Hi,
I am a young closeted adult in this borough who is at the tail-end of living with their parents. As someone who identifies with multiple labels, it’s typical for me to experience some level of shame, insecurity and loneliness surrounding my gender and sexuality – especially when there are even parts of the community that unfortunately do not recognise my right to exist amongst other queer people. I am asexual, pansexual, and toeing the line between demigirl and agender.
My experience of the world is scrolling through menus and having to input who I am instead of being able to select it from a list; not knowing what flag to wear during Pride; being subjected to invasive questions about my partner and I’s sex lives; being called frigid, a pussy, defective and mentally ill for not experiencing sexual attraction; worrying I’m not queer enough; worrying I’m too queer. This area isn’t the greatest place to possess some zest, as I’m sure all of you are aware. The fated ‘Rainbow Day’ of school-that-shall-not-be-named ended with the football lads booting their balls at us at grave injury-causing speeds as they used our flags as target practice. I remember the place my friend was grazed blooming bright red and still flinch at the sound of a ball being kicked. I first got called a tranny in a maths class. On leaving a building, one girl wheeled around and exclaimed, with the most repulsed, contemptuous face, “what is it?!” because I stopped her from pushing everyone over during a bottleneck. She was nice.
This experience didn’t end at school. It did – and still does – follow me home. Ironically, I was actually more out at school and college. One of my parents is abusive; a sad reality for many people in this borough, regardless of their identity. She also doesn’t believe in nonbinary people, misgenders any trans person she sees and told me I’d grow out of my asexuality. That I was too young to know. She also thinks bisexuals are greedy. I’m not telling her anything else about myself.
What has been really plaguing me recently is the stifling weight of silence. I lied about my first pride flag and said I was storing it for a closeted friend. I get paranoid that they’ll know I find a woman on the TV pretty. My first Pride was accidental: the parade rounded the corner as we were going to see Matilda, and my homophobic granddad aggressively grumbled all the way through it. I was smiling. My next Pride was on purpose, and I had to make some excuse to sneak out and spend the day there. That was Yarmouth 2025. So many lies and secrets and evasions still just to live as who I am. Each one weighs a ton.
When I got to Pride 2025, a pack of feral children adopted me. A girl smushed rainbows onto my face and a lady asked if we wanted our picture taken. Spooked, I told her I couldn’t; I couldn’t risk it. She gave me a hug and said “I’m glad you’re here” in a tone so warm it almost made me cry. I spent the entire day dodging phone cameras and the event photographer (to varying degrees of success) but by god was every risk worth it.
What makes life more volatile for people like me is knowing that we’re less relatable. We’re branded too weird, too different, too much. Trying too hard to be special. We’re not the most familiar bunch for a cishet person to understand and, whilst we have moved mountains in normalising and celebrating LGBTQ+ people in society, there’s still a long way to go. Particularly with identities that are only just being recognised by society. I see how the right picks us off from the outside-in and I see how people like me can be easy pickings. I sit in multiple boxes in the community, in multiple circles of the LGBTQ+ world, and yet sometimes this exclusionary talk makes me feel like I’m all and neither, like I need to prove that I’m not a nefarious actor to be where I already belong. I have been called a paedophile and been equated with being a rapist for being trans, which is part of a narrative that is particularly aggravating for me as an AFAB person who has experienced sexual violence and harassment since the age of 7. It infuriates me to no end to have intrinsic parts of my being weaponised against each other by a random straight cis guy for his own personal gain. And that’s unfortunately not just Rupert Lowe.
What I like to content myself with is the fact that we are a naturally occurring part of life. And that things are looking up for me. Uni is the door that my hard work and tenacity opened – a world away from looking over my shoulder, hiding my screen and stuffing my pride flag into a duffel bag, all beyond its rigid, cisheteronormative frame. I’m even thinking of purchasing a binder!
They quite literally will never be able to stamp us out. They quite literally will never win. The dinosaurs are losing to a comet. So despite it all,
I’m queer, I’m filled with fear, and I’m still here.