by Dan Savage
Kristel Yoneda attended the George Washington University in Washington, DC. She is a currently a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, California, documenting her quarter-life-crisis adventures.
A MESSAGE FROM KEVIN HAGUE, MP
AOTEAROA, NEW ZEALAND
I’m a gay man and I’m a member of Parliament for the Green Party in New Zealand.
I remember being a teenager and starting to realize that I was different from my friends. It took me a long time to acknowledge to myself that I was gay. And it took even longer to tell other people about it. Fitting in and seeming like everyone else can feel really important, especially when you’re young. It certainly was for me. I often felt isolated, scared, and depressed by the anti-gay bullying and abuse I was exposed to—but also by the jokes and anti-gay culture that was around me in the boy’s school I attended. It all left me feeling pretty bad.
That’s a long time ago now, though. And today, I’m happy. I’m a well-adjusted, adult gay man. And I have a great life. I have a relationship with my partner; we’ve been together for over twenty-five years now, going strong. I’ve got a great adult son. And I’ve had a career that’s been really interesting and now has me in Parliament.
And so part of my message to you is, even though things might seem bad at that moment, it gets better. It gets better.
Perhaps the most important thing I want to say about my life now is that I don’t hide being gay from anyone. It’s very, very seldom that I personally encounter any anti-gay discrimination or abuse. So for every one of you out there who’s feeling like I did when I was a teenager—scared, isolated—my message to you is this: If I could, I would love to be able to reach out to you, and be able to show you the fantastic future that awaits you. I can’t do that. So instead do this one thing, be brave about this one thing: Reach out to someone else. Talk to a friend or a family member or maybe someone at your school, a teacher or a counselor, someone you can trust. Because usually what happens is those people are more supportive than you think they will be. They’re better than you think they are. And if there is really no one around that you think you can talk to, check out what’s available online. There are lots of queer youth groups around the country, and a fantastic umbrella organization in New Zealand called Rainbow Youth
Remember that no matter how bad things seem right now, it will get better. And we want you in our community. Contact someone, get some support, and be there for us. And we will be there for you, too.
Kevin Hague is a New Zealand member of Parliament for the Green Party. Before this he was a senior figure in the New Zealand Health sector and also had a career in bookselling. He has been strongly involved in the community sector since the 1970s, including the anti-apartheid movement and in groups working for gay, and other, human rights. He led the New Zealand AIDS Foundation for the five years until 2003. He lives on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island with his partner of twenty-six years.
HATERS CAN’T HATE SOMEONE WHO LOVES THEMSELVES, AND IF THEY DO, WHO CARES
by Lynn Breedlove
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
When I heard about this project, I thought, “I never got bullied so I have nothing to offer.” But then I remembered they always called me “weird” in grammar school, and I didn’t have many pals.
Even the one gay kid in sixth grade wouldn’t let me play with him and his girlfriends cuz he said I was a boy. I thought, “Yeah, and you’re a girl!” I was jealous cuz his mom dressed him as a flapper, in a dress and makeup, on Halloween because she saw that’s what he wanted to be. My mom never let me dress as a cowboy for Halloween. She dressed me as Twiggy. No one in San Leandro knew Twiggy was a Carnaby Street supermodel. And I certainly didn’t care.
I spent my thirteenth summer playing softball with other girls, and developed a crush on two older teammates who were already in junior high school. I gave them both sheaves of love poems. They read these to one another, realized I was madly in love with both of them, and in September went back to school, spreading the word I was a dyke.
As soon as I arrived at junior high, their friends greeted me with the nickname “Truck,” which I guess was supposed to be an insult meaning “butch.” Some Latina gangsta girls threatened me. I charmed my way out of it: Smile, submit, avoid, but don’t cower.
My dad taught at an inner-city school. He said, “If anyone tries to beat you up, just ball up your fists and scowl. Do not back down, beg, or cry. This only encourages predators. Act tough and fearless. Chances are they will lose interest. And if not, you will gain a rep as a badass and not a punching bag.”
Using what talents I was born with, and learned from my parents, I smiled and said something funny. The mean girls lost interest and eventually in high school—along with most everyone else—ended up my friends.
What I did have going for me was my parents’ love. They told me that I could be whatever I wanted in life and that they would be there for me no matter what. Mom said, “You’re Lynn Breedlove. Never forget that.” I thought that was weird, but later it came in handy.
In my first year of junior high, I busied myself. I was drawn to a boy named Victor and asked him out to the Girl Ask Boy dance. I tried out for the school play, the part with the fewest lines and the most laughs, got the part, and cracked up the whole school. The rejection, ridicule, and threats turned overnight into love. Everyone wanted to be my pal, because I had found what I was good at and was obviously having fun. I skated the hallways, streaked through my gym class, and cut up in French class with jokes in French that were over the teacher’s head.
Victor came out to me two years later in high school. I said, “Yeah, me too,” and then he said, “We are going to find every gay person in this school and make a gang.”
Every day he would come back to me with a report. The guy with the earring. The classical pianist. The bisexual babe. The Queen fan in Saturday Night Fever pants who swept up after school cuz he was always in trouble. Pretty soon we had a gang of badass queers hanging out. And no one had the balls to fuck with us, because there were a bunch of us and we were obviously not ashamed. Granted, the only award I won upon graduation was Class Clown, but for someone who was to later become a comic, that was apt.
I got through school by sharing what I loved with others, and the obvious queer that was me got love in return. I served the conservative population of my suburban high school some live queer entertainment, poetry, laughs, and pal-dom. And, I found that if I showed up with my whole self, I would have all kinds of pals, straight, gay, and trans.
When it came time to value myself, to decide whether I would kill myself over my gender issues or not, whether I would clean up my act or shoot drugs until I was dead, the words my mom always said to me kept coming back to me, “You’re Lynn Breedlove. Never forget that.”
What I learned from my parents was love. I loved myself because they loved me. My mom built up her own tribe because she had left her family behind the Berlin Wall in the ’50s, and she had to make a new family. I learned from her how to make one for myself, too.
If I had had a family who said they would love me only if I pretended to be someone I wasn’t, things might have turned out differently. But if you have that kind of family, you can make your own family who will love you unconditionally. That’s why queers call each other Family. We create one that will love us for who we are. We have drag moms and dads, dyke uncles, and matriarchal mamas.
Thirty-five years later, I have that extended family. (And over three thousand queer friends on Facebook, most of whom think and feel as I do.) I learned in high school, if I hold up an effigy, a mask, or a lie, that mask will get all the love, not me. If I say, this is who I am, I may only get three real pals, but it will be me, not some pretend persona, who will be getting all the real love from those three pals.
If I stand up and say, I am awesome and my life is worthwhile, most others will believe me.
If I encounter assholes who want to hate, I have a joke ready and
a posse to stand up for me.
As a kid, I was shy, weird, unpopular, ignored, threatened, and rejected. As a teen, I charmed my way through school, but I thought drugs would make my struggle with being different easier. For fifteen years I tried to off myself slowly with drugs or hang out in dangerous situations hoping someone else would off me. Then one day, at age thirty-one, I was able to draw on some distant past truth, that I am loveable, a truth which inspired me to save my own life, make a bunch of art that makes life worth living, and even pays the rent. Now at the age of fifty-two, I am happy and strong. So let this be your truth too: You are loveable and you have something that no one else has to offer the world, something that connects you to other humans: your heart. And something that sets you apart from other humans: your art.
So don’t fuck us over by offing yourself. Bring it. Bring your whole badass queer self. We need you to live. To protect us. To stand up with us. To inspire us.
Create your own scene and find your own tribe. You are not alone. Without us, straight people would be super-bored, and so would we. The more of us find each other, the more exciting the adventure becomes.
We’re waiting for you with open arms.
Lynn Breedlove is a performer and writer. From 1990 to 2005, he was the lead singer for Tribe 8, the first all-dyke punk band playing music for by and about dykes. In 2005 they won the Cultural Heritage Award for Creativity. Breedlove was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, Godspeed (St. Martin’s Press, 2002), and won the 2010 Lambda Literary Award in the transgender category for Lynnee Breedlove’s One Freak Show (Manic D Press, 2009). He is currently writing a political memoir with his mother and running a queer car service called Homobiles in San Francisco. He has been clean and sober since January 1, 1990.
NOT PLAYING AT A CINEMA NEAR YOU
by Rebecca Brown
SEATTLE, WA
To look at the popular images of lesbians in mainstream movies, you’d think we were all just failures at being straight. What a shitty image to have of yourself. Don’t buy it. You can be a lesbian or dyke or queer woman or girl-crazy, or whatever you want to call yourself, and have a great relationship with another woman who is smart and funny and cute and sexy and loyal and truly wants to be with you as opposed to with some guy.
The latter of which is the message you get if you look a little below the surface of The Kids Are All Right. I hate that subtext. In fact, I’m totally sick of how mainstream movies portray us. Part of the problem is that movies portray us so rarely that whenever you do see a lesbian character on screen, that character bears tremendous weight.
When discussing The Kids Are All Right, everyone fell all over themselves flashing their “enlightened,” and oh-so “tolerant” credentials, describing it as a story of a “normal family that happens to have two moms” (played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore). But of course one of those play-pretend lesbian moms really wants to sleep with a guy. In the real world, some lesbians do want to sleep with guys, or discover they are bi. Nothing wrong with that. And there would be nothing wrong with portraying this if it was simply one of many ways lesbian were portrayed in the movies. But it’s not.
At least that so-called lesbian wants to have sex with something. The other movie stereotype of lesbians is that we are cold and bitter, repressed and ancient old bags, i.e., utterly unsexy. Remember Notes on a Scandal? It came out the same year as Brokeback Mountain. The latter is a beautiful, sensitive love story of two beautiful young men in love, set in a beautiful landscape, and the tragedy of how they could not fulfill their love in the cruel world. (Hey, wait a minute, wasn’t the gay rights movement happening at the same time? Whatever.) Notes on a Scandal, on the other hand, tells the story of an ugly, old, closeted dyke who preys on a pretty young innocent straight woman. Judy Dench is great as the creepy, manipulative cartoon of Older Lesbian Predator. (Though maybe they should have given her a mustache to twirl to complete the image.)
Older Lesbian Predator is exactly the mythic boogeyman (boogey-woman? boogeydyke?) my mother was afraid would corrupt me when I was young. That didn’t happen, though. Far from it. I lost my virginity in my teens with a girl my own age, and have always been treated like a beloved daughter by older lesbians who have mentored me and done whatever they could to help and encourage me in my life and work.
Judy Dench wasn’t the only great English actress to play such a part. There’s a pair of Heartless Old Dykes in Never Let Me Go, a complicated quasi-science fiction story set in the future. When the young and in love straight couple come to ask the two old misses (Charlotte Rampling is one) if they can get them the dispensation they need to marry, the Heartless Old Dykes say no. By the time I saw this yet-another caricature of lesbians I wanted to scream. (This may have been complicated by the fact that Charlotte Rampling appears to me to be profoundly fuckable. Actually, now that you mention it, I wouldn’t say no to a go at Annette Bening either.)
The point is, you’re a young woman wondering if you are a lesbian. You wonder what a lesbian life might look like when you get older. Do not—repeat: Do. Not. Believe what mainstream movies tell you about your alleged self. Do not listen to what people who don’t actually know any honest-to-God out lesbians tell you. Of course, there are some poor, bitter, fucked-up old dykes out there, but you do not have to become one. And, sure, some women can take a while to figure out their sexuality, playing around with your heart in the process. But you do not have to stay with women like that your whole life. And, yes, some women happily and healthily discover they shift fluidly between being bi and lesbo. Let ’em do so. Wish ’em well. What I want to tell you is that you can have a great girlfriend who will not leave you for a guy. (Or another woman.) And that you can both be out and productive and happy and fulfilled.
I didn’t think that was possible for me for a long time. (I dated a lot of people who were not right for me.) Then when I was thirty-five, I met the woman to whom I am now married. (Though not legally. Not yet.) For the past twenty years, I have had a great life with her. Our families adore us (including her six—count ’em, S-I-X!—grandkids) and we adore them. We are not, and do not have to be, closeted anywhere.
I look forward to the day when no one has to be closeted. I also look forward to the day when those pop culture stereotypes of lesbians exist only as a quaint reminder of our culture’s unenlightened past. A time when you and your lesbian wife will only dimly remember ever thinking you were anything less than the beautiful, brilliant, funny, loyal, well-adjusted, happy—no, ecstatic—pair of dykes you are.
Rebecca Brown is the author of twelve books including, most recently, American Romances, a collection of essays that won a Publishing Triangle Award.
FROM “FAGGOT” TO FIELD BIOLOGIST
by Christopher A. Schmitt, PhD
LOS ANGELES, CA
I was once a gay teenager, growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It wasn’t exactly the easiest place to be a gay kid, especially since I went to inner-city public schools. I was bullied, called a “honky faggot,” called “gay,” all of that. At the time I didn’t necessarily know what to make of it. I knew that I had been more interested in guys than girls for as long as I could remember, but I didn’t really know what it meant to be gay and didn’t really think of myself in those terms. There weren’t any gay role models at the time so it hurt when people teased me in those terms. All I knew about then were stereotypes of gay people, and I wasn’t really interested in being like that.
When I was thirteen, I bought in to the colored jeans and silk shirt look that was so popular in the early ’90s, the apex of which was my calico silk jacket. Very hot, I know. Needless to say, it did not help with the bullying. One day, riding on the after-school bus (I think I was wearing purple jeans and a teal silk shirt at the time), seven or eight guys came up to me and started calling me a “honky faggot.” I got off the bus early to avoid them but they followed me. For the next eight blocks home, they circled me and spat on me and pushed me and co
ntinued calling me names. It was horrible. By the time I got home, I was really upset and I told my mom about it. She listened quietly and then asked me if I was gay. Since I didn’t really even know what that meant at the time, and I certainly didn’t want to prove the bullies right, I said no.
When I finally came out a few years later, my mom told me that she feared I might be limiting my options by deciding to be openly gay. To be honest, I was afraid of that, too. All I knew about being gay were the stereotypes that society had fed me. Yet it never limited my options at all. In high school, I was a well-respected varsity athlete and a lifeguard. I even saved several people from drowning. After I graduated from high school, I went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison and majored in zoology and English. I also met my first boyfriend, fell in love, and, subsequently, had my heart completely broken (it was worth it, despite the broken heart).
After college, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life, so I moved to Costa Rica and studied monkeys for a year on a volunteer basis. I loved it so much that I went to graduate school at NYU to continue studying primate behavior in the wild. I’ve been living in New York for the past six years, and just this September I received my PhD in physical anthropology, studying the behavior and genetics of woolly and spider monkeys in the Ecuadorian Amazon. All of the things that I’ve done since I was that thirteen-year-old kid who was followed home and spat on and called a faggot, all of it’s been fantastic. And all of it was worth it just to get to where I am now. Right now, I’m in South Africa studying primates, doing what I have wanted to do since I was a teenager. And I’ve done it all as an out and proud and openly gay man. I’ve been able to travel everywhere with this job. I’ve lived in the Ecuadorian Amazon. I’ve worked in Peru and Colombia and Nicaragua and Costa Rica and Argentina.
