By Nick Levine — 2020
Though pop culture often portrays queer people successfully coming out young, a generation of our closeted LGBTQ elders might disagree.
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“In Latin America, there’s been a great deal of progress around gay and lesbian identities,” Ortiz says. “But with being transgender and non-binary, a lot of people are still unsure what it all means and I believe it’s connected to the words we use.”
The term “Two Spirit” in Native American culture often describes a person possessing both male and female spirits. And they’ve been around well before the Santa Maria or the Mayflower dropped anchor.
These black women and gender-nonconforming individuals have created a space for other young girls and nonbinary persons to feel seen and heard.
Although society has made many strides in queer acceptance and visibility, coming out at work is still a monumental—and sometimes risky—task for many LGBTQ workers.
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Confusion over why autism is so prevalent among transgender people may be limiting their access to medical care.
Autistic queer folk may experience struggles for acceptance in both identities.
After generations in the shadows, the intersex rights movement has a message for the world: We aren’t disordered and we aren’t ashamed.
For LGBTQ youth in particular, the Internet can be a refuge—a safe place to feel less alone. For queer youth to feel normal, they need to see, read and hear the voices of others who look like them and use the same identifying labels.
Queer culture and the arts would be much poorer without the presence and contribution of butch and stud lesbians, whose identity is both its own aesthetic and a defiant repudiation of the male gaze.
“Representation and visibility is given to us by larger power structures, but what do we give ourselves? I’m more interested in that. What questions are we asking ourselves to grow and heal? To challenge the ways this world constantly teaches us to hate ourselves?”