My sexual orientation is lesbian
and my gender identity is identify
as a woman. I identify as queer.
I have used the term lesbian in the
past. I consider myself queer,
which means anyone who's not 100% straight.
And out of the whole alphabet
soup of Elbe QA I plus I consider
myself the B for bisexual.
I'm a transgender woman
and my gender identity is female.
But I was assigned male
at birth when I was born.
The doctors looked at my anatomy
and said it's a boy but at a very
young age I didn't identify with
that and now it is an adult and
I have started presenting and
living authentically as ultimate.
Identify as a what they call a
cisgendered male. I am a gay male.
To be a cisgendered gay male is to
be someone who is born in determined
male and they have not changed
their identity and they identify
as such. I'm gay, gay, gay,
gay, gay, gay person of colors.
Experience of coming out is often forgotten.
It's not a big deal for me to come
out because someone is going to hate
me by what I look like before they
even find out who I'm in bed with.
The first person I told was my best friend,
I went ahead and I said it and I
said I'm a lesbian and she said,
see that wasn't so bad.
I was at an event with one of
my dear friends.
I was sitting next to someone who I've
known for a long time but had an odd
physical reaction to them that I had
never experienced before and so it
was kind of it was it was shocking.
We started dating and she's a woman.
My high school boyfriend said to me,
hey, you know so and so is bisexual
and he said I think you are too.
I knew I was that person but I
just hadn't heard the word before.
I remember being two
or three and telling my parents that I
I really felt like I was a girl and I
felt like they were really wrong when
they were telling me that I was a point.
And by the time I hit puberty,
I like I knew that I was different.
I knew for sure probably
towards the end of high school.
When I turned 18, right? Told my mom
and I told her when I was a safe
distance away at college and she
said you have nothing to worry about.
I've known this entire time.
I almost forgot to tell my mom like she
came to visit me at college and I was
living with Brooke and she's like oh great.
So what does he sleep? And I'm like
why ellipses? We gotta talk, you know
Brooke was he was my everything at that
time. There are many
misconceptions with with lesbians.
If I was just more feminine then
I could attract men. And then
I wouldn't be gay.
And that's unfortunately
some people feel that way.
People think folks in the queer community
are always excited or excitable.
Absolutely not true.
People think that if they meet
a woman who has a husband,
that that means she's straight.
Don't assume their sexuality or their gender.
The only time that I saw trans
women on television where as
victims of crime or as survival,
sex workers,
those were just misrepresentation.
This community is.
Promiscuous or confused,
or in some kind of a moral
danger is something that I
think is a misconception.
We all aren't great dancers.
We all go snap and say girl
we all don't hate football.
It can take many years for you to feel
comfortable enough to not feel the shame,
not feel the guilt and and be
able to tell someone else.
We should embrace every one of our
differences and celebrate our diversity
because it's the right thing to do.
You can tell just
by looking if someone is
in the pride community.
Someone also might be in the
Pride community later in life.
We're your family where your
friends or your neighbors. We're
just like you just like anybody else
and we would just like to be
treated and respected as such.
There's all these different
connotations about what it means to be
gay and what you're supposed to be.
You know whatever it tells you that
you're supposed to be just yourself.
But once I came out to myself and
started living authentically,
then you know then that those were the
keys that opened up the rest of my life.