah. An awful lot of members are far from pleased with the United Methodist organization's continuing position on this subject. It's really not compatible with the overall emphasis on social justice, and hopefully this will turn around ASAP to be more in line with the British Methodists' approach.
@@jadsel The school I went to was founded in 1748, and John Wesley left England from Pill just outside Bristol where my god mother lives. He spent a lot of time preaching temperance in the Bristol area and also founded a free school for both boys and girls in the slums of the city, as well as the boarding school for the sons of his ministers next door to it (that moved to it's current location in Bath in 1852)
as a trans women it feels like i came out at the wrong time with all the anti trans bills and rhetoric, but it feels more like the best time everyone has been amazing and supportive and i feel like if i came out 20 or 30 yrs ago it would be a world away from what i have experienced
same! Im in my 30s and i only started coming out as trans 4 years ago. I was soo scared about how people would react, but literally everyone I know has been wonderful and im soo much happier and been living my life more since then than I can literally ever remember. Im in the UK so the anti trans laws aren't actually here yet in force, although our healthcare already sucks, but the way we are talked about in the media and by the government are really scary. But in my real life its like a different world. And its wonderful
I don't know how I would have coped coming out 20 years ago. I can't imagine I would have been able to find the same community or felt soo generally accepted
@@WhichDoctor1 same i came out 3 years ago and am in the uk, and yea the media makes it just seem the worse
i started transitioning in 2016 lmao i thought things would get better😅😅
The fact that they're trying harder and harder with anti trans rhetoric means that they're losing control of their narrative and they're scared. If we as a society can push past this resistance and keep going then hopefully we'll get to a point were trans people are more accepted in society and the bills that they're trying to ram through will be repealed/rejected.
I started 8 years ago or so. At least you probably dont have people asking if Caitlyn Jenner inspired you.... There is good and bad at everytime but we are moving towards more justice not less.
Yes, Boomers and Gen X lie about being gay. Growing up, I remember seeing my aunt light up when she saw her best friend in a way she never lit up for her husband. Her husband lit up for his best friend in a way he didn't light up for her either. I had exposure to lots of happy marriages to compare them too, and it was obvious, even to a young child, that they loved their "special friends" more than each other. They never admitted to having a lavender marriage, but it was obvious they made each other miserable and would have been much happier being their authentic selves. Instead of coming out of the closet, they used a Christian church so conservative it was basically a socially acceptable cult to indoctrinate their kids to be homophobic and now that he's dead she still can't come out because her kids would hate her. It's awful, but yes, they're lying. They're lying to us, and they're lying to themselves.
Each to their own - Let them be...
also, the "str8" no profile pic obviously cheating on their wife "straight" guys looking for a quickie that are a dime a dozen on grindr
how do you know they were gay? maybe they just didn't like each other.
@@ferideylmaz6114Probably because their reaction and relationship with their "special friend" was different from their other close friends.
If they just wanted to get away from each other, then they'd act like that with any friend, but they didn't.
What a horrible outcome
My mother was the baby of the family. My oldest aunt was born in 1909 South Carolina, and she said something to me in the 90s I'll never forget: "There's nothing going on now that hasn't BEEN going on. The difference is now it's out in the open."
JAMES
I'm old (and straight) and gay people of my parent's generation (born in the 1920s & 30s) often conformed to the extent of getting married and having families and keeping their sexuality secret. The alternative was being shunned or losing your job or going to prison. My mother's view was not anti-gay per se but she said gay people tended to lead sad and lonely lives, which wasn't entirely untrue. It wasn't that gay people were inherently miserable loners but society in general was very oppressive. One big cultural turning point in my view was 'The Naked Civil Servant' which millions of people watched.
I'm 50 and still live a sad and lonely life 😅 except for my partner, who is the light of my life 👩❤👩 but I could have done with a lot less hardship & lived as comfortably as my straight peers if I could've survived my depression while hiding who I am.
I've been quite focussed on my uncle's story since I was rather young, particularly after I realized that I was a lesbian. He died of AIDS in 1988, aged 26. When I was a teenager, I was super focussed on finding out as much as I could about him. I identified people he knew from newspaper articles (there was public outcry when he was fired from his job as a bus driver at the Olympics), but I quickly discovered that almost all of them had died of AIDS before I was born or when I was an infant. I ended up finding a friend of his who had AIDS but was still living (he passed away last year), and he told all of these stories about my uncle. He was the only one of his friend group (8 gay men) in the 80s to live past the early 2000s. I don't think I can really comprehend the scale of loss.
young lgbt people do absolutely have it better than what older lgbt people went through, but there are absolutely unique struggles that we are going through today. where i live, a bill was passed banning trans care for minors and i have to go off of the hormones that saved my life because of it. and im lucky, i know a lot of kids who are in dangerous situations because of their identities. i also know that most of the kids in my area are still very transphobic and homophobic. i really hope things improve for future generations, and if youre like me youre not alone
Many young LGBT people have been moving to my state for this very reason for years & while the more the merrier, I do wish everyone could just be free to be themselves wherever they want to & I hope things will start to change for the better soon 💗
I’m 42 and just realized in the past few years that I’m on the ace spectrum (specifically demisexual, which I didn’t even know was a thing). Wish I had been exposed to this info sooner because I just always figured there was something wrong with me for being different from all my friends/family 😕. Nice to know I’m not alone in how I feel about relationships
Imposter syndrome is so real… I was 18 when I first really questioned my sexuality. By 19, I quietly identified as Pan. I never said anything, because I wasn’t “queer” enough to do so - I felt the same about everyone, but strongly about no one. It wasn’t until 29 that I discovered the existence of asexuality and it wasn’t until 31 that I realized I was an ace lesbian 😅 and now, a year later, I still pause sometimes and wonder if I’m actually making it all up.
Maybe I’m just shy? Maybe crushing on women is just easier? Maybe I just don’t want to be “normal?”
The pondering is endless and tiring. So, yeah…imposter syndrome is a stable thing in my life. Not just with my orientation, but also my chronic pain, intelligence, dyslexia 😅😅😅
You summed up how I feel so well! I have been struggling in recent years to admit to myself that I am aromantic and asexual, and as of now I have only told 2 people. I haven't had the courage to fully own up to it or to tell my family because I'm scared of not meeting my family's expectations for me and that I'm trying to steal the spotlight from my sister, who had recently come out as a nonbinary lesbian.
I hear you. I was 27, and I'm still trying to figure out what I should call myself. (Bi-attracted anegosexual? Big shrug there.) It doesn't help that a lot of ace erasure seems to come from the asexual and queer community, gatekeeping the terminology and accusing you of just being confused if you feel an orientation that isn't none. I think that's a big part of why a lot of us asexuals don't feel like we have a right to include ourselves in Pride. If you already feel like an imposter, all the gatekeeping just compounds it.
Nobody knows you better than yourself, though, so no one gets to dictate to you how you identify. And it's OK if that changes or becomes more clarified over time. Terminology isn't perfect, or fixed, it's just our best attempt to make sense of reality at any given time, so finding your experience doesn't fit well within the current lingo doesn't invalidate your experience. Anyway, sending hugs.
Sounds like you and I landed on the same square (ace lesbian) by going around the same board in opposite directions ( I never questioned my sexuality until after I'd questioned my gender and started transitioning) 😅
My brother loves to throw this around as if to say that being trans is a fad. He believes that some people are “actually” trans, but that most are just doing it because it’s the new big thing. I have to remind him that these people have been routinely underrepresented as well as abused for their sexuality and gender and they’re finally free to express themselves (for the most part).
@furtunafurtuna103 ???
@furtunafurtuna103 Take your meds 💊💊💊💊💊💊💊🥛
@furtunafurtuna103 There's no apples in your meds.
are you my dad's sister because my dad says those exact same things LMAO /j
@@ImUpYourArse 💀✋
I think it's also about changing definitions, especially with bisexuality. Up until pretty recently, most people seemed to think either that bisexuality was a myth, or that the only way to be bisexual was to date men and women in equal measure. Meanwhile the fact that SO many of us have the experience of coming out to our older relatives only to have them respond with some version of
"Honey are you sure you're gay/bi, because you know it's only natural [to want to experiment/be in love with your best friend/some other extremely gay thing]. When I was your age, I [did extremely gay thing/had extremely gay thoughts and feelings] but it didn't mean anything because [various old person reasons e.g. it was the 60's, I was at college/war, everybody feels that way],"
that I can't help but feel that many many people of past generations found ways to discount their same sex attraction even to themselves, or even if they believed and were accepting of bisexuality, genuinely thought that their feelings or experiences weren't enough to qualify them as anything but straight.
That’s sucks that bisexuality was SO ostracised back then, or it was like a myth. It’s funny kinda because now, the largest group in lgbtq is the b so! But still biphobia and bi-erasure is still BAAD. like, did you see the kit Connor stuff that happened a while ago?
Thanks so much for this video -especially mentioning the pandemic of HIV. I lost so many friends then in the 90s and really didn't deal with it and when the current pandemic came and more friends died it stirred up all the terrible things caused both times by conservatives down playing the horrific deaths of people I loved. I have talked to other surviving GenX friends who are LGBTQ and many of us have had the same experience being re-traumatized by the current pandemic and behaviors from those in power. The death tolls plus the fact there are just less GenX people generally have made our age range a bit lonely at times and I'm only 50.
I work with kids and the school-aged summer school kids are so, so open minded. I started explaining my gender and one immediately went, “Oh, you’re trans!”
A minute later another one is explaining how “some people dont feel like girls or boys and so they are called they/them!”
They decided I’m a they/them now and Im not mad about it 😂
communally assinged gender
That's so sweet
So the Queer kids are recruiting the teachers now? Plot-twist!
Need to show this comment to someone who thinks "the teachers are turning the kids gay" now look at that plot twist!!
ownn thats cute
I'm a Boomer with a daughter who is in her 20s. I had about as many LGBTQ+ people in my high school and college years as my daughter has in hers.
In my generation, they didn't tell everyone about their sexuality/identification as people today. (The internet has done at least that much good in the world, and made people less afraid to speak up, and more people around them more willing to accept them and speak up for them.) I was very "safe" for those LGBTQ people around me to open up to, but not everyone was.
What happened to all those "Gay Boomers"?
Huge numbers of the LGBTQ people in my generation DIED OF AIDS.
Please never forget that. Never let their memories get swept under a rug, merely for the sake of promoting a debate point. 💔😢
The world can be scary 🥺
Especially when even in a country like Norway, where it has been safe for LGBT+ people in paper for years... There is hate growing to the extent of the horrific attack on queer people in pride month last year. Resulting in casualties, injuries and a canceled parade.😢 Luckily the government is doing what they can to keep everyone safe, but it is scary and reminds us that we need to stick together to stand up for our rights and those who are not free to live authentically and safely.❤
A lot of people also have the internalized biphobia to consider too. Plenty of people, including lgbtq+ people, are guilty of thinking if two people are in a heterosexual relationship then their bisexuality does not count or that they're "straight" because of the relationship they're in rather than who they feel attraction to. I've gotten that before from people. I say I'm bi, and they respond with "but you have a boyfriend" like sexuality turns off once you've entered an assumed monogamous relationship.
Yeah. I'm an older millennial who only few years ago admitted to myself that I'm queer (bi, demi) but because I'm 10+ years in a "straight marriage" I don't feel I belong to the queer community because I heard so many times that I'm "basically straight".
I swear sometimes it seems like you can't be bi unless you're dragging around one of each on both arms
@@comradewindowsill4253 And then we still can't win cause they'll just use that to solidify the "bi people are promiscuous" stereotype in their minds.
A lot of older people, including us who were born in the early 80’s, we taught being queer was a bad thing and we felt we had to hide who we are. A lot of us had old expectations of what our lives were supposed to be pushed on us from the time we were little, it takes time to work through that programming and realise who you really are. I’m happy that I’ve been able to do that now but it’s hard to figure out who you really are at 40 😊.
FWIW, I'm 60+ and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, and that's not at all a bad thing. ❤ I've literally lived multiple adventures in one lifetime, and I think I have time for a few more.🙂
@@BengtNordsten I’m sure you have more time for some more adventures. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, I’m just happier and cuter now than I was a few years ago 😊.
@@goosie8207 I in my 56 years have learned 'going with the flow' seems to elicit adventures I didn't think of or plan for, to have had some distinctly rewarding experiences. The surprise is the not knowing. But born in the late sixties I know all about internalised homophobia and transphobia for it to be a veritable surprise what I have become. Oh and further to, the group of young translings we support welcome us as elders.
I'm a 15 year old bisexual person and I found this video incredibly interesting! Thank you for making this Jessica and happy pride month
I'm a 38 year old bisexual mom, and I just want to say I'm so proud of your generation! I tried to come out at your age, hit backlash, and went back in the closet for another 20 years.
@@krystlepoulin6382 aww thank you and I'm so sorry you had that experience. I'm still closeted mostly but I plan on telling my dad soon :)
@@krystlepoulin6382 That's a sad story, but I've got you beat. I'm a 68-year-old baby boomer. I lived in San Francisco from 1980-1989, during the height of the AIDS epidemic. San Francisco would have been the perfect place for me to fully explore my sexuality, but AIDS scared the shit out of me, so I lived my life as an unhappy "straight" person. If it weren't for AIDS, my entire life would have been drastically different. I've always suspected that AIDS was created in a government laboratory because it was the perfect disease for the right wing conservatives to scare off millions of men from exploring their sexuality.
May allah guide u to the right path
@@sameersalum7179 please don't try to force your religion on me.
When I came out to my Very Christian Grandmother (TM), I phrased it as “I’ve always been this way, it’s just that now I have the words to articulate how I feel about my sense of self and how I view others”
Great way to close out Pride!!!🏳️🌈
Where did you find your pride flag emoji? I haven't been able to find one since about 2019!
@@conniegarvie it's in my smiley options under the flags (android).
@@conniegarvieif you have an iPhone, it’ll be among the flags. There’s a lotta them, so you’ll just have to look lol
Yuck
I absolutely believe that we will also be seeing polling numbers for older people identifying as LGBTQIA+ going up as well, because it seems like every week I'm seeing someone in their 40s/50s be exposed to queer stories and have a "WAIT, you mean not EVERY straight/cis person feels same gender attraction/complex gender experience? This isn't just something that everyone feels and just doesn't talk about??" epiphany. Or, slightly more rarely, the equally precious "There's a WORD for what I am now? I have a community!?" epiphany.
As someone who is 50, I find it wild that anyone is still in the dark since the internet became widely accessible. Speaking only for myself, I was desperate to learn anything I could about what was going on with me & the internet helped everything to fall into place that much more quickly (small town libraries at the time weren't much help to me). But better late than never, I guess. I'm glad more people are finding the courage to look more deeply into themselves & discover who they are & that there's a lot more help for them than I had!
another word for it is just weird fetish
I think we also see more gender non conforming or previous androgyne people come out as non binary. NOT saying that you cannot be androgynous as a man or woman you absolutely can, but I feel a lot of people in the 70s and 80s felt similar feelings that non binary or genderfluid people feel, they jsut didn’t know it was a real thing.
Lovely video as always❤
Just thought I should let you know that BetterHelp is really problematic. Many ppl who've used the service, have said that they had to deal with unprofessionalism, like therapists that were late to appointments but stil charged full price, and one even going as far as to use the toilet while on a video call with their patient. Their aervice really isn't worthy of being advertized.
People have said things on the last couple of vids that have a BetterHelp sponsorship. At this stage it doesn't seem like they are listening.
As someone of a similar age to you "I have seen and read things I did not understand..." is a very apt summary of the internet in that early time. It was truly shocking... And most parents only understood internet safety as "don't share your name or address"
Yeah. Remember having access to the internet as a kid without any parental controls like there are now.
My son is 17 and in the 11th grade of Highschool in Las Vegas, and most kids his age just don't give a f**k one way or another, as most or just whatever makes you happy. With each new generation, things become for accepted and open to the masses, and sexual orientation is no different.
When I was growing up in Los Angeles in the 70's, 80's and half of the 90's, I would barely see interracial relationships in the 70's, but as time past, I would see more and more. Of all my friends in Vegas currently, lets say 10+ couples, only one is in a same race relationships, all the others are mixed including mine. In the 70's, that number would have been reversed, as 1 out of 10 maybe would have been mixed.
While the LGBTQ+ numbers haven't changed that much over the same time, they have for sure risen over time, and I'm pretty sure people haven't changed, just the acceptance levels have and people willing to put themselves out there more. Cities and regions play a part as well I'm sure, as some things just aren't as open depending on community mindsets.
I mean, speaking as an elder millennial who who only realized their queerness in their 30s...representation really matters. My family was always very LGBT+ accepting. I was always drawn to stories with bi or genderqueer vibes (all 5 that you could find in the 90s, that is). I would waffle OUT LOUD if anyone called me "straight". And yet...I basically never saw any bisexual women (aside from a few villains), or any AFAB people who were not either definitely cis women or definitely trans men either in real life or media. As soon as I DID start seeing that, it was much easier to go: "Oh. They're like me, aren't they?"
By contrast, there's a kid in my family who came to the same two realizations between ages 12 and 14 (independent of knowing that I was going through the same process) - and I'm so happy for them!
My oldest first cousin (who is 20 years older than me) came out as a trans woman last year, aged 60, 3 or so years after I came out to my family as being non-binary (no one respects my pronouns or chosen name) so it's good that I am not alone in the family anymore. Given that my mother has always adored her first nibbling (more than me or my sister for sure!) I am hopeful that she will come around, as she is currently working on respecting my cousin's pronouns and new name.
2 years ago, I was having a conversation with my daughter about representation of the lgbtq+ community and the important of being out. My rationale was that people probably already know and loved someone from the community and that being out would lead to greater societal acceptance. She immediately told me she's bi. I hugged her and ordered "Proud Mom" and "Proud Dad" T-shirts.
How fantastic would it be to have two moms caring and loving you😭
Over 30% of certain bird species get to have this privilege.
You do you, boo. I’m happy in my nuclear family.
the hate that the younger generations get from the the media and some people in the older ones is jsut so depressing, I'm a millenial and remeber when it was targeted at us for the most ridiculous things, and now I look at the gen Zers in wonder! It's an awesome generation full of kind and thoughtful humans and still the older generation is loosing their freaking mind over random stuff 🤦♀
I am a queer Gen Xer....I lost far too many friends and family from AIDs. They will never be forgotten 💔 x
I'm 29 now but first came out at 11 😂
More people are lgbt because we are more comfortable and accepting with every generation ❤❤
Also im trans , demi bi
11? And truth be told in my experience some people pretend to be.
@@ggt47yeah. I came out as bi at 11 , and then over the years realised I was trans and I've been out for over 10 years as trans now
❤️🌈
@@ggt47that's called an opinion
Also yes. Knew when I was 3, I'm trans
@@ggt47, I am a boomer and realized that I also like girls 'that way' when I was nine. I immediately realized that I had to keep that a secret, because my dad would unalive me if he found out. Additionally, nothing about gender identity or gender roles made the least bit sense to me, ever.
Now, pushing sixty, I am happily agender, panromantic, demisexual, and eternally thankful for the younger queer generations who put those words out on the Internet for me to find.
I was having sex with my best friend when I was a young teen, and they turned to me and ask, "Do you think this is wrong?" I was somehow already way past that, "Our parents are always telling us no about something - and they do it - why can't we?" I would have come out but it was 1972 in a very conservative state. Not much has changed, except we talk about it now. GREAT VIDEO! Thank you.
im a gen z who only realised i was trans at 18 (and still in the closet living as cis years later for safety). i didnt know queer people existed until i was a teenager with access to the internet. spent some time denying it because i thought "it must be bad if it was taboo and kept hidden from me!" i grew up rural america. apparently have gay relatives who we were always told were "good friends."
i can only imagine how much worse a lack of access to information about queerness could make it for older generations who didnt have the freedom of the internet in their teen years to explore, and had to spend their whole lives living a lie even when they did find themselves. i know that someday i can get out of my living situation and come out, but so many didnt have that option in previous generations.
i think it also stems from being able to give a name to these things since they no longer quite fit the earlier definitions. like the way wisterias used to be categorised in the genus of glycine. the inclusion of more labels under the lgbtq+ umbrella means more people can identify on the queer spectrum. labels don't matter much to me personally, but i can see how they would give a sense of belonging.
that being said, i did go through a few years of my life wondering how did people even get crushes and if there was something wrong with me for never feeling that way. so it's nice to be able to place that under the aro-ace spectrum and go "well, i suppose that's not that weird after all".
i'm just thankful that my family (so far) is pretty nonchalant about my perpetual single status. i can't imagine that would have been easy in the past where marriage used to be much more of an expectation
I think you would be surprised how many "spinsters" were aro-ace, and while there was definitely judgement, most places did have some options. Like in Western Europe you had Beguines, women who formed groups and swore (temporary) oaths to remain "chaste", and lived together doing acts of charity.
I was born in 1959. Last week I worked the Help Desk at Registration for VIDCON. Watching (and often speaking with) those thousands and thousands of young people who had found THEIR clans, tribes, groups, special someones via a method which was undreamt-on during my own childhood filled me with envy and joy for what they have, sadness for what I did not, and happiness I became part of this amazing THING in the last several decades of my life.
It's incredible for myself to live in a place where even if someone sees my pronoun pin and is like "EWWWW WHAT ARE YOU, PLUARL?" I can just tell them to shut up and walk away unscathed
Jokes on them, we are!
well i use they/them, not because im non binary, i just have a tulpa.
@@palemeadows Yeah saaame
I’m a 32 year old female on the straight side of things, but in elementary/middle school, calling someone gay was still very much an insult. And I grew up in a pretty liberal area of the world too. I remember questioning my sexuality in high school because I was a late bloomer/shy girl who didn’t get a lot of male attention. But I couldn’t talk to anyone about my questioning sexuality because it was still so “embarrassing”.
Flash forward to university where I realized I WAS primarily attracted to men. I think I would have saved me so much heartache and distress if I was able to openly explore my sexuality, talk about it and figure it out in a supportive environment.
Jessica your hat is beautiful
Yes!!!! I would so wear that!!! I love her style!!!
"People fall into two categories: 'It was hard for me so it should be hard for you.' or 'It was hard for me so I want to make it easier for you.'" I have been saying a variation of this for years, it's nice to hear someone else mention it as well. A good, fairly comprehensive video all around.
When Jessica mentioned online communities, I got a little sad because I'm a Gen Z queer (aro/bi/enby) and my online community isn't equipped to talk about nonbinary gender-y stuff as often as I need to talk about it. So, this is me reaching out. Here's what I'm going through right now: 1) I'm AFAB, and while I don't want to start T, I do want facial masculinization surgery and probably top surgery at some point in my life. Is anybody else navigating possible medical transition as a nonbinary person? I'd love to talk about it; 2) I'm agenderfluid which means I'm usually genderless (agender) but when I do experience gender, I experience it fluidly between plural genders (genderfluid), and I've recently started tracking my gender changes in a rainbow journal. Has anyone else tracked their gender changes?; 3) I hypothetically love dresses, but I hate that I can't wear them on my man days because I can't wear a dress and still pass for male. I hate how they don't fit my chest right, and they make my hips look wider. Does anyone relate?; 4) I saw my first real rainbow in years earlier this week. This doesn't have to do with anything, I just thought we could all use more rainbows in our lives! :)
hey i'm also an aro bi enby!! I relate to most of this so you're not alone! I hope you're doing ok in this chaotic world :)
Millennial here, guess that means I'm a elder queer contextually. While I'm amab genderfluid/genderqueer there's some input I can give. 1) It's worth checking the state/country laws as transition is heavily impacted with not just ability but limitations to how you transition. Best bet would be somewhere with informed consent model (even if not restricted not every provider uses this). Medical transphobia means cis health professionals really try and conform to binary gender ideas of sex characteristics. Self advocacy is important as is familiarity with your medical rights. While all transition is case by case a lot of people make assumptions as if it's on rails. You can do things and pick and choose procedures even if results are ymmv. Also trying for a therapist who understands your gender and is on your side is important because....
2) There's the historical standby of well lying. Because some places have set requirements (you must have these proceedures for this legal change etc) in the past and in some places it was not uncommon for non-binary to pretend to be binary to get through the medical hoops and then book it. Not recommended, cuz stressful but you do what you have to. (For others reading and thinking what if they're not sure, when you're considering surgery it means a level of thought and research usually.....) A therapist who's on your side can help with that, though that's not always easy. But is important to try otherwise you'll be in therapy with someone you're lying to to get your required letters for surgery and again even more stress.
3) Of the tiny amount of people who detransition who are not doing so because of transphobia some amount are nb people who had more transition measures than wanted and had to walk it back to a level of comfort. Sometimes this is because of medical professionals not respecting the agency of patients or worse legally not having a choice. Hopefully this isn't you but bringing it up cuz in that case it might be worth the stress of hunting for resources in that direction. (Though beware there be TERFS/ Gender criticals that's been there hunting ground for decades).
4) Speaking from the US one thing to watch out for is insurance and legal requirements about surgery. For example some states require a year of hormones before facial harmonization so depending on your means to pay out of pocket see 3). If your medical team gets it and you're in such a place one way would be to microdose real low (if self administered well it's how low can you go ahem sry i luv puns) so it's on your medical record and can be approved. A understanding medical team makes this way easier.
5) If you've done a lot of research and demonstrate that you understand that research and standards for less... Standard transition care is breaking new ground I've found competent trans healthcare workers are more willing to discuss cuz you're not coming from ignorance. If they say this is kinda experimental and you're reply is I know and that's why I'm signing up health professionals relax. This happens a lot more often in informed consent model.
I think that's it?
Wait damn tracking genders. I used to cuz my dysphoria/euphoria would change and if I wasn't conscious of it my mental health would take a hit. After hrt i give less than a damn and present however I feel sometimes not even matching my gender but just cuz it looks good. Talk about gender non conforming lol. I do know my gender changes day by day but I'm aware of it, quick on the uptake and mostly my response is huh neat.
* Every trans person I know could use a tailor. Always worth it. Another suggest is "woman's cut" kilts. While not dresses they're more flattering than the typical square cut.
🌈🌈🌈🌈
I'm non-binary and I also want to medically transition. I've already gotten a hysterectomy (though that was mostly for medical reasons, the gender reasons were just a bonus) and I want top surgery so bad.
Didn't notice I was nonbinary until I was 35 the disporia was hiding under autism and afab autistic people are wildly under diagnosed. Neurodivergent people are apparently more likely to identify as queer in some way possibly because we are already being stigmatized for something so whats one more thing and diagnoses is getting more accessible.
I think it's also because of how neuroatypical people see (or don't see) rules. Because I feel like like a lot about gender is just (arbitrary) rules. Many neuroatypical people spot stuff like that easily. And also their minds just work simply _differently._
I have (diagnosed) adhd and am fairly sure I'm on autistic spectrum as well and have pretty much zero internal sense of gender. I identify with my sex - but have no idea what gender should feel like. I guess I'm an agender female then.
My sexuality is very fluid. I can't a 100% agree on sexuality being an unchanging quality you are born with 😅 For many it likely is - I just think sexual and gender fluidity is also something that varies between people.
@@Pippis78 Agreed and it seems likely to me that for the undiagnosed things like that can get buried under the noise. At least it was like that for me.
@@silentlyjudgingyou Being undiagnosed can make life anyways kind of chaotic and take up a lot of energy and cognitive resources - and getting a diagnosis for neurological stuff can make sooo many things make sense and click into place.
Not to mention the effect of gaining a community full of shared experiences, support and shared humour.
I got diagnosed with adhd also when I was about 35-38yo and - as is typical - there has been LOTS of unraveling of guilt, poor selfesteem and feelings of being a lazy, shitty failure of a human being.
I thought I finally really _GOT_ my gender identity at 31yo when I "found" my identity as a woman through becoming a mother and becoming a huge fan of drag. But alas, now at 44yo I just realized a few months back that "wait... I think I'm agender?" Until 31 I had kinda felt I'm mentally between or both a man and a woman, but haven't had gender related dysphoria though (atleast not great anxiety over it. I have always kinda wanted some male parts and a moustache, but also like the part I do have. Luckily I don't have huge boobs - those I might have a problem with). I did suffer from internalized misogyny until 31. Since I have memory I've been a gender rebel and hated how girls and boys and women and men get treated differently.
My sexual orientation I've given up on trying to determine. I really really liked it when I identified as a lesbian and still struggle with apparently not being one afterall 😂😅🤦♀️ I'm going with "who cares"/pan for now.
@@Pippis78 I still say I'm a lesbian I'm fem presenting enough it's just a quick short hand but I haven't even made a solid decision on prounouns yet. I had a full breakdown trying to meet NT standards when I was undiagnosed I now have multiple anxiety disorders.
@@silentlyjudgingyou We don't have gendered pronouns in my native language and home country. I LOVE it so much (everybody is referred to as "hän" - or "se" often in casual speech/slang ("se" translates to "it", which admittedly sounds a bit weird 😂)). It has always felt somewhat uncomfortable and unnecessary to have my sex emphasized every time I'm referred to by "she". But well, it matches my body and I don't think I want to bother with asking people to use another pronoun.
And, I mean, I'm proud to be a woman, even though I identify it only as my sex and not a/my gender - if that makes sense?
Apparently the picture of the choir should now have all people wearing black as the 7 remaining members have also now died of AIDS since it was taken.
I love that you described it as a hidden pandemic because it really hits home after going through such a public one how terrible it mist have been to go through one that was ignored
Im gen z, and i grew up with a supportive family, but i grew up in tennessee being queer and trans. Thankfully when I was 14 my family moved up to connecticut where people are much more accepting. I've known I was queer since I was 10, and trans since I was 12, but i didn't start transitioning until 15 (im 15 rn). I'm so glad i live in a place where people are so accepting, i wouldn't be surviving where i used to live
❤
I remember that photo, of the SF GMC, it made a vivid impact, and made me a vocal ally and advocate at 10 yrs old.
the rates of autism diagnoses went up as it became more widely known. this is no different.
During high school, I didn’t know any gay people at all but 40 years since graduation it turns out that they were a few friends of mine who came out later in life.
I visited the Stonewall Inn earlier this month. The memorial garden dedicated to the missingeberation was particularly moving since I also had a godfather who was a gay man who died in the epidemic. I remember his boyfriend who had passed earlier, when my uncle's health started worsening, and the morning that I learned he had died. Standing in the memorial garden, I particularly thought of that couple.
I still pray to my uncle, and I'd like tp think that hevwas a guiding force as I found a way to my own queer identity.
❤ thanks for sharing this.
Hi Jessica!! I'm a great fan of your content from Brazil!! I'm 15 years old and I'm a lesbian :)
I don't know if you're going to see this, but if you for any chance do I really wanted to thank you and Claudia for your content here. I don't have much contact with queer adults in my life and much less sapphic couples. Seeing your love for each other, seeing you build a family feels my own heart with love and hope.
I would like to someday also find a girl I love and start a family, I want to be a mother and be who I am, I want to love the way I love.
I watch your videos almost everyday because they make me feel lesser of an stranger, I think. I see you and Claudia being such a lovely couple and I wonder if someday I will ever have that too. Sometimes I like to imagine this might be me in the future. Lol.
Anyway, thank you ❤
They are great role models! ❤
The percentage people in older generations (in the USA) identifying as L/G/B has also increased - in other words, everyone seems to be getting more comfortable with saying it.
I notice you dropped the T. Typo, I hope?
@@christopherb501 no, older surveys didn't ask about trans.
First and foremost, that is an amazing dress!!! Secondly, GenXer here - another thing to lend to the idea that our generation hasn't come out of the closet entirely is that so many of us never entertained that we could be anything but cis & straight. So we didn't explore our sexuality or genders, and I often find myself wondering if I would have been non-binary or gender fluid if such a thing had been discussed at all. I did discover I was bi/pan in my twenties because I left the high-demand religion of my parents and found the nicest group of queers who helped me understand some things about myself. It's not just a matter of coming out of the closet in public but having the words & freedom of self-examination to come out of the closet to yourself. I think for many in the older gens, it was just a bit too late & we were satisfied enough in cis-het places in our lives to not bother exploring further. Which is pretty sad, if you ask me. But I love the fact that my son had that freedom and can proudly say he's a gay transman.
As an older person (48) who only realised last year that he's aspec, I think the fact that it's spoken about more is giving people a bit more confidence too. My generation and older didn't have or understand these nuances, or perhaps even think they're broken, not realising they're under the lesser known LGBTQ+ identities.
Most of my life I thought I was straight though realising how my experiences were different from my straight friends. Fireworks! I'm not straight. Without making friends of all ages, I might never have figured this out. Of course AIDS was a big thing, but I suspect there are many Boomer and GenX people who are ace, or aspec, and have never had that realisation.
Millenial here, had that same thought about the unmoderated hellscape of the internet the other day, like my major primary school memories include blue waffle and omegle. Kids these days cant have much of a better experience - ive seen the horror films on kids youtube
There is so much Im worried about but the increased attitude of acceptance, equality, and empathy from gen z gives me hope. We Milennials seem to be a widely mixed bag due to coming up in a time when a lot of things were transitioning but Im hoping by the time we could be "the old folks in power" we'll have the grace previous generations didnt to actually share it and listen to the generations coming up instead of snearing and blaming and ranting about things like food prefrences (avacado toast anyone).
What a lovely video 🌹- pleasant AND well-considered!
Fifty years ago, even the MERE THOUGHT of "well, I might be..." was radical. It took fortitude and commitment to even examine a MAYBE. And there was the constant awareness that to make a single tentative tiny move toward gay life could easily result in utter devastation of one's life, starting with abandonment by family and friends, excommunication (literal), loss of job, eviction, denial of government services.... You didn't become less than human - you stopped being human, with fewer rights (and receiving less sympathy) than a stray dog - randos could run up and beat you bloody and the cops didn't care (they might join the randos), and if you died you knew you'd be buried very quietly and your name never mentioned again.
So if "the kids have it so EASY nowadays" and "they can just 'try it on for size' and change on a whim!!" - well I say GOOD FOR THEM. Bless the young for living under a little less fear, for not needing to fall into a dark depressive spiral just because a total stranger had a nice smile or some TV star seems eminently touchable 😁- for not living in perpetual crushing fear of "well, I might be."
I was a youth adviser in the 1990s, in a community where there was at least an official acceptance of LGBQT+ people. My co-advisor was very out.
I didn't count, but there were a lot of out youth, and those who were ostensibly straight were supportive.
Echoing the generation gap, many of the older members of the community, while intellectually supportive, had problems with interacting with queer people in a non-awkward manner.
Thank you for bringing up the AIDS crisis. I’m a millennial and know about it, but it feels like “before my time.” You putting it in context here about why it may seem like there are less gay boomers hit hard. It’s like I had those two concepts (less gay boomers and the epidemic) in separate files in my brain and you helped put them together into a more comprehensive file -if that makes sense. My brain looked at it from the fact that it’s more accepted now, but obviously it’s more than just that.
love the video but really wish you didnt do the betterhelp sponsor as they have a very controversial past of hiring extremely unprofessional people, especially homophobic people too + wayy more things i didnt mention, there are a lot of videos on them :/
Thank you, I love Jessica but she really needs to look into her sponsors 😕
I was looking for this comment to like because of the sponsor.
I am so sorry but Jessica the thumbnail.........the serious expression on your lovely face, the title....."Are people GAYER??" That just absolutely sent me😂😂😂😂😂I'm snorting, my cat is disturbed, I love you.
Its a lot safer to be gay nowadays. Its a lot safer to live out and IDENTIFY yourself openly as gay now, in 2023, than it was in, say......1938. Previous generations were just as gay or not gay. But they were taught to interpret their feelings and instincts differently. Religion was more prevalent. Most common Judeo Christian religions consist being gay against God and that muddied the water even more. Basically, the world is exactly as gay as it ever was. But now you don't have to fear for your life if you are. God bless us all.
I absolutely want a video with all the wise-crack responses to homophobic comments, that sounds like a hoot!
I would so love a video of all the best comebacks at homophobic people, that would be so fun!
Thank you for this video!
I think it's also the awareness for more identities, especially those not in the LGBT acronym. There were hints I'm aromantic, asexual and genderless at least since I was 11, but I didn't even hear about these identities until much later. I'm currently 30. I started identifying as aromantic and asexual when I was around 23, after I started wondering about it as 19. I suffered from a lot of internilized aphobia, especially arophobia.
'it was hard for me, so it should be hard for you' is just pure crab bucket.
Thank you for the Remembrance 🌹1981 was tough for all queer people and their friends.
GenX here. When AIDS emerged, we were told we could get it from public toilet seats. It was an awful time.
One of my moms asked me how my daughter knew she was gay when my mom really had no idea until she was older that that was even a thing that she was allowed to be. So yeah, we had to have this conversation. Thank you for the great explanation!
My father was born in the late 1940s, early 1950s. He is gay but was told he had to have a child. He was out in the late 70s.
He was disowned, kicked out of his house and religion. I understand why the older generations didn't say anything and chose to stay closeted. It was very unsafe to be even called anything but "normal".
When I was growing up queer (just 15 years ago) I was so scared that people would cease talking to me when they found out. I'm still not entirely out to everyone who knows me today, as I come from quite conservative community - but things are slowly moving forward in the right direction, younger generation has no issue bringing their same sex partner home and I learned to my surprise, that there are quite a few older queer members of my family, too!
Oh as a Gen Xer I'm upset with that percentage for my cohort. As a Bisexual disabled ciswoman I held back saying to anyone in case of bullying and backlash for my family.
I only realized I was a lesbian a few years ago, in my mid thirties. Apparently, my husband knew I was a lesbian before I did.There's a lot of things that can keep a person from coming to terms with their identity. I wish people had told me when I was younger that sexual attraction and being able to tell someone is conventionally attractive are NOT the same thing.
That picture just hit so hard. Like the whole video was striking, but that image was just so poignant.
Thank you for the nod to the generation who sneaked Certain Books in the library (or went there for unfiltered internet). Also the gays run the libraries! I'm in my 40s and I know this now LOL. I was safe there and never knew it
The librarian had to be the first person to know I was gay by the books I would ask for!
The Indian supreme court is actually having discussions on the landmark decision of legal recognition of same sex relationships!! and I'm praying everyday for it to be passed finally
I'm from a very conservative and rural part of India (i can't legally vote yet lol) so I can't contribute much offline without being targeted somehow but I am part of an online safe space for the lgbt+ amd regularly have discussions and debates to defend our community and give us more recognition ❤️ Your channel has been a great motivator for me to keep living my truth and knowing that happiness is achievable 😊 Thank You so much for being who you are and providing your amazing content and education
I've said this many times and I'll say it again - because I'm a member of Gen Z and I've grown up in a time when this kind of thing is talked about, I have a lot of labels - I know that I'm an autistic lesbian with ADHD and OCD. People tell me all the time "Oh, if you'd grown up 100 years ago, you wouldn't identify with all this nonsense!"
And in a sense, they're right. 100 years ago, I would think of myself as a scatter-brained, incompetent, lazy, socially inept, oversensitive, constantly anxious woman who can't do anything right and who is deeply miserable and unsatisfied in her marriage to a man. I'd wonder every day what was wrong with me, why I couldn't be normal like everyone else, and why I couldn't seem to be happy with my husband no matter how hard I tried.
Today, I get to have these labels, I get to connect with other people like me, and I get to live my best life - and I'm happy. If you think it would be better for me to live without the labels even if it made me miserable, then congrats! I completely disagree.
Actually, back then it would've likely been "neurotic." A very popular catch-all back in the day - before depression existed. 🙄
Sure, there are plenty of "label collectors" running around loose, but most of us are just looking for a handy little map of the neighborhood(s) we've found ourselves in.🙂
@@BengtNordsten can't forget about the very common diagnosis of "hysteria" back then too
As a fellow migraine sufferer I really feel that about the cancellations.
I also am in my 30s so have had experience with friends having to hide who they are, but another are now starting to find the courage to explore things & talk. It's still not fully safe for us, but it is a lot safer than it used to be
Imagine learning that women can love each other at the same time you learn men and women love each other instead of through a gay slur learned in middle school .....
Right??!
Literally the only reference to people being gay when I was at school was boys accusing each other of being queer, gay, homos, and so on. For just about anything. Was anyone actually gay? I really don't know.
I'm early gen X and cis het yet I do wonder how I would identify had the support structures available today were available 40+ years ago.
I came out in my late 20s in the 90s, which went disasterously. If I were in my 20s now, I might have come out much younger & gotten more support and acceptance. Remember, lot of LGBT people of my generation didn't survive to my age, including lots of my friends and chosen family. I barely scraped by myself. We've always been here and we'll always be here.
The younger generations are better educated then we were.
thank for this very informational video:) i hope more people who didn't know this find it and get a little more educated
I don't think I'd know I'm pan without the internet, I'm also demi, I fall for people I get close to, but without really knowing it was an option to be with a girl I don't think I'd try to get close enough to one to have that bond.... I'm also very shy introverted and exhausted by people, so I really don't get close to a lot of people
If it makes you feel better about trying to get people to say your name properly, I've been asked by people to spell my last name. It's Walker! Thank you for pointing out the AIDS epidemic in the United States and the UK. Here, people are still trying to take us back to the 1920's and Affirmative Action was just repealed today. My child has enough hindrances to education and AA helped me get in to college when I surely wouldn't have been able to without it. Since they are also disabled I fear that's on the chopping block in the future as well.
“I did not see this coming! This is fun!”
-Jessica Kellgren-Fozard 2023
I am 69 and an Ally who has been fortunate to have several Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Trans persons in my life. My partner is Bi, as is my best friend. My best friend in high school, whom I had fallen in love with, came out to me when we were in college together. I was hurt and angry, but not at him. I was angry with myself for not seeing it. Many of his mannerisms that I never thought of as "typically Gay" screamed Gay to others. So after he came out, I felt like such a fool. But I gradually resigned myself to the facts, and we continue to be very good friends. I just feel fortunate that he is still, as my former husband would say, upright and able to take nourishment. Now, many years later, I have several friends and family members who are somewhere in the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Two of my brother's 7 children, 6 of whom were born female, have come out as non-binary and ACE. They've both changed their names, and one of them is getting married to their partner, who is Trans, on Halloween. They're both in their early 30s, so I'm not sure which generational label encompasses them. And I'm the understanding, non-judgmental auntie that all my nibblings and their friends can come to in a crisis. I just wish my brother and his ex-wife would just get off their Fundamentalist Christian high horse and accept the fact that 2, and possibly 3, of their daughters are finally identifying as they are truly meant to be.