By Melissa Raney — 2019
By the time you reach your 30s, you think you know yourself—your likes, your dislikes, what inspires you, what makes you tick. But there I was, at 36 years old, realizing I didn't know myself at all.
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CLEAR ALL
Accepting and sharing your gender or sexual identity is always a complex, emotional journey. Coming out later in life comes with some unique challenges — and some benefits, too
Though pop culture often portrays queer people successfully coming out young, a generation of our closeted LGBTQ elders might disagree.
When many LGBTQ people look back on their childhood, we remember a mixture of confusingly feeling different; being harassed for our sexual identities; and realizing how important our parents, teachers and other authority figures were in either helping us through those years—or making our lives worse.
“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.”
Ideas of visibility and the closet have largely been shaped by white America and the gay liberation movement of the 1970s. Refusing to subscribe to this narrative gives us space to connect with our gender, our culture and our sexuality on our own terms.
A recent study found that only 19 percent of Asian American and Pacific Islander LGBTQ youth said they could “definitely” be themselves at home.
A queer author of color on the limits of language and the maximums of love.
Make sure you come out only when you really want to. Take control of the situation and remember that it may be more of a process than an event
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.