Living the Queer Life

Gaia Kinder-Hine

I don’t know how it was for others but it’s safe to say being Bi can be an experience and a half. At least it was for me in high school as someone who realised fairly early it ended in a disaster. My first attempt at coming out ended in me vehemently denying it as a rumour because of the high school culture of being a queer person.

Anyone who was brave enough to come out was given the societal cold shoulder of the school. By the end of the year it was long forgotten that I could ever be a queer person and I wasn’t the target of teenage prejudice. How could anyone honestly be happy living a life in hiding who you are though?

Eventually it got easier to accept that you simply had to hide it for fear of your peers treating you as a social pariah. After high school I eventually gave up living a shadow of a life for fear of the way others would look at me and I came out as bi; my family already knew but for the first time I had friends who I knew wouldn’t judge me in a community where I wouldn’t be the outcast. Throughout my life, I’ve come to a realisation that as a community we will always pick and choose what parts of ourselves to accept and sacrifice what parts of ourselves we can’t to accept to fit our narrative: the way we planned our lives to be with those guiding us. After this I decided to give up on other people’s perceptions influencing my life plan and just ‘be’. It gets exhausting after a while to live a half life due to the pressure of those around you.

Even as I came out there were still these echoes from all angles telling me who I could and should be, the stereotypes that should have been long forgotten. The fact is I will never be “straightened out” and I refuse to “pick a side” nor am I “hyper-sexualised”. I won’t be told who I can be and what the boundaries are when set out by other people who don’t know me, my story or who I am. By imposing the stereotypes that come with coming out, it results in alienation for young people and creates a hatred of the institutions that perpetrate these stereotypes and reflects the fact that there is no proper education about being queer in this world. Our education system should reflect the needs of all of those within it, not simply the ‘mainstream’.

Feelings towards homosexuality have pro gressed, changed, and shaped over the years in various different places around the world. The UK happens to be one of the countries where attitudes towards homosexuality have undergone significant changes over the years. But while it is true that attitudes have changed, there are still some discrepancies in opinion and acceptance between different regions with in the country.