The Blue Crab

This is my very first blog post ever. I have been trying to determine what to write about. I wanted my first post to share a bit about me personally. So here it goes. I am a Gen X, cis gendered, white lesbian who was born and has lived my life so far in West Virginia. I didn’t realize I was gay until I was 16 years old but looking back, the signs were there very early. Seeing as how I started writing this post in June, Pride month, I am going to focus on an aspect of my earlier life and its impact on my being gay. I hope that what I share shows you that the don’t say gay laws do not stop people from being gay.

As a child, I played pretend like all children. I pretended I was a boy like 98.5% of the time. I would be a soldier, a journalist, a boat captain, etc. Even playing with other children, I would pretend to be a boy. My parents, etc. called me a tomboy. I remember being around 6 years old and wondering if I should have been born a boy. This concern didn’t stay in the forefront of my mind, and I didn’t change how I played. But apparently, it was still circulating around in my subconscious because when puberty hit, I realized that I was not meant to be a boy. I was very happy to be a girl. I was happy with my body. I realize now that I was so lucky. I have not had to deal with the disconnect between my mind and my body and the pain caused by it. Just imagine feeling as you do but your body being biologically the opposite sex to get some idea.

However, as I got older, I realized that the reason I wanted to pretend to be a boy all the time was a number of reasons. Most importantly for this post was probably because I am gay and growing up in the 70s, there was not any representation of lesbians in all media, well any of the LGBTQA+ community really. In the 80s, just about any representation was negative. Within my family, all I saw and all that was discussed were straight relationships. The first time I remember much being said about gay people was during the AIDS epidemic. The news had stories about AIDS being a gay disease brought on by God because of the immorality of gay people. The beginning of the AIDS crisis was years before I realized my gayness. Lack of representation and negative representation didn’t stop me from being gay.

This is the case with gay, lesbian, bi, trans, non-binary folks, etc. Hearing the word gay or seeing positive gay representation doesn’t make someone gay. The only thing that comes from don’t say gay laws and other anti-gay rhetoric is that a person who falls into one of these categories learns to hate themselves or view themselves as unworthy. When I first realized I was gay, I had no negative thoughts about it. I didn’t wish it away or pray I was different, but I knew I couldn’t be out to just about everyone in my life. That time in the closet caused me a lot of emotional harm. Harm that I am still working through to this day.