- On the outside, I'm this 25-year-old
about to turn 26, you know, I was one of the first people
to be out in my high school.
I was super out in my college.
I now do YouTube videos where I'm hella out,
I'm going to all these conferences to speak
specifically about LGBT issues and be this kind of
community spokesperson in a way,
but I've never had a girlfriend.
Hey, so, I thought we would have a little sit down
today and talk about a topic that I've written about
before, including in a mini essay
in Hannah Witton's book, Doing It.
You know, if you're straight, there's this idea
that you can pretty much find romance everywhere.
That, you know, you can just be
in high school and have a crush
or you can be in college and there'd
be someone in your lecture that you fancy or,
you know, you can be in your workplace
and there might be, or in your friendship group, or,
you know, 101 Dalmatians Style,
you could be walking your dogs and you get tangled up
together and then you fall in love.
And obviously that idea of love at first sight
is this kind of idealised and fictionalised version,
but I think it's important to note the fact that,
as a straight person, you can go into
pretty much any situation and there's going to be
someone, like you can kind of assume
that other people around you will be straight as well,
and therefore, you might have these worries of like,
"Oh, if I ask this person out, will they reject me?
"Will I be humiliated?
"Will they say that they don't like me?
"Will it ruin our friendship?"
And those kind of worries are also worries
that queer people can have, but
there's this added element on top of it of
what if they're not queer themselves?
Am I gonna put myself in danger by putting myself out there?
Are they gonna turn out to be homophobic?
You know, what does that look like?
If you don't want to be rejected in a dangerous situation,
if you don't know people are queer, where can you go?
Well, I suppose you could go to a LGBT only space,
but what does that look like?
Most of the time that looks like an 18 plus space,
right, that looks like bars and clubs
that are specifically alcohol-oriented,
and so if you're in high school, it's like, well,
what can you do?
And when I was in school, I actually went to this
big conference that was being organised with
different educators and charities
and they were saying that they,
five years previously had been really, really
worried about straight girls online
and child predators and all this kind of stuff,
but increasingly though was this worry for
queer boys, in particular, using dating apps,
not necessarily to try and hook with these guys,
but lying about their age in order to just
even meet someone who was queer,
'cause it was something that they hadn't experienced before
and it was so difficult to find anyone
that they were like, "Well, this is the only
"way that I can see that happening."
It was really like a lack of provisions
in terms of LGBT youth groups or anything like that.
So when I went to university, I was super out.
I was like, the first thing that I would say to anyone,
and it kind of became a recurring joke amongst my friends,
I would be like, "Hello, I'm Row and I'm gay."
You know, the first meeting that I went to,
I ran for the LGBT welfare position and got it
and then, you know, I ran for positions
in the main university LGBT society
and I ended up being the president of the LGBT society, so,
I was super duper out, but
I went on
three dates my entire time I was at university.
And even me being someone who was so
comfortable in myself, who was so outspoken,
who was part of these big campaigns and whatever,
I did not hold their hands during those dates,
like, deliberately.
There was this nervousness and this internalised panic
of like what would happen if I did.
And, also, to be around a lot of my
straight friends who were almost
falling into relationships, like,
didn't even mean to, they were like,
"Oh, it's just happened," because of this
ease of the fact that everyone around them
had the capacity to be attracted to them
or to kind of be interested in them romantically.
And that was just something that I didn't have.
It was very much like I would have to make the decision
to seek out these people.
I have to make a decision to join this dating app,
to find a queer dating app in the first place,
which is easier said than done,
and then to scroll through what ends up
becoming a lot of straight men being on there,
girls who are asking you to come and have
a threesome with their boyfriends, you know.
That becomes really difficult as well.
And you also have to be super out
to be using these apps, right?
So I was, but I know a lot of people who aren't,
necessarily, like they could very well have been
dating someone really lowkey but they didn't want to put
that information out into the public sphere,
as it were, because that means that you're potentially
can be outed to anyone.
Am I gonna talk about this?
Yeah, okay, I'm gonna talk about this.
So, when I finished university,
I had a really, really rough time.
With the idea of what I saw then as this
perpetual life and existence as a queer woman of loneliness.
That, I'm getting a little bit upset.
That I just couldn't see a reality in which I
ended up with someone.
And I think it kind of has been useful for me
seeing these other people who are around my age
talking about the idea of
it taking longer for queer people
to start having these similar experiences,
because my straight friends,
God, so many of them are getting married and having kids
and babies and stuff like, they've been in relationships
long enough to decide that that's what they want to do.
And it's like it's not necessarily that it's easy,
but it's, there's so many hurdles
that they don't have to jump or think about,
and I was, when I was at school,
I remember girls asking me, "Don't you want to get married?"
About me being gay, they were like,
"You know, but you've got long hair.
"But don't you want to get married and wear a lovely dress?"
And at that point it was illegal for me to do that
and that was just something that, you know,
being that age and knowing that,
at that point it was like, well,
you're never actually gonna be able to have
this fairytale even if you manage to
try and find someone that you love
and who loves you because you won't actually
be able to have these things that,
that other people can have.
And, you know, girls in my schools would say that
gay people shouldn't be allowed to have kids,
they shouldn't be allowed to adopt,
and there was just this idea of
all of these things that my peers were gonna get,
I just wasn't gonna have access to.
This is something that, you know,
intersects with being somewhere on the ace spectrum
is that there's an also issue of
what does, I can't identify necessarily with how
kind of heterosexual media paints relationships
or how that's meant to work,
but I can't necessarily see
what I see my relationship being in any lesbian media either
which is very sex-oriented.
So, yeah, this turned into a little bit more
of a serious video.
I hope that this was, in some way, enlightening
or is something that resonates with you
and that this isn't something
that you're dealing with alone.
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments
and I'm gonna leave a link to my Patreon,
if you want to support these videos, in the description
along with links to all my social medias.
You can find me all over the internet.
And until I see you next time, bye.