You know how being a teenager is horrible? It’s especially horrible for queer teenagers. Because all the stuff happening to them: the acne, the hormones, the pressures to be a sort-of adult, but the right sort of adult. Especially in a world of straight people, where all the people you might have met are straight and (basically) all the people on TV are straight and everyone thinks you’re straight, so why don’t you just be straight, because that’s what’s ‘normal’, right?
That’s why it’s great to see people sharing their stories of #GrowingUpGay on Twitter. There’s talk of bullying:
Secret relationships:
Homophobic parents:
Having to rely on ‘gaydar’ while meeting other people in the hope that you too might find a first love:
And Twitter’s queers are not only discussing what it was like growing up gay, but what it is like growing up gay right now. And the generational differences are particularly telling. There are people who just didn’t know anyone else like themselves because there was a time there were no gay people on TV:
Then you have people who made gay role models out of whatever they could find:
Then you have the ones who found a few gay people on TV but only in a sexualised context:
And then there are those lucky enough to grow up with the internet. It’s not perfect and bullying and abuse do continue online. But, hey, in societies with piteous (or no) LGBT sex education and a lack of equality in the mainstream media, it’s an endless resource of actual knowledge about queerness and stuff that could be new and inspiring to hopeless teenagers. Oh, and there’s loads of porn. Because if there’s no gay people snogging on TV (straight people snog on the TV all the time), where else are you meant to get your kicks?
Overall, the lesson is: it gets better. Not only as people get older and more independent from whatever their family thinks or wants, but as culture and our consumption of it has progressed. Back in the day, when B_ut I’m A Cheerleader_ came out, you’d have to rent it from Blockbuster then go and watch it. Now? You can stream Orange Is The New Black on Netflix in the privacy of your own room (keeping your Netflix searches private if you feel you need to) and enjoy Natasha Lyonne playing a much more confident lesbian.
And as most of the memes being created around the #GrowingUpGay hashtag – and the hashtag itself – show, the internet and pop culture are so important in helping young people unsure of themselves get a bit of identity.
Glee might look faded in retrospect, and Lady Gaga’s Born This Way has got old, but that’s almost a good thing. That none of what either did is radical anymore shows how much further we’ve come in accepting not just gay rights but queer people, even in the past couple of years. Each little cultural example of people not doing what’s ‘normal’, people doing stuff outside of traditional heterosexuality, is so helpful in giving young queer people an idea of how things are done. In the same way toddlers with older siblings learn how to walk faster because they see those before them doing it, seeing queer people at ease even on a TV programme can assure young people that they’re not alone and that feeling at ease with your identity is possible.
And now? As you can see from the hashtag, young people are increasingly finding and creating their own renditions of queer culture online – even if that does mean spending an afternoon Photoshopping Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson so they’re holding hands – finding support systems and role models within these narratives. This in turn is leading more young people to be out than ever. There’s Miley Cyrus, Kristen Stewart, Sam Smith, Olly Alexander from Years + Years, Cara Delevingne Nick Grimshaw... the list goes on. Maybe not all of young people’s queer role models are household names, but that's an advantage of being fluent in technologies their parents just don’t understand. Another is it's harder for them to be ‘caught’.
Coming out and being out is hardly easy; the world has a long way to go, even in those countries where being gay and gay marriage are both legal. Because queer people are still marginalised in the places that should be looking out for them – in Parliament, in schools’ PSHE education, in the media. But things truly do improve, not only as individuals get older, but as the world gets that little bit more mature, too.
Like this? You might also be interested in:
Why The Search For The Gay Gene Is More Important Than You Think
Valentine's Day Isn't All Roses When You're In A Lesbian Couple
Why All These Public Displays Of Faux-Lesbianism Need To Stop
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.