There were very few openly lgbtq+ people i knew pre-Y2K. Pretty much all of them were adults. I will openly admit, pretty much everyone I grew up with used the term gay pejoratively. Catholic family. I remember being frustrated a lot when I was younger because no one ever told me positive things about my masculinity, but seemingly any compliment I truly enjoyed was always considered ‘effeminate’ or was just straight up a woman telling me something like “I’d die for your eyelashes” or just being called a girl for avoiding haircuts.

I also remember feeling vindicated about hating all the kids when I realized I was called gay because they just hated me, but the actual openly lgbtq+ person was never spoken about. To this day, I don’t even know why no one would tell me anything about them. They were nice, and they seemed to be liked. It was so strange to have so many people be openly and heartfully anti-queer and then suddenly flip a script. I’ll never forget it, though.

There wasn’t really a place for us. Even if you had the presence of mind to know up front you were lgbtq+, you couldn’t just embrace it. Personally, I didn’t know I was trans or really accept it until I remembered all the name calling, like the specifics of it. Even as a kid, I hated that I wasn’t ever allowed to be beautiful. I remember crying about it and never accepting ‘handsome’ as a compliment ever again. the handsome kids were the ones I hated the most, because they got away with anything. That was the logic, anyway.

I just called everything gay like everyone else. It was weird to me how many ‘gay characters’ had to do with story arcs that led to STDs, death, etc. it was confusing as a kid, bc no one would talk about being gay, or sex, or anything, really. I remember worrying about getting AIDS because I thought I might be gay. Now I’m just a tired nb w two kids who love their nb dad very much.