Back in my day as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed freshman, one fateful night the Universe (and a generous helping of Kirkland Vodka) guided my friends and I to a party on DP which we were assured would “pop off” any minute. We awkwardly stood in a circle, red Solo cups in hand, swaying to “Sicko Mode,” when we noticed a stray bro wandering toward us.
To set the stage, he was five Natty Lites in, and he’d adopted a Scottish accent while wearing a Texas University shirt and American flag shorts (a multicultural icon). After staring at me for a solid minute, off-brand Shrek asked me a question: “Are ye gay mate??”
I laughed it off and said yes, thinking that was that, but no, discount Braveheart wanted me to give him a deep dive into the gay lifestyle, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since my high school musical theater days.
“Are you a top or a bottom? Like, if you’re with another dude are you more like the girl or the guy?” he asked.
This may sound outlandish and I’ll admit I haven’t run into any drunk wannabe Scotsmen before or since, but the “top or bottom/girl or guy” question is one queer people hear quite often. Most queer people (myself included) find this question insulting because when straight people ask it, they’re asking you to validate yourself by mimicking straight romance and sexuality.
I’ll admit that for some, it can be comforting and familiar to understand yourself in terms of an unambiguous masculine/feminine framework, but the beauty of queerness is in its ambiguity. It offers the freedom to explore gender and sexuality without imitating straightness, because by definition queerness is a rejection of straight traditions.
This is to say that queerness is not an oddball parody of heterosexuality, but its own set of gender and sexual identities, making it impossible to “straighten out” in order to emulate heterosexuality.
It’s worth noting that this mindset is not exclusive to straight people; many queer people impose these dynamics on themselves because of pressure to perform gender, sexuality, and romance in palatable, familiar ways.
Many modern depictions of sex and romance are told from straight perspectives, which can cause queer people to internalize implicit messages that the only romantic and sexual experiences worth having must include a sharp masculine and feminine contrast. While there’s nothing wrong with enjoying masculine and feminine dynamics in your relationships, it’s important to remember that there are other — equally fulfilling — ways to enjoy sex and romance.
Feminine people often have feminine partners, masculine people have masculine partners, genderfluid people have genderfluid partners, and so on and so forth. These relationships are just as fulfilling as the more traditional masculine/feminine paradigm, and allowing yourself to choose which dynamic works for you rather than blindly following “normal” gender dynamics will likely make your relationships more authentic and enjoyable.
On the surface, most queer people hate the “top or bottom” question because it’s rude and creepy for someone to ask intimate questions about your sexual preferences out of the blue.
But on a deeper level, this question is insulting because using someone’s gender expression to determine their sexual role (or vice versa) is laughable. There are feminine tops, masculine bottoms, and everything in between. This can even go beyond queer relationships, as it would be laughable to assume that all straight couples act the exact same way in bed together based solely on their gender.
The main issue with all this is that romance and sexuality — whether queer or straight — is not a black-and-white Etch A Sketch. It’s a messy, multi-colored Picasso painting; you can try to make logical sense of it but it’s best to appreciate it for its disjointed, avant-garde beauty.
As recently as 10 years ago, the idea of coming out and being accepted as homosexual or bisexual felt unthinkable for countless LGBQ teens. Society has seen significant progression in recent years, though, and a new study finds that the number of U.S. teens openly identifying themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning has doubled between 2009 and 2017. Unfortunately, despite progress in this regard, the study also notes that LGBQ teenage suicide attempt rates are still disturbingly high.
In 2009, the LGBQ teenage attempted suicide rate was five times that of their straight peers. In 2017, while the rate did see a slight decline, it was still four times higher than the attempted suicide rate among straight teens.
“Large disparities in suicide attempts persisted even as the percent of students identifying as LGBQ increased. In 2017, more than 20% of LGBQ teens reported attempting suicide in the past year,” says lead study author Dr. Julia Raifman, assistant professor of health law, policy & management at Boston University’s School of Public Health, in a release.
“It’s critical that health and educational institutions have policies and programs in place to protect and improve LGBQ health, such as medical school curricula and high school health curricula that are inclusive of sexual minority health,” Dr. Raifman adds.
Raifman and her team believe that LGBQ rights, or perhaps lack thereof, play a significant role in subsequent teenage suicide attempts. In a separate study conducted in 2017, Raifman found that the legalization of same-sex marriage coincided with a 7% decrease in all high school student suicide attempts. Additionally, numerous previous research projects have noted that anti-LGBQ policies are seriously detrimental to the LGBQ community’s overall mental health.
“Our new paper indicates that an increasing number of teenagers are identifying as LGBQ, and will be affected by anti-LGBQ policies that may elevate these already very high rates of suicide attempts” she says.
Only six U.S. states continuously collected data on sexual orientation among teens between 2009-2017; Rhode Island, Maine, Delaware, Illinois, North Dakota, and Massachusetts. Among those six, only Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Illinois kept track of the gender of sexually-active students’ partners, and made a distinction between consensual sexual activity and sexual assault. So, the research team were left with sexual orientation data on 110,243 high school students, and further information on the consensual sexual activity of 25,994 students within that larger group.
Using all that data, researchers determined that the percentage of high school students openly identifying themselves as LGBQ doubled from 7.3% in 2009 to 14.3% in 2017. Breaking those statistics down a bit further, the percentage of openly gay or lesbian students increased from 1.4% to 2.8%, bisexual teens went up from 3.9% to 7.2%, and teens unsure about their sexuality increased from 2.0% to 4.3%. Meanwhile, the number of sexual active high schoolers who reported same-sex sexual activity went up from 7.7% to 13.1%.
In 2009, and again in 2017, roughly 6% of heterosexual high school students reported attempting suicide over the previous year. In comparison, 26.7% of LGBQ teens attempted suicide in 2009, and 20.1% did the same in 2017.
High school can be a tough time for anyone, regardless of their sexual orientation, and the results of this study make it clear that LGBQ teens are in need of additional support and acceptance as they navigate the pitfalls of growing up.
“Now, I’m far more attracted to men than women, but who’s to say my sexual preference won’t sway again?”
I’ve identified as straight, I’ve identified as gay, and I’ve identified—and still identify—as bi. My sexual identity is something of a shapeshifting mass that I can never quite firmly grasp. In the minds of many, I’m confused. But I don’t see it that way. I’ve always been confident in my sexual orientation; it’s just changed over time. For the majority of my life, I was solely romantically and sexually linked to women. But in my late 20s, I started to experiment with men (something I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time) and really liked it. Now, I’m far more attracted to men than women, but who’s to say my sexual preference won’t sway again?
“It’s not uncommon for people’s sexual identities to change,” sex educator Erica Smith, M.Ed, tells NewNowNext. “I know this as a sexuality educator and because I’ve experienced it firsthand. I’ve identified as bisexual, lesbian, queer, and straight (when I was very young). It wasn’t until I was in my mid-30s that I relaxed into the knowledge that my sexual attractions are probably going to keep changing and shifting my whole life.”
According to Alisa Swindell, Ph.D. candidate and bisexual activist, it is not always our sexuality that changes. Usually, it’s our understanding of our sexuality that evolves when we explore what feels right to us. “Our understanding of gender and how it is expressed has been evolving at a rate that has not previously been known (or studied) and that is changing how we understand our own desires and responses to others,” she says.
Many outside factors can influence our sexuality. For instance, Swindell thinks many bisexuals are playing against a numbers game. “There are more people with other gender attractions than same-gender, so more often bisexual people end up in relationships with people of another gender and find it easier to pursue those relationships,” she says.
In her opinion, this sentiment is especially true for women, as there is still a lot of stigma toward bi women within lesbian communities. Men, however, experience a different set of challenges.
“Once [men] start dating [other] men, they often find themselves in social situations that are almost exclusively male and so meeting women becomes harder,” she adds, effectively summarizing my lived experience as a sexually active bisexual man. “Also, those men, like all of us, were socialized to respond to heterosexual norms. So many men who enjoy the queerness of the male spaces are still often attracted to heteronormative women who do not always respond to male bisexuality due to continuing stigma.”
The continuing stigma often pressures bisexuals to adopt a monosexual identity. Take Leslie, a “not super out” bisexual, as an example. Leslie dated a woman from her late teens to early 20s, keeping her sexual orientation a secret because her parents were conservative and she didn’t want to ruffle any feathers. As she revisits her past same-sex relationship with me, she has a realization: “In reflecting on all of that, I think deep down I thought that being with a man would just be easier.”
The bisexual Pride flag
Now married to a man, Leslie feels like she’s lost her bi identity, though she’s still attracted to different genders. “When I see people I follow online and find out they are bisexual I usually reach out and say, ‘I am, too!’ so I can collect sisters and brothers where I can,” she adds. “Otherwise, as I am cisgender-presenting I often feel like I don’t really have a say but I offer my support.”
This loss of identity is all too common. “Maintaining a recognized bisexual identity can be difficult as monosexuality is still the assumed norm,” Swindell says, noting that showing support—whether that looks like keeping up with issues that affect bisexuals, correcting people who mistakenly call bisexuals gay or straight, or encouraging our partners to not let that slide when it comes up with friends and family are all important for maintaining an identity—as Leslie has, is important to maintaining a bi identity. Smith adds this loss of identity may be attributed to a person’s own internalized biphobia, too.
“When it comes to sexuality in particular, there is rightfully a lot of autonomy given to people to self-identify. If someone self-identifies as queer or bisexual, none of their sexual or relational behavior, in of itself, alters that,” psychotherapist Daniel Olavarria, LCSW, tells NewNowNext. “Of course, there is also a recognition that by marrying someone of the opposite sex, for example, that this queer person is exercising a level of privilege that may alter their external experience in the world. As a result, this may have implications for how that person is perceived among queer and non-queer communities.”
Jodi’s experience as a bisexual person is more reflective of my own: She shares that she’s gone through stages where she only dates men, and others where she only dates women. Available studies suggest that only a minority of bisexuals maintain simultaneous relationships with both genders. In one report, self-identified bisexuals were asked if they had been sexually involved with both men and women in the past 12 months. Two-thirds said yes, and only one-third has been simultaneously involved with both genders.
As for a possible explanation? “It can be really difficult for us to find partners who are comfortable with us dating other genders at the same time,” Smith offers up as a theory.
“If I’m in a situation where I have to be exhibiting a lot of ‘masculine’ energy (running projects, being very in charge of things at work, etc.), then I tend to want to be able to be in more ‘feminine’ energy at home,” Jodi adds, clarifying that people of any gender identity can boast masculine and feminine energy. “Likewise, if my work life looks quieter and focused on more ‘feminine’ aspects such as nurturing and caregiving, I tend to want to exhibit a stronger more masculine presence while at home.”
Bisexuality is, in many ways, a label that can accommodate one’s experience on a sexuality spectrum. This allows for shifts based on a person’s needs or interests at any given point in their life. Perhaps “The Bisexual Manifesto,” published in 1990 from the Bay Area Bisexual Network, says it best:
Bisexuality is a whole, fluid identity. Do not assume that bisexuality is binary or duogamous in nature: that we have “two” sides or that we must be involved simultaneously with both genders to be fulfilled human beings. In fact, don’t assume that there are only two genders.
Sexuality is complicated, and how we experience it throughout our lives is informed by a multitude of different factors—the exploration of power dynamics, craving certain types of sexual experiences, and social expectations can all influence our gender preferences at any given time, to name just a few. Much like our own bodies, our understanding of our sexual orientation will continue to grow.
I’ve come to accept this ongoing evolution as a wonderful and inevitable thing. Imagine having a completely static sexual orientation your entire life? Boring! Being able to explore your sexuality with wonderful people of all genders is intensely satisfying and uniquely insightful, no matter how many others try to denounce what you feel in your heart or your loins.
I didn’t choose the bi life; the bi life chose me. And I am grateful.
So, you’re not sure if you’re “bisexual,” “pansexual,” or “lesbian” to be exact, but you have an inkling you’re not strictly straight. If you’ve been wondering, “Am I queer?”, there is no simple answer to that question. On one hand, you might be able to pinpoint exactly which childhood female celebrity crush sparked a sexual awakening. Or maybe you distinctly remember a K-12 Valentine made with extra special care for a girl in your class. On the other hand, maybe you’ve shared a curious, impulsive kiss with a girl. Or maybe you’ve hooked up with another woman, either one-on-one or in a threesome, and have elected to ignore those implications. Whatever your case may be, there are def some aspects of your sexual and romantic attractions you can reflect on to answer that question.
Data from the Pew Research Center shows that more and more Americans are identifying as members of the LGBTQ+ community. As of 2017, a little more than 10 million people in the U.S. or 4.1% of Americans identified as LGBTQ+. That’s up from 8.3 million people or 3.5% of Americans in 2012, according to the same researchers. Interestingly enough, millennials lead the pack when it comes to identifying as queer. In 2017, LGBTQ media organization GLAAD found that 20% of 18- to 34-year-olds identify as LGBTQ+ in the U.S.
If you’re curious about whether you’re queer, here are some aspects of your desires to consider.
“Queer” can be how you identify
It’s important to know that “queer” can be an umbrella term. For example, you’ve possibly heard people use “the queer community” and “the LGBTQ+ community” interchangeably. It’s also important to know that “queer” can be the specific label you identify with — that’s the “Q” in “LGBTQ+!” The queer community includes people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and pansexual — so, anyone who isn’t straight. (This also includes folks who are transgender, non-binary, or two-spirit, so anyone who isn’t cisgender or the gender they were assigned at birth. But for the purposes of this article, we’re just going to focus on sexuality, which is separate from gender.)
When it comes to using “queer” as your label, sex and relationships therapist Courtney Watson, whose practice works specifically with LGBTQ+ people of color, says, “‘Queer is a term that offers the most fluidity in definition. [It also] allows for a sexuality identity that transcends discreet gender and sexual orientation categories.”
What you’ll notice romantically is…
One thing sexuality educator Jamie J. LeClaire emphasizes is that there isn’t just one way to be queer, especially when it comes to romantic orientation. You might be:
aromantic, which means you lack of romantic attraction completely,
biromantic or panromantic, meaning you feel romantically attracted to more than one gender,
or homorantic, meaning you feel romantically attracted to people of the same binary gender that you identify as.
Do you have warm and fuzzy feelings for a woman at work? Has romance just never been your jam? Do you dwell on how nice it would be to cuddle, hold hands with, and raise a dog with one your hot, charming non-binary friends? Queerness looks different for everyone, but LeClaire says, “If you find yourself developing romantically-fueled, crush-type feelings outside of the scope of heteroromanticism, you might be queer!”
What you might notice sexually is…
As LeClaire puts it, one of the main signs you might be queer is you catch yourself “fantasizing or desiring sexual intimacy, in any way outside of strict heterosexuality.” You might be:
asexual, meaning you lack sexual attraction completely,
or lesbian or gay, meaning you’re sexually attracted to people of the same or similar gender as you.
This might look like an interest in lesbian porn, or sexual fantasies with people of the same gender or similar genders. It could be as tame as daydreams of kissing a cute someone of the same gender (or a similar gender presentation) from one of your classes. This might be having zero or only a passing interest in sex at all. Queerness differs from person-to-person, but these are some things to consider about your sexual desires.
And don’t feel pressure to come out
“Generally speaking, ‘coming out’ is a never-ending process in today’s world, where people are harmfully assumed to be cisgender and heterosexual/allosexual,” LeClaire says.(Allosexual is term for folks who experience sexual attraction, unlike asexual folks.) “Do what is right and feels comfortable for you and your situation.”
Especially if you feel like your parents, guardians, or community will react badly (or even violently) to your newly acknowledged queerness, wait until you feel safe to do so.
“If you have the financial privilege to go to therapy, it can be an incredible tool for navigating the coming-out process,” LeClaire suggests. Cultivate a support system of friends or “chosen family” to have your back as you figure your queerness out. “Support can very well come from online queer communities if that’s all you can access, which are incredible resources as well.”
Whatever the case may be, don’t stress about labels
No matter what label you end up sticking with, Watson explains, “It’s also important to know that your attractions and identities can be fluid and change.” It’s why Alfred Kinsey, a famous sexologist, invented the Kinsey scale — a numbered spectrum between completely homosexual and completely heterosexual — to help queer people express how they felt. Because even in 1948, people were realizing that no two bisexuals loved and desired people in the same exact way, and that sexuality evolves.
“As for how to find a label that works for you, think about what you feel most deeply resonates for you right now,” Watson says. You can identify as bisexual today, but pansexual a year from now. You might feel comfortable with the lesbian label at first, but then realize you’re also asexual — so then you feel good about “gay and asexual” or “homoromantic asexual,” or no labels at all.
The word you pick for you identity is not a “life-long stamp.” Keeping that in mind can help take the pressure off.
What’s more, Watson says, “You can have an identity regardless of your current partner’s gender/sexual orientation.” You might be dating a man and still have sexual desires for women. You might be dating a lesbian woman and feel genderqueer. Who you’re dating at any given time doesn’t take away from who you are and how you feel comfortable identifying.
At the end of the day, LeClaire says, “Gender and sexuality are more than a spectrum. They are a universe of opportunities to live, love, and be loved.” Keeping this in mind can help you embrace and celebrate your queerness in a positive, reaffirming way.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots. Since then, June has been recognized as Pride Month, dedicated to celebrating the resilience, perseverance and unity of the LGBTQ community.
During a time when diversity and inclusion are the main pillars of Pride, people with disabilities are still left out in the discussion and celebration of sexual and gender diversity. Just last year, the historic Stonewall Inn bar denied entrance to a blind queer person because they didn’t provide paperwork for their service dog — a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which states no paperwork is needed for the entrance of a service animal.
That is only one of many examples of how Pride remains mostly inaccessible to the disabled, deaf or hard-of-hearing, blind and people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. Accessibility issues are present in gay bars, parties, big parades, as well as protests and rallies.
The physical spaces of many of these events present obstacles for people with physical disabilities or with sensory sensitivities. For example, parades can often be difficult for people with mobility issues because of uneven, long routes, extreme heat and tight, narrow spaces. Even if there is a designated wheelchair path, often times the parade coordinators underestimate the amount of space needed, or the path becomes overcrowded.
Even intimate gatherings often lack disability accommodations. Events with speakers, more often than not, do not have accompanying ASL interpretation, film screenings do not have closed captioning and spaces do not account for participants with noise or light sensitivity or who are on the autism spectrum.
However, these physical barriers and obstacles have a more significant implication. People with disabilities have been viewed as asexual beings, or incapable of having other identities other than being disabled. The mainstream population too often feels squeamish about someone who might need help in the bathroom, also having a fulfilling sex life.
Activist points out that Pride is too often inaccessible.
The Atlantic recently released a short documentary following the hurdles a married couple had to face when trying to convince a group home to allow them to live together. They both have intellectual disabilities, but that doesn’t mean that they are incapable of understanding their sexuality or of being in a marital relationship. The couple had to legally prove that they can consent to their sexual relationship, and thereby earning their right to live together. The mere fact that the couple had to go through this process speaks volumes on the social and cultural perception on the sexuality of people with disabilities.
The fundamental meaning behind Pride is for everyone to be proud of their bodies, sexuality and physical appearances. However, the same invitation is too often denied to LGBTQ folks with disabilities. Instead, they are reminded that they don’t belong in such spaces and that they can’t have sexual or gender identities. They want the exact same things that non-disabled LGBTQ people want in life: acceptance and not being “othered.”
People have multiple facets of their identities — a concept that is often referred to as intersectionality in academic and research settings. To ignore, or not account for, one aspect of a person’s identify — say, their disability — penetrates the notions of exclusion and discrimination. In turn, this can eradicate the histories of members of the LGBTQ community with disabilities.
Disability accommodations and inclusivity should not be an afterthought, but rather a priority when planning LGBTQ events and celebrations. Pride should strive to honor and recognize the lives of all people who identify as LGBTQ, and that certainly includes people with disabilities.
“As long as trans disabled people like me exist, disability issues are trans issues, and trans issues are disability issues,” Dominick Evans told them. Evans is trans, queer and disabled filmmaker and advocate.
Louis Kenneth Neu, 26-year-old cabaret singer of Savannah, Ga., left, is pictured on trial, Dec. 15, 1933, in New Orleans for the slaying of Sheffield Clark Sr., a Nashville, Tenn., businessman, in a New Orleans hotel. His attorneys set up an insanity plea for defense but Neu, claiming to be “perfectly sane”, has repeatedly expressed the wish that “they would hang me quick and get it over with.” He confessed to beating Clark to death just a week after he had similarly killed Lawrence Shead, a theater manager of Paterson, N.J. Others are unidentified.
The world treated them like criminals. And that made them victims.
In an America where their very existence was illegal, gays were forced into dangerous shadows. At a time when being out meant being arrested, lonely men looked for love in dark parks, public bathrooms, and Times Square bars.
Often, they only met their murderers.
James Polchin’s “Indecent Advances” tells the grim tale. Advertised as “A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall,” it focuses on what it meant to be a gay man in the first half of the 20th century: A target.
Polchin begins his story after World War I, as millions of American soldiers and sailors returned home, ready to celebrate. The Jazz Age was starting, and young men were eager to join the party.
Author, James Polchin
Having defeated a foreign threat, though, the American establishment now turned its attention to domestic ones. While the government hunted down political subversives, police departments and the armed forces searched for “sexual deviants.”
That crusade pushed the propaganda that gay men were dangerous perverts, eager to molest children and recruit innocent youths. It fed a paranoia that justified almost any action against them, from legal entrapment to brutal vigilantism.
In 1919, worried about corrupting influences, the Navy asked sailors to catch off-base seducers by going undercover. Some were even urged to go under the covers. In Newport, R.I., sailors were told that just going home with a man wasn’t enough. Only a “full act” would guarantee a conviction.
The practice was eventually dropped, but only because of public outrage at what good clean American boys were being asked to do. Ridding the streets of homosexuals was still seen as a moral crusade.
Ernest Kehler, right, 24, Canadian-born boxer, is shown as he was brought to New York police headquarters from Toronto, Dec. 20, 1939, to face charges in of slaying Dr. Walter Engelberg, first secretary of the German consulate in New York. Man at left is an unidentified police officer.
It was a growing one, too. In New York in 1918, there were 238 arrests for homosexual solicitation. Within two years, that number more than tripled. Police regularly raided bars in Greenwich Village. Sweeps of Bryant Park, a popular cruising spot, were common.
Being gay in public was a crime. But being gay in private could be fatal.
The stories were grisly. In 1933 in Paterson, N.J., Lawrence Shead, a movie-theater manager, was found in his apartment, beaten to death with an electric iron. When the killer was nabbed, he claimed self-defense. Shead had made a pass, the killer explained.
New Jersey declined to prosecute, allowing the suspect to be extradited to Louisiana, where he was wanted for killing a wealthy businessman. In that case, though, robbery, not sexuality, was seen as the motive. The suspect was convicted and hung for that crime. Getting away with murder was possible.
The message was clear: Gay lives don’t matter.
In 1945, ballroom dancer Burt Harger disappeared from his Manhattan apartment. Then his body started showing up, in pieces. Police arrested his roommate, who confessed to killing Harger with a hammer and cutting him up in the bathtub. He said he’d just thrown the last piece, the torso, off the Staten Island ferry.
The reason for this gruesome crime? Harger came on to him, the roommate said. Convicted of manslaughter, his sentence was 10 to 20 years.
It practically became a pattern. In 1948, there was a rash of hotel room murders in New York: a merchant seaman in Times Square, an NBC executive in Albany and a Canadian businessman in the Waldorf-Astoria. Nothing connected the crimes, except the perpetrators’ excuse: Self-defense. The other guy made a pass.
Some prosecutors pushed back, insisting these were premeditated crimes. Robbery was the underlying crime; smart thieves knew that gay men were reluctant to go to the police. Prosecutors argued that these were cold-hearted killers, taking advantage of their victims’ own isolation.
Yet juries sympathized with the killers.
For example, the victim at the Waldorf-Astoria, Colin MacKellar, always stayed at the posh hotel when he was in town. He also always drank at the bar, known as a discreet pick-up joint. One night the middle-aged MacKellar befriended a hunky 19-year-old patron. After several rounds, the older man invited the younger one to his room.
The teenager beat MacKellar to death. Then he went to the movies.
When arrested, the suspect’s defense was the older man propositioned him. He was just protecting himself, the teen insisted. That might have gotten him released, too, if the prosecutors didn’t discover the kid had a long history of haunting bars, meeting older men, and robbing them.
Even then, he, too, was only convicted of manslaughter.
The homophobia grew, convincing many Americans that the scariest problem wasn’t gay bashing, but gays. In 1954, a handsome airline steward, William Simpson, was found in a lover’s lane in North Miami, shot to death. His wallet was missing. Police eventually arrested two young men.
They admitted to “rolling” gay men, first hitchhiking along Biscayne Boulevard, then robbing whoever gave them a lift. “Getting money from perverts,” they called it. The defendant who shot Simpson said he panicked, thinking the man was going to rape him.
The press and public couldn’t help but sympathize – with the defendants.
“Third Sex Plague Spreads Anew,” Brevities (November 2, 1931)
“Good Guys – Not Toughs” the Miami Daily News editorialized. “5,000 Here Perverts, Police Say” the Miami Herald reported. Other stories warned of a secret colony of sexual deviants. Politicians vowed to “run them out of town.”
Once again, the defendants were convicted only of manslaughter.
Even when people worried about crimes against gay men, they weren’t concerned about the victims. No, people were far more concerned with gays in the neighborhoods bringing down property values. And they feared how homosexuals endangered heterosexuals.
In 1955, in his syndicated column “Dream Street,” Robert Sylvester churned out hard-boiled prose about a rapidly decaying Times Square, home to sleazy bars and short-stay hotels. “The Bird Circuit,” he called it, were gay hangouts where thugs waited for gay men to pick them up, go back to their rooms and rob them.
It was a terrible thing, Sylvester wrote because it put truly innocent people at risk. “It probably isn’t important if a homo is roughed up by some hoodlum,” he concluded. “The important thing is that when there are no available homos, any unprotected citizen makes a satisfactory substitute.”
By the ’50s, some gay activists, notably the members of the Mattachine Society, began to push for acceptance. The movement
Illustration from Psychopathology by Edward Kempf (C.V. Mosby Company: St. Louis, 1920)
grew. In 1967, after the police raided the Black Cat Tavern in San Francisco, supporters politely protested. Two years later, when cops tried the same thuggish tactics at the Stonewall Inn, patrons fought back in the streets.
Times were changing. When the Supreme Court ruled, in 1972, that state governments could refuse to employ homosexuals, a Daily News editorial agreed but made a modest plea for tolerance from private employers. “Fairies, nancies, swishes, fags, lezzes – call ’em what you please – should of course be permitted to earn an honest living,” the editorial stated.
Ralph Edward Barrows, 20, formerly of Grand Rapids, Mich., smiles and waves his hand, which is handcuffed to that of another prisoner, in a train at Hoboken, N.J., March 7, 1950, as he leaves for the state prison at Elmira, N.Y. Barrows was sentenced to 40 years on a manslaughter conviction for killing wealthy Canadian businessman, Colin Cameron MacKellar of Montreal. MacKellar was found dead in his Waldorf Astoria suite on Nov. 5, 1948.
Compared to some attitudes, this was practically liberal.
The cries for real liberation were growing louder. As Stonewall proved, gay people were no longer worried about what was permitted. Instead, they were intent on what was owed.
They were no longer going to be quiet and ashamed, they were determined to be loud and proud. And that pride, already on display, will be on the march next Sunday.
In recent years LGBT+ rights have improved dramatically. Same-sex marriage is now legally performed and recognised in 28 countries. Equality laws protect LGBT+ people at work and increased media coverage is improving knowledge and awareness of sexual orientations. More to be done, however, to ensure equality for all, and researchers have been looking into how different factors like these contribute to the happiness and life satisfaction of people with minority sexual identities.
Studies have shown that, on average, homosexuals and bisexuals report lower levels of life satisfaction than heterosexuals. This has been linked to homosexuals and bisexuals experiencing heteronormativity (the assumption that heterosexual orientation and binary gender identity are “normal”, which has led to the world being built to cater to the needs and desires of heterosexual life), which leads to stigmatisation. For our new study we looked deeper into the links between sexuality and life satisfaction, and found that people with an “other” sexual identity – such as pansexual, demisexual, or asexual – also experience lower levels of life satisfaction than heterosexuals.
Well-being differences
Using 150,000 responses collected over five years as part of the Understanding Society survey, we analysed whether the happiest heterosexuals are happier than the happiest sexual minorities, and if the least happy sexual minorities are less happy than the least happy heterosexuals. When looking at the data, we controlled for a number of things – such as age, employment, personality, and location – to make sure our results focused solely on sexual identity.
While other studies have looked at the “average” effect of sexual identity on happiness (where it has been shown that sexual minorities report lower levels of life satisfaction), my colleagues and I considered the whole well-being distribution. That is, we looked at the differences between heterosexuals and sexual minorities at the lowest, average, and highest levels of self-reported life satisfaction.
Our results are clear that sexual identity is correlated with life satisfaction, but it is a nuanced picture. We found that homosexual males are less happy with their lives than heterosexual males, except for at the very top of the well-being distribution (where they are happiest). We also saw that homosexual females are happier with their lives than heterosexual females. Although interestingly that is except for at the lowest levels of well-being.
Facing ostracisation on the basis of your sexual identity has a large negative impact on how satisfied you are with your life.
Bisexuals – irrespective of gender – report the lowest levels of life satisfaction, and the loss to well-being associated with being bisexual (rather than heterosexual) is at least comparable to the effect of being unemployed or having ill-health. In fact, out of all the sexual identities analysed we found that bisexuals are the least satisfied with their lives.
“Other” sexual identities are associated with lower levels of life satisfaction in the bottom half of the distribution, but higher life satisfaction in the top half. This means that the least happy people with an other sexual identity are less happy than their heterosexual counterparts. But the happiest people with an other sex identity are actually happier than their heterosexual counterparts.
While our findings highlight the importance of gender (or more precisely its interaction with sexual identity), this is only relevant for homosexuals. As noted above, the results for homosexual males and homosexual females are drastically different This makes sense considering that other research has highlighted that societal attitudes towards lesbians are more preferential than to gay males. So it is likely that the higher life satisfaction reported by lesbians (compared to heterosexual women) is associated with these more positive societal attitudes.
Identity and acceptance
Looking to our findings for other sexual identities, we believe that growing awareness (for example due to increased representation on television) is likely to have reduced the need for some people to “explain” their identity to others. This will have made reaffirming the validity of their sexuality to themselves easier too. If we couple this with increasing self-awareness of an identity that gives meaning to attractions (or lack thereof), the positive well-being identified for this group is understandable.
While it could be argued that the same should be true of bisexuals, there is a significant difference between bisexuality and “other” identities. Bisexuality is an identity that has existed significantly longer and was part of the original LGBT movement. And yet the greater minority stress experienced by bisexuals is likely a reflection of how they experience stigmatisation from both heterosexual and homosexual communities through bi-erasure and lack of acceptance of bisexuality.
Overall our research shows that people with a minority sexual identity are on average less satisfied with their lives, but across the distribution of well-being a more positive picture emerges. If we look at other research into the different societal attitudes and growing acceptance towards certain sexual identities, it is clear that being accepted is important. Facing ostracisation on the basis of your sexual identity has a large negative impact on how satisfied you are with your life.
It’s never too late for love to call back. Verizon and PFLAG are committed to connecting and reconnecting all families. Find support for LGBTQ families at pflag.org
On a Friday night in February 1926, a crowd of some 1,500 packed the Renaissance Casino in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood for the 58th masquerade and civil ball of Hamilton Lodge.
Nearly half of those attending the event, reported the New York Age, appeared to be “men of the class generally known as ‘fairies,’ and many Bohemians from the Greenwich Village section who…in their gorgeous evening gowns, wigs and powdered faces were hard to distinguish from many of the women.”
The tradition of masquerade and civil balls, more commonly known as drag balls, had begun back in 1869 within Hamilton Lodge, a black fraternal organization in Harlem. By the mid-1920s, at the height of the Prohibition era, they were attracting as many as 7,000 people of various races and social classes—gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and straight alike.
Stonewall (1969) is often considered the beginning of forward progress in the gay rights movement. But more than 50 years earlier, Harlem’s famous drag balls were part of a flourishing, highly visible LGBTQ nightlife and culture that would be integrated into mainstream American life in a way that became unthinkable in later decades.
A portrait of a couple, circa 1920s.
The Beginnings of a New Gay World
“In the late 19th century, there was an increasingly visible presence of gender-non-conforming men who were engaged in sexual relationships with other men in major American cities,” says Chad Heap, a professor of American Studies at George Washington University and the author of Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940.
In addition to these groups, whom social reformers in the early 1900s would call “male sex perverts,” a number of nightclubs and theaters were featuring stage performances by female impersonators; these spots were mainly located in the Levee District on Chicago’s South Side, the Bowery in New York City and other largely working-class neighborhoods in American cities.
By the 1920s, gay men had established a presence in Harlem and the bohemian mecca of Greenwich Village (as well as the seedier environs of Times Square), and the city’s first lesbian enclaves had appeared in Harlem and the Village. Each gay enclave, wrote George Chauncey in his book Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, had a different class and ethnic character, cultural style and public reputation.
A 1927 illustration of three transgender women and a man dancing at a nightclub.
Gay Life in the Jazz Age
As the United States entered an era of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity in the years after World War I, cultural mores loosened and a new spirit of sexual freedom reigned. The flapper, with her short hair, figure-skimming dresses and ever-present cigarette and cocktail, would become the most recognizable symbol of the Roaring Twenties, her fame spreading via the new mass media born during that decade. But the ‘20s also saw the flourishing of LGBTQ nightlife and culture that reached beyond the cities, across the country, and into ordinary American homes.
Though New York City may have been the epicenter of the so-called “Pansy Craze,” gay, lesbian and transgender performers graced the stages of nightspots in cities all over the country. Their audiences included many straight men and women eager to experience the culture themselves (and enjoy a good party) as well as ordinary LGBTQ Americans seeking to expand their social networks or find romantic or sexual partners.
“It gave them many more possible places they could go to meet other people like themselves,” Heap says of the Pansy Craze and accompanying lesbian or Sapphic craze, of the ‘20s and early to mid-‘30s. “At its height, when many ordinary heterosexual men and women were going to venues that featured queer entertainment, it probably also provided useful cover for queer men and women to go to the same venues.”
The fame of LGBTQ nightlife and culture during this period was certainly not limited to urban populations. Stories about drag balls or other performances were sometimes picked up by wire services, or even broadcast over local radio. “You can find them in certain newspaper coverage in unexpected places,” Heap says.
A cross-dresser being taken away in a police van for dressing like a woman, circa 1939.
“Pansy Craze” Comes to an End
With the end of Prohibition, the onset of the Depression and the coming of World War II, LGBTQ culture and community began to fall out of favor. As Chauncey writes, a backlash began in the 1930s, as “part of a wider Depression-era condemnation of the cultural experimentation of the 20’s, which many blamed for the economic collapse.”
The sale of liquor was legal again, but newly enforced laws and regulations prohibited restaurants and bars from hiring gay employees or even serving gay patrons. In the mid- to late ‘30s, Heap points out, a wave of sensationalized sex crimes “provoked hysteria about sex criminals, who were often—in the mind of the public and in the mind of authorities—equated with gay men.”
This not only discouraged gay men from participating in public life, but also “made homosexuality seem more dangerous to the average American.”
By the post-World War II era, a larger cultural shift toward earlier marriage and suburban living, the advent of TV and the anti-homosexuality crusades championed by Joseph McCarthy would help push the flowering of gay culture represented by the Pansy Craze firmly into the nation’s rear-view mirror.
Drag balls, and the spirit of freedom and exuberance they represented, never went away entirely—but it would be decades before LGBTQ life would flourish so publicly again.
The New York Daily News and the Village Voice used slurs in their reporting about the police raid that galvanized the gay rights movement
A sign at New York City’s Stonewall Inn, a gay bar and national historic landmark where a police raid and riots in 1969 galvanized the gay rights movement.
The most striking thing about the media coverage of the Stonewall riots — the 1969 uprising that was a turning point in the gay rights movement — is how offensive much of it was.
“Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad” blared the headline on the front page of the New York Daily News. “Lilies of the valley” “pranced out to the street” when the cops showed up, the paper said.
“The police had difficulty keeping a dyke in a patrol car,” reported the Village Voice. And from inside the bar, where police and the Village Voice reporter were briefly trapped, “the sound filtering in doesn’t suggest dancing faggots any more.”
And if you’re wondering if those words were as derogatory then as they are now — “Yeah, these were not friendly words,” said historian Hugh Ryan after reading both articles. Ryan is the author of the book “When Brooklyn Was Queer.”
Both the Daily News and Village Voice stories were long and detailed, but the focus is on prurient descriptions of gay and transgender people meant to highlight their difference.
Consider the decidedly non-news lead in the Daily News:
“She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a hummingbird. She was angry. She was so upset she hadn’t bothered to shave. A day old stubble was beginning to push through the pancake makeup. She was a he. A queen of Christopher Street.”
We know now that most of the participants in the Stonewall Riots were gay men, though transgender women and lesbians also played vital roles. But more often than not in the Daily News story, the rioters are referred to as “lad[ies]-in-waiting,” “spokesman, or spokeswoman” and “girls.” Stonewall is described as a bar where “they could congregate, drink, dance and do whatever little girls do.”
Ryan says this may be shocking to read now, but he can’t say definitively whether the reporter is being intentionally offensive. Nowadays there is growing understanding of the difference between transgender women, like Laverne Cox; gay men who sometimes dress in drag, like RuPaul; and other people who just like to mess with ideas about gender by, say, wearing a dress and growing a beard.
For example, one of the rioters was a gay man named Martin Boyce who told Ryan that at the time of the riots, he was a “scare queen” — someone who “wore just enough drag to freak out the straights.”
“What does that mean in terms of how he would have been covered?” Ryan asked. Reporters may not have seen or known the difference between Boyce and transgender activists like Marsha P. Johnson. (Many newsrooms and journalism groups now have guides on how to cover LGBT subjects.)
Jerry Lisker, who wrote the Daily News article, died in 1993. Howard Smith, who wrote the Village Voice article and was a noted chronicler of the hippie movement, died in 2014. His New York Times obituary says many people first heard words like “Stonewall” from his reporting, without mentioning that Smith used gay slurs in the same report.
Coverage of Stonewall in the Times was certainly less salacious — and just less, in word count. A few hundred words describe the first night of the unrest under the headline “4 policemen hurt in ‘Village’ raid.” And the next day, when protests continued, a few hundred more words were printed under the headline “Police again rout ‘Village’ youths.”
The Washington Post was even more spare; toward the back of the July 1, 1969, edition, just 60 words follow the headline “N.Y. Homosexuals Protest Raids.” The Post didn’t mention Stonewall again for 10 years.
But according to Ryan, the fact it was covered at all is significant.
“Part of what is important about Stonewall is that it gets a certain amount of straight recognition,” he said.
That recognition was not accidental. Stonewall participants such as Jim Fouratt were actively seeking media attention.
Ryan said that when he spoke with Fouratt, the activist recalled, “The first thing I did when I got home from Stonewall is I picked up my Rolodex and I called everyone.” Fouratt, who was well-connected in the antiwar movement and music industry, called reporters and activists to amplify the impact of the riots.
Some of that coverage wasn’t exactly accurate. One of the long-standing myths of Stonewall — that it was sparked by the death of gay icon Judy Garland — springs from that coverage. While a few of the participants have told historians that, yes, they did stand outside Garland’s funeral earlier that day, Garland’s death had nothing to do with why they were rioting. Plus, most of the rioters were young street kids, not the older gay men more associated with Garland fandom.
In fact, the only mention of a Garland connection appears nearly two weeks after the police raid, in an insulting Village Voice column that began: “The combination of a full moon and Judy Garland’s funeral was too much for them.” The columnist then calls Stonewall “the Great Faggot Rebellion.”
“I think [the Judy Garland myth] persists because it’s a good story, because it’s easy to pass on … and that makes it survive,” Ryan said, “But I do think it trivializes” Stonewall to repeat the myth.
The most important thing about Stonewall, though, wasn’t that it happened or that it made the newspapers. Three days into the unrest, Fouratt and his friends founded the Gay Liberation Front, a gay rights group that took a much more assertive approach than its forebears.
The next year, with other groups including the Gay Activists Alliance, the GLF organized the first pride march on the anniversary of the riots.
But the GLF held its first protest the previous year on Sept. 12, 1969 — against the Village Voice for using gay slurs in its coverage of Stonewall.
Join us at Chez Josephine Restaurant where Patrick Pacheco and Donna Hanover explore “American Theater After Stonewall,” from 1969 to the present. Donna asks Patrick about the four seminal plays he has chosen that helped shape American Theater – Mart Crowley’s “The Boys in the Band,” Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song,” Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart,” and Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.”
Sexuality and sexual orientation is one topic not often brought up in the average American household.
It’s a taboo, hush-hush subject left somewhere on the fringe of socially acceptable.
“I think in general, America has a really weird relationship with sex,” said nicci port, project director and LGBTQ+ initiative for the office of Diversity and Inclusion.
Things such as television ads are sexualized but as a society people are uncomfortable talking about sexuality, port said.
Twenty-two states require sex education in their schools, and only 12 states require discussion of sexual orientation within those sex education classes.
Three of those states require teachers to impart only negative information on sexual orientation to students.
“I think at the basis we think we have to be a puritanical society and care about purity by viewing sex as procreation instead of realizing we are sexual beings,” port said.
According to reachout.com, sexuality is about who a person is attracted to sexually and romantically, but “is more complicated than just being gay or straight.”
The Kinsey Scale, developed in 1948 by sexologists Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and Clyde Martin, organizes sexuality into a gradient scale which demonstrates that sexuality is a spectrum and not everyone fits into one specific definition.
The Kinsey team interviewed thousands of people about their sexual histories.
Their research showed that sexual behavior, thoughts and feelings toward the same or opposite sex were not always consistent across time.
Instead of assigning people to three categories of heterosexual, bisex0ual and homosexual the team used a seven-point scale. It ranges from zero to six with an additional category of “X.”
A person’s sexuality can manifest in many ways and forms that only the identifier truly understands, but there are quite a few umbrella terms that encompass the currently defined sexual orientations.
The most common and widely recognizable sexual orientation within the United States is heterosexuality, with an estimated over 90 percent of the population not identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual, according to Gallup.
Heterosexuality is when “a person has emotional, physical, spiritual and/or sexual attractions to persons of a different sex than themselves. More commonly referred to as “straight” in everyday language,” according to the Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success website.
On the opposite end of the Kinsey scale is homosexuality, with an estimated 4.5 percent of the United States population identifying as lesbian, bisexual or gay.
Homosexuality is when “a person has emotional, physical, spiritual and/or sexual attraction to persons of the same sex,” according to the Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success website.
The term is often considered outdated and potentially derogatory when referring to LGBQ+ people or communities.
Within the homosexual umbrella lies at least two sexual orientations, these being gay and lesbian. Gay is used to refer to men who have an attraction to other men, but not all men who engage in sexual behavior with other men identify as gay.
Lesbian is used to refer to women who have an attraction to other women, but not all women who engage in sexual behavior with other women identify as lesbian.
Under the homosexual umbrella “about 4 to 6 percent of males have ever had same-sex contact.”
For females, the percentage who have ever had same-sex contact ranges from about 4 percent to 12 percent,” according to the Kinsey Institute.
In between homosexuality and heterosexuality on the Kinsey Scale are at least two sexual orientations. The most heard of and talked about of the two is bisexuality.
Bisexuality is when “a person is emotionally, physically, spiritually and/or sexually attracted to both men and women,” according to the Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success website.
The other orientation is pansexuality.
Pansexuality is “a term used to describe a person who can be emotionally, physically, spiritually and/or sexually attracted to people of various genders, gender expressions and sexes, including those outside the gender binary,” according to the Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success website.
Though both pansexuality and bisexuality are similar in that identifiers have attractions to those of multiple sexes, they are inherently different — but are often confused and assumed to be the same sexual orientation.
The “X” on the Kinsey Scale refers to either those who have not yet had sexual contact with another person or those who identify as asexual.
“In its broadest sense, asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction and the lack of interest in and desire for sex,” according to the Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success website. “However, some asexual people might experience emotional attraction or other non-sexual attractions.”
Asexuality is one of the less-heard of sexual orientations and the smallest group within the LGBTQIA+ community, with the CDC finding in 2014 about one percent of the population identified as asexual.
Homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality and asexuality all fall under the umbrella term of queer, which essentially is anyone who identifies as not heterosexual in the broadest sense.
Queer is “an umbrella term which embraces a matrix of sexual desires, identities and expressions of the not-exclusively-heterosexual and/or monogamous variety,” according to the Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success website.
For novelist Lev Rosen, school sex ed involved putting condoms on fruit. We need to be much more creative – and fun, he argues
By Lev Rosen
When I was 13 years old, when I knew I was queer but wouldn’t be saying so for a year, I remember some boys at school during lunch talking about gay sex. They called it “gross”, they laughed about it. That’s what I heard from my peers about the topic. I heard nothing from my teachers; I wasn’t about to ask my parents; and the gay people on TV never did more than peck each other on the lips.
Sex education for teens is one of those topics we tend to dance around. No one wants to talk to them about sex. It sounds pervy to tell kids how to have sex – as if you’re ruining their innocence or, worse, grooming them. I don’t know what your sex education was like, but I remember mine: it was putting condoms on bananas.
Fun fact about bananas: they’re all genetically identical. Every banana you’ve eaten is the same as every other banana you’ve eaten. And many of the sex-education classes taught today are exactly the same as the one I attended more than a decade ago. Condoms on bananas, STDs, reproduction – no talk of pleasure or consent, much less gay sex.
So, I wrote a novel for teens that features guides to oral sex, anal sex, and basic BDSM. I didn’t do this just so people had someone new to send hate mail to; I did it because teens have heard all this already from TV, playground talk, and online porn. Even sheltered teens already have some idea about how sex works; pretending they don’t isn’t going to help anyone. And while not all of them want to try these things, those who do, need to know how to do it safely, and with consent. Instead, they learn all of that from the media.
In most media aimed at teens, queer men tend to be sweet and sexless. You’ve seen or read the gay best friend character who talks about how hot guys are but never touches one. Or you’ve experienced mainstream gay romance – with gentle kissing, hand-holding, maybe a hug (fully clothed). Even when they get to say what they want, these boys on TV or in film rarely long for more than a kiss and a cuddle. We never see the mimed, under-the-covers sexy-and-shirtless making-out that our straight peers are treated to. Straight teens get to have sex on TV. Gay ones, not so much.
There’s this thing I call the glass closet: the idea that liberal-minded, well-meaning folks who genuinely don’t think they have a problem with queer people tend to confine them to a rigid definition of “good” queerness. For women, this means not going too butch, usually. For men, it means not going too femme, and also, not being too slutty. “I love gay people, but do they have to be so in-your-face about it?”; “I love gay people – but not being ‘too gay’, OK guys?”
And gay sex? That’s way too gay.
Society likes to keep gay teens sexless. It likes to maintain that gay content (even something non-sexual, like the representation of gay parents) is inappropriate for children’s TV or books. Those who complain say it’s too adult – implying that queerness, essentially, is all about sex, while straightness is just what a normal relationship looks like. It’s a weird dichotomy: straight people holding hands are non-sexual, while queer people holding hands is somehow the same as broadcasting pornography. The message is clear across all media: gays have to be kept sexless because they’re already too much about sex.
And so, if all the gay teenagers on our screens are portrayed as “good” gays, kept safely in the confines of the glass closet, and sex-ed doesn’t discuss more than bananas and STDs, then real queer teens turn to the one place they can see their desires: porn.
If you haven’t seen any gay (male) porn, let me describe most of it: everything is clean and polished (yes, even most of the dirty stuff). Everyone has lots of vocal fun. No one ever flags until they finish.
Of course, porn is fantasy, and the men in these videos do massive prep for these scenes. It looks much easier than it is – that’s half the fantasy. And as fantasy, it’s fine. But as a primary source of education, gay porn leaves young queer men with an idealised, routine set of acts that suggest a (wrongly) regimented set of requirements for “real” queer sex. Standardised sexual imagery, it turns out, is just bananas with abs.
I’ve also spoken to queer women about their sexual education. They didn’t always go to porn for their sex-ed, but they didn’t find it at school or home either. Those who did look for it in porn had the additional problem that the fantasy being presented wasn’t even being presented for them.
“Many young women will encounter lesbian sex through mainstream porn,” says Allison Moon, sex educator and author of Girl Sex 101. “This means everyone, not only girls, can get some very wrong ideas about lesbian sex, because the lesbian sex in mainstream porn is designed for male visual pleasure. So queer women have to navigate male sexuality whether or not it interests them.”
And that leaves queer teens in sex-education classes in an awkward place. Straight teens can ask about things they’ve seen on TV, they can apply condoms-on-bananas to what they learn from the media, and come away with a basic framework of sex. Queer teens can only turn to porn.
The good news is that, in some places, things are changing. When I contacted my old high school to find out how the condom bananas were going, I spoke to the director of health and wellness about how the sex-education curriculum has changed, and how it’s about to change even further.
“We can do better, and we’re on the cusp,” she told me, before going into future plans: a curriculum that covers the usual safe-sex issues, but also talks about consent, healthy relationships, porn literacy and queer sex. I was thrilled to hear it. I may have even become a little teary, thinking about a class of young queer people who get a real sexual education that applies to them.
But not every school does this. And they need to, because queer people are everywhere. We’ve made strides in acceptance, but today I still see gay men in their 20s and 30s online saying they don’t know how things work. I get emails from men saying my book taught them things they wish they had learned as a teen. Teens today tell me that it’s so nice to hear someone talk about gay teens having sex, about how they feel, as though, even if they’re out, they’re still not allowed to act on their desires – or are unsure how.
Right now, teenagers’ choices for learning are two extremes (the “good gay” or the “bad gay”) – neither of which is helpful. Either way, these teens end up feeling as if they’ve done something wrong. And we can fix that so easily. Just start talking about it, teaching it. We do it with straight sex. We can fix this the way we can fix most things in life: just gay it up.
What gay teens should watch and read
Another Gay Movie (2006) A raunchy teen sex comedy about four gay guys trying to lose their virginity before graduating. There are gross sex gags, some nudity, and the pressure to lose one’s virginity is problematic, but if you wanted a queer male version of the American Pie movies (or the more recent Blockers), this is it.
I Killed My Mother (2009) A French-Canadian film that features young gay men having fun, sexy sex without being porn – like many of the straight teens you see on TV today.
Release, by Patrick Ness There are plenty of graphic, but beautifully wrought sex scenes in this book about a queer teen trying to find some freedom for himself in a small American town and with his deeply religious family.
Under The Lights, by Dahlia Adler This fun romp on the set of a Hollywood television show has explicit lesbian sex behind the scenes, as the character deals with who she’s playing on TV, and who she is when she’s with her publicist’s daughter.
Princess Cyd (2017) In this quiet and beautiful film about a teen girl (Cyd) spending the summer with her aunt, there’s one great scene between Cyd and Katie, who is a “little bit boy” (and played by a non-binary actor). It’s exactly the sort of sex we should be seeing everywhere.
• Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by LC Rosen is published in paperback by Penguin on 7 February at £7.99.
A few pointers for people who are just starting to explore their sexuality!
Right after coming out as gay/bi, the idea of having sex with another man can be nerve-wracking. The mechanics, while simple, aren’t necessarily intuitive. It also can be tough to really connect to another guy sexually right after sashaying out of the closet. Well, as we begin 2019, let’s make a New Year’s resolution to explore having better and more meaningful sex. With that in mind, here are 11 sex tips for guys who’ve just come out as queer.
1. There will always be cute guys
Cute guys are a dime a dozen. There will always be cute guys, so don’t be upset if one rejects you. Seriously, it’s not the end of the world! Don’t do anything stupid just to have sex with one. Relax. You have the rest of your life to sleep with cute guys.
2. Use condoms (even if you’re on PrEP)
If you just came out and are just starting to get comfortable with your sexuality, the last thing you’ll want to be doing is getting an STD or STI. Honestly, it’s just going to bum you out and make you never want to have sex again. So wear condoms. (Even if you’re on PrEP!)
3. Tell him what you’re into beforehand
Sex shouldn’t be a guessing game. If you’re into something, let him know beforehand that you like X, Y, Z, and it would really turn you on if he did that to you. That’s one of the (few) things that’s great about apps like Grindr. You can explicitly state what you’re into before meeting up without any judgement.
4. Be vocal during sex
In addition to saying what you’re into before things start heating up, you should also be vocal about what you like during sex. If that position isn’t doing anything for you, tell him you want to change positions. He isn’t a mind reader. Let him know what’s up!
5. Have sex with guys who are outside your normal “preference”
We all have men who we are attracted to and not attracted to. I’m not saying that you should sleep with men you’re not attracted to, but I am saying that you should broaden your horizons. Often, societal norms dictate to us what’s attractive. If we’re able to break away from societal standards of beauty, it opens us up (metaphorically and physically) to a wider range of sexual and romantic partners.
6. Be vers
It’s 2019. Being a top or bottom only is so passé. Do it all. Be a millennial, renaissance man! Besides, being vers makes you a better lover because you’re aware of the mechanics of both types of sex.
7. You can say “no” anytime before or during sex
You can always say no anytime before or during sex without an ounce of shame. If you don’t feel comfortable, you have a right to stop having sex at anytime. Is it awkward to kick guys out of your house? Yes, it is, but it is worth the awkwardness. If you’re not into it, and he’s being aggressive, tell him to GTFO.
8. Figure out your own method of cleaning your butt
There are plenty of ways to get a deep clean. Figure out if a douche (or some other way) is the right way for you! While I douche, I’ve heard of some folks using ear syringes to clean out because it’s less forceful.
9. Never feel embarrassed, ashamed, or awkward about asking a guy’s status
You should never get uncomfortable or feel bad for asking a guy what his status is, as well as asking him to use a condom. In the era of PrEP, there is definitely a little bit of condom-shaming, but while you shouldn’t judge them for not wearing a condom, they shouldn’t judge you for wanting to wear one.
10. Use lube
Lube is your best friend. The more lube the better. You want to be turning that bed of yours into a Slip ‘N Slide! Additionally, it’s important to see what type of lube feels best for you. Some guys prefer water-based, whereas others prefer silicone or a hybrid mix of both.
11. Explore your kinks
We all have some form of kink. Something a little more exciting that we’re into. Explore them now. There’s literally no reason to wait. And no matter how “weird” you think your kink is, there are literally thousands (if not millions) of guys who have the same one. You’re definitely not alone.
All I remember from my relationship and sex education in school is phallic objects, condoms and everyone being terrified of pregnancy. Looking back it’s clear how disjointed and inadequate this was at a time when I was struggling with the complexity of being a black, queer, working-class boy navigating life inside and outside school.
If I had been given information about the kind of relationships I would later come to be in and given the space to think critically about my gender it would have made my road to self-acceptance a less bumpy one. It was also a missed opportunity to address toxic elements of masculinity such as suppressing emotion or objectifying women. Modernising the sex and education curriculum wouldn’t just make LGBT+ people safer, but would benefit the wellbeing of all students.
The demand is there. According to a report published by the Terrence Higgins Trust looking at responses from 900 young people aged between 16 and 25, 97% of them thought RSE should be LGBT+ inclusive, but the vast majority (95%) had not been taught about LGBT+ sex and relationships.
This isn’t the only front the current RSE is failing on: 75% of young people were not taught about consent and 50% of them rated their RSE as “poor” or “terrible” with only 10% rating it as “good”. In this context, the shocking 22% rise in cases of gonorrhea between 2016 and 2017 is sadly unsurprising.
I spoke to one of the students responsible for this action; they are 17 years old and asked to remain anonymous. When asked why they felt this action was necessary they said: “Being LGBT+ in school can be an isolating experience … I have experienced ignorant remarks from students and teachers alike. We wanted to do this visual action to draw attention to what feels like a hidden issue, but the impact of which I and many like myself feel on a day to day basis.”
‘An inclusive RSE curriculum could mean LGBT+ identities could be celebrated.’
Only 13% of LGBT+ young people have learned about healthy same-sex relationships. Those who do receive inclusive education are less likely to experience bullying and more likely to report feeling safe, welcome and happy according to Ruth Hunt, chief executive of the LGBT+ equality charity Stonewall.
The feeling that this is a “hidden issue” comes as no surprise given the long history of active exclusion of LGBT+ people and their experiences from public life. In 1988, the Thatcher government introduced section 28 which stopped local authorities from “promoting” homosexuality in schools. It took 15 years for this piece of legislation to be overturned, but many teachers still don’t know if they are legally able to openly discuss LGBT+ topics, and many feel that they lack the expertise to do so.
The reason inclusive RSE isn’t mandatory is because sex education as we know it today was introduced by a Labour government in 2000, but section 28 (the law that banned “promoting” homosexuality) wasn’t overturned until 2003. It is humiliatingly out of date. An inclusive RSE curriculum could mean LGBT+ identities could be celebrated in a place they were once erased and demonised.
Thanks to campaigning organisations such as the Terrance Higgins Trust, the government has committed to making RSE lessons compulsory in all secondary schools in England and relationship education compulsory in primary schools. This was meant to be rolled out in 2019, but has now been pushed back to 2020. Whether this will cover LGBT+ relationships and gender adequately remains to be seen, as the finalised guidance that will be used by schools to deliver the RSE has yet to be published.
The rollout can’t come soon enough. LGBT+ people are more likely to experience poor mental health in the form of depression, suicidal thoughts, self-harm and substance misuse due to the pervasive discrimination, isolation and homophobia they experience. This shake-up of RSE could be an important step towards changing this.
Police arrested his roommate, who confessed to killing Harger with a hammer and cutting him up in the bathtub. He said he’d just thrown the last piece, the torso, off the Staten Island ferry.
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