thelesbianlifestyle.com

Hello. I’m new here as well and so (for now) I’m going to completely ignore the suggested topics, and instead do a little intro sort of thing. I’ll try and post on one of the topics later in the month. It’s finals week here, so you get what you get. However, I’m going to appologize now: I write a lot. Read, if it’s interesting to you, or don’t, if it isn’t. I just want to get it out there, and maybe some of it will be helpful to someone out there. Or not. Who knows.

I’m going to start with where I am right now. I’m an junior undergrad at Syracuse University majoring in English and minoring in LGBT Studies (this is a NEW program, one that my friends on the faculty have really been pulling for). I’m going to be turning 21 in February, and don’t plan to get smashed. I’ve been out as bisexual to my family for nearly a year at this point, but I identify myself as a lesbian primarily, and yet still often feel like labels in general are restrictive and try to shy from them.

When I came out to my family last winter, I originally came out to my brother who is three years younger than I am. I was terrified at the time of what he was going to say, but then he told me he was bisexual as well and thinking he liked men more than women. I was surprised, but at the same time, it was good to have an ally in my family and I was glad that he’d have me to support him as well. He’d wanted me to wait until that summer vacation to tell mom because he figured after I came out, he’d probably end up doing the same, and didn’t think he was ready yet. But I ended up telling her in February or March because I’d been having a rough time hiding half of myself from her (and I think she was getting suspicious because 2 out of my 5 classes were LGBTish at that point…) and broke down and told her. And she was okay with it, because she wanted me to be happy and really was more sad and upset that I had been so broken up about it, and wanted me to know I could tell her anything. And she said she wished that I wasn’t going to have to deal with so much opposition (because of my identity), but I told her I didn’t really have much choice in the matter. My brother ended up coming out to her within the same week, and she dealt with it really well. I think she felt some intial shock that both of her children turned out queer, and I think she still wonders if she had a hand in it, but she definately doesn’t wonder if she did anything “wrong,” but wonders if it was somehow influenced by us growing up without a father (he died in ‘91). And frankly, I don’t know why we’re both not straight. I chalk it up to mom creating an accepting environment for us, telling us we could do anything we wanted, that she didn’t care what we did as long as we were happy. Also, due to the number of her friends and co-workers that were/are gay, she often expressed that love was love no matter who it was between, and that that was okay. And she meant that sincerely.

Since I came out my life has changed incredibly. I declared the LGBT minor as soon as I got wind that people were working on getting it passed. The professor who’s class I’d been in at the time when I came out to my mom (Margaret) is a good friend of mine now, and she is the faculty advisor for a group I co-founded on campus called Outrage (see my little square on the TLL page for a link to the site I made for Outrage). She’s a dyke and has probably been one of the most influential people in my coming out. I really don’t think I could have if I wasn’t in her class that semester last year. Probably half to three fourths of the students in that class were queer somehow, and it was the first time I’d been in such an open environment, where sexuality was openly discussed, where reading material was written by gay men and lesbians, and where paper topics could be anything, and where my final paper was about the medicalization of transgendered identities. It was being in that class that allowed me to work up the nerve to go to the campus LGBT center for the first time, to meet the friends I have today, to get involved with Outrage and its activism, to sit in on the campus’ senate committee for LGBT concerns… etc. I’m lucky. I went from highschool, where I wasn’t even out to myself, to freshman and sophmore year here, where I was hiding my identity from others, to today, so openly queer that my dorm room door is covered in rainbows (cliche, yes). Life does get better.

So, that’s all for today, and again, sorry for the intensely long post, but I am an English major after all. If you made it to the end, hooray! And feel free to comment. I really want to hear from some of these awesome people I’ve been reading about. So say hi.