#genuinely feels impossible to find any queer adults my age

[coffentyme]

Ventured out into the world today

I’m sad to report

No horny trans people to be found in my town, only me 😔

[soullessjack]

🔥 jack

oh my godddd I have so many unpopular opinions where do I even start….HOLY DISCLAIMER BATMAN!

anyways so in no particular order or tier system:

✯ i don’t think jack would wear anything feminine im sorry spn fandom. for lolz he has same-outfit-pattern-everyday autism and for serious it’s like. Really weird how fandoms tend to HC/portray non-binary amabs (and men/transmascs in general) almost exclusively as GNC or fem-presenting…like DGMW that is a real and valid form of self expression but it’s not the Only type of non-binary expression that exists. and honestly…**dare I say that most fandom/queer spaces just need to realize that queer masculinity exists and it doesn’t always have to be a matter of breaking gender norms??

** genuinely do whatever u want idc I can’t stop you i don’t want to stop you yada yada. paint his nails and put him in a skirt all u want but Please recognize patterns yall 😭

✯ more headcanon complaints (see disclaimer above ⇧) but I promise to switch it up soon. anyways every time somebody on this lil website says something along the lines of “Jack can’t handle/doesn’t like [insert violence, scary or adult-oriented thing], he prefers [soft or blatantly childlike things]” I shrivel inward like a dead spider. It’s annoying, it’s completely inaccurate to his canon personality and interests, it’s annoying ˣ2, and whether ppl wanna admit it or not—it stems from infantilization. not necessarily ableism, as infantilization is not exclusive to disabled people, but still just about the same thing.

honestly all I see of majority jack headcanons are ones that set him back to just being a child or otherwise being treated like one. for example, the one about him being able to shapeshift is pretty cool...until it just becomes about him deciding to age regress, yknow, to an age set he canonically chose not to go through, showed no desire to be in, and is more offended than anything to be considered as such. all of his interests have to be some shit like bluey or animal crossing, and he drinks apple juice from a sippy cup instead of beer. BARF.

I’ve lessened on my keyboard warring over babyjack in the past year but I have not lessened in being a hater. and I’ve said this before, but the baby-jack au already breached headcanon containment a long time ago when it’s not only so widespread that ppl take it for canon and it makes having any intelligent conversation about him nearly fucking Impossible, but it also lead to harassment and accusations of being a fucking predator, to anyone who dared find a whole grown man attractive. any potential jack ship, like jackharper? automatic grooming case to them. it’s like the fandom is just so dead set on this idea that jack really truly is a child in every aspect you can think of, and for what? if it’s just a headcanon, something you know is not part of the actual show, then don’t go Travis the Chimp levels of apeshit when you see him being treated like he is canonically 💀

unpopular opinion numero 3 which is slightly connected to 2:

✯ baby-jack and a handful of the domestic au’s are BORING (see disclaimer again ⇧), not just on a surface level to my suiting, but also because I feel like it just ..misses the point of the show?

the ragtag untraditional found family is now as nuclear and traditional as the Atomic Age. Dean and Cas are the most heteronormative “who wears the pants in the relationship” gay couple ever, Sam is demoted to the uncle that gets written out of his own family, Jack is just there to make his gay dads look cute and emphasize that they’re a gay family (while still being very heteronormative), and at least 5 of them could be found in a California gated community. everything that made any of them unique or defined their personalities is just scrubbed off, even for an AU.

so much of the later seasons focus on Sam and Dean realizing that they don’t have to make a hard splitting decision between the lives they want to live; that they can find a balance; be happy and have good things—namely families—without giving up hunting (and vice versa, that they can have hunting without giving up on family or happiness). everybody loves the gay hunters from S10(?12?) and what they represented for Dean, but I almost never see that be put into practice in the fandom.

THEY’RE ALREADY DOMESTIC!!! AND WITH THAT PERFECT BALANCE!!!! Season 13 quite literally gave Team Free Will a surrogate son to raise and established them as a family; highly untraditional, largely dysfunctional, overall not fitting of a family family, and yet they are a family still. Dean wears an apron and cooks and bakes for everyone; he built himself a man cave and established two separate family night events that they all ritually keep up; Sam has a morning jogging routine and visits his girlfriend every so often; Jack was taught how to drive, has normal chores like washing dishes, and gets groceries. And they didn’t just have that while fighting monsters—they had that while fighting a whole fucking archangel. Even if it did go down the gutter by the end, they still had it: domestic familial bliss and violent messy hunting without having to trade one for the other.

✯ I truly genuinely think Jack’s relationship with Dean is the best, most interesting and most misunderstood out of the three, and I also think that the problems with his relationship to Cas and Sam are hugely overlooked by the fandom—granted they are very small, especially if you’re comparing it to Dean, but they’re still there and I think we should bully Cas and Sam about it more. I shan’t elaborate because it’s 5AM and this was an impulsive add-on ❤️

✯ getting normal now…his plaid pattern jacket from the first half of Ouroboros is ugly as SHIT i have never liked it and don’t think I ever will. but I cannot deny it; he got that shit on.

✯ most unpopular opinion of all, I wanna do insane shit to his cervix 🙌

[phoenixcatch7]

Random mdzs headcanons that I don't think interfere with canon:

Though sufficient cultivation cures this, lwj is short sighted. (this is because of that mxtx interview but if he actually was short sighted he would be wearing glasses in canon.) Similarly, so would lxc and lqr is already halfway there lol.

Wen chao is barely older than the main cast. Like a couple years at most. This is is because it took until his poor wife (who shall forever be unknown, rip) being mentioned for me to go 'that's an ADULT?!'. Everything from the voice to the face to the short sighted immaturity and the lying to adults in charge, there's no way this guy is anything over 20.

Lqr isn't a very strong cultivator for all his technical skill is impeccable. I think this because I thought he was young grandparent age when he's the uncle!! It's too much stress! Major props.

He's also aromantic! We know that nothing will stop a lan in love, much to their detriment, but not only does lqr seem to regard the lot of them as idiots for finding the absolute worst choices ever but I feel if he'd also loved and lost it would have been... Relevant.

Jfm was gay, and his unrequited love was wcz. Alternate sexualities (and queerness as a whole) is one of those things that's still so dangerous in many countries, and I guess ancient fantasy China is one of them! Poor mxy. Anyway that plus arranged marriages plus jfm being an only child (to my knowledge) and needing heirs... Yeah I feel like that's one of those things that happens. It's common all throughout history, forcing people into het relationships for any number of reasons or risk social (or even physical) death. I could so easily trace how that would have affected him through the courtship, marriage, his parents, him genuinely trying to love yzy and maybe deep inside knowing it was doomed to fail, her intelligence picking up on that and trying to figure out how she was unworthy, her feeling hurt and disrespected, getting more and more paranoid and sensitive as it wears on, her being so close to the right answer but correcting her would expose him. Him just trying to settle for mutual respect and teamwork and her never getting what she needs to be fulfilled in life, what she was raised and trained all her life in preparation for. The way he's so unwilling to force his kids to do anything miserable and the way he's so quick to call off the engagement when all he's hearing is disinterest and incompatibility. I could make this a whole post on its own but I fully believe this man lived and died like so many other queer people have in the past - never being able to find out who he truly was, and that he wasn't broken for not being the way he needed to be. Wangxian have an easier time of it, but when there's stories like mxy? People keep their heads down. He raised jc the way he was raised, and he turned out fine. It wasn't their fault he was such a failure of a son.

To cheer things up, I firmly believe that wwx is bisexual af. Just because lwj is his soulmate doesn't mean he's not. Are you an mxtx protag if you're simply, straightforwardly gay? I think not.

Though I do wonder if jc being Banned From Women was 100% an entirely whoopsie daisy accident. Sometimes standards are supposed to be impossible... Now I think about it, the certainty lwj hated wwx, the total lack of any partner, the focus on jl, the constant frustration with wwx's flirting and incomprehension with jyl crushing on jzx... I think the women are the only straight ones in the family, cuz he's sounding the aroace bell! Good for him tbh!!! Break the cycle!!!!

Lsh is the child of either wrh, wc, jgs, or two perfectly lovely normal people who died in war/childbirth. He was 100% a village kid, so thank goodness they all stepped up. I feel like one of the wens would have told wwx his parentage either way, so if he hasn't told anyone else I can't imagine it's great.

Each sect is associated with an element. The wens of course were fire, the nie earth, the lan air, the jin water (koi/carp tower), and the jiang are lightning (given we assume yzy and the jiang territory are compatible (her husband is probably water lol oof)). Years of specialised clan training and select marriages have caused the clan members qi to take on movement (at minimum) matching the respective elements. This is based on the anime, where everyone has nice handy colour coded qi, but the twin jades have the prettiest cloud texture that perfectly matches their crest and wwx has an almost lightning spiky red with just enough smoulder to make he sure he's a fire type. This also!!! Matches their fighting styles, have you noticed?? Idk if they did it on purpose or not but it's so cool!!! Wwx and jc are constantly moving, redirection, bounce and flip around; lwj and lxc are very twirly, lots of attacks from above, lwj often lets his sword fly mid battle, and of course the music! And the nie are very... Brick wall lol. I'd say NHS is air? Maybe? Water?

This one's a bit silly, but I like to imagine csr and bsr are mother and daughter from a distant land where people use their surnames last (gasp) and it wasn't really important to bsr cuz secluded mountain but they did figure it was going to be a problem a touch late. 'oh but phoenix they have different spellings in Chinese' csr got asked 'oh so like the immortal?' panicked and changed it on the spot. Her husband's nicknames all use her 'surname', he's the only one who knows about the mix up.

Spinning in the air helps you change an attack or helps you float. Yes this is based entirely on the anime (donghua?) where even the most serious of characters (lwj) do three full rotations before landing a big attack midair. It might be so he has time to get his guqin out lmao.

Jc is left handed, I'm pretty sure that's anime canon at least. Any good swordsman (or dual sword whip wielder!) can do a little ambidexterousness tho.

Wwx can do decent guqin cuz he's the gentleman prodigy of the arts but he probably whittled a dozen dizi out of roadside bamboo on long journeys to entertain himself which is why chengching was such a fine tuned spiritual tool.

The jiangs were a great sect lead by good people in an ehhhh family. Individually they're all actually decent people but they bring out the worst in each other even as it keeps them all in check.

I firmly believe that yzy was holding back a LOT when made to whip wwx in front of the wen wench. That's a whole entire spiritual weapon and she was going at it wildly in a barely stable environment. Compare that to lwj who took the discipline whip not too many more times (if any) and was rendered bed bound if not house bound for years recovering (and grieving) and over a decade later is still a mass of scar tissue. And that was an orderly and structured punishment using materials designed to NOT kill the victim, not a whole entire LIGHTNING MURDER WEAPON. Wwx was back on his feet minutes later sword fighting, rowing, carrying jc on his back... Lwj is the more realistic result, real whips can be lethal, and very, very dangerous. They are excruciatingly painful and if you make a mistake they can easily flay skin and muscle to crack bone. You're not supposed to strike the same patch of skin twice. Yeah wwx and his stupid pain tolerance but I truly believe him and yzy were in full accord in that moment with the roles they had to play (and jc hated every second). She could at least have apologised... in the middle of heated battle for her home and life though....

Lwjs eyes are gold and sunset and stars' YES ALSO BUT I looked at them and my immediate reaction was 'that's a bird of prey'. They're LITERALLY falcon eyes, they're identical, and I've never once seen that comparison :(. He's already piercing/intense/pinning/scouring, (and his anime eyeliner and dark lashes look like the markings) he's so perfect for the metaphor. Make it that wwx is the rabbit prey, come on.

Why is wwx sun coded but moon aesthetic and lwj moon coded but sun aesthetic like how's that fair why does it always happen.

Stop blaming wwx for Suiban he admits he came up with a zillion good names and it was jfm who didn't pick any and named it as a joke. Ngl if that was my trusted person who went and did that I would have been gutted but hey wwx thrives. I do feel like jfm naming the sword that wwx sacrifices to save jc is grounds for some angst at the very least.

Lxc was definitely in some situation with the other two because he does read as a parallel to lwj. Their romantic lives are basically inversions of each other, you could hold a graph up to a mirror. It's just that lwj was so deeply lucky to get wwx back, and he fell in love with someone true to himself. Lxc just got used and left with the ashes, no matter how much true love was on either side. Wwx chose family, kindness and community with poverty and jgy chose greed and power and wealth for total isolation. It was NHS that inverted their fates, but either brother's love could only come at the cost of the other. Poor qiren...

All those fancy huge ribbons in everyone's hair (again it's the anime donghua) are special and ridiculously sturdy ribbons given by the parents they wear in varying styles to tie it all up and as they grow up so they don't trip on it. This is a silly headcanon but I love it cuz those ribbons are stupid long and literally everyone has it. Maybe it's the mdzs equivalent of the guan ceremony?

Wwx has for sure done cannibalism.

Ooh painful headcanon time - his parents died in yiling right? And all corpses get tossed into the mounds for centuries, right? Nonzero chance wwx's parents bodies broke his fall.

Lwj gets wwx a mule for a birthday/festival cuz those guys are basically the perfect mounts humans are ever going to get, they're just v rare and infertile. They're smart and brave as donkeys and fast and strong like the horse, resulting in an animal that is down for mounted parkour with the right training. And then lwj can ride a horse alongside wwx when they go travelling ^^. Idk I just think it'd be super cute.

Wwx only comes up with good names when he's doing real bad. Names when he's doing good: Suiban, li'l apple, rulan (after his bf). Names when he's doing bad: chengqing, yin iron tally/stygian tiger amulet, compass of evil.

[emilybrontesghost]

So I’m not saying this to hate on Heartstopper (because I actually really like the show overall and think it genuinely gets representation right for some queer people), but I have to say, as a wlw this show has been bringing up some feelings of exclusion as well. I realize I’m coming at this from my own experience, but I know from reading online from other wlw that I’m not the only one to feel this way, so that’s why I do want to talk about it. The “it” being representation. I definitely respect what Heartstopper has done for the mlm community and what it’s done for young queer guys. I’m happy a show that normalizes same sex relationships for young boys exists and that it was handled in such an age-appropriate and kind way. It is impossible to ignore though that women in this show and in media in general still end up getting the short end of the stick. I say this mainly because one thing I see being said about Heartstopper SO much is that gay boys love how the representation speaks to their experience and finding their identity as a teen. I’m glad a generation of young boys get this, but I do feel there is not a true equivalent of this for girls, and definitely not one that has taken off to the extent Heartstopper has in terms of mass appeal and popularity. I empathize with those boys who feel like they didn’t have representation growing up or who feel that this is the first show to really show their experience, but I can’t help but be reminded in the process that not only was there no such thing for me as a wlw as a teen, there still isn’t now that I’m an adult. Yes, there are shows with wlw representation. Yes, Heartstopper is one of those shows. But so rarely is a wlw relationship ever the main focus of the plot of a show. Tara and Darcy are not given a fraction of the screen time that Nick and Charlie get, and this maybe wouldn’t bother me so much if this wasn’t always the way it was. So many shows relegate wlw relationships to the sidelines and so many shows for queer people always center queer boys. Part of how I think I went so many years where I was confused by my identity is honestly because representation, especially for teenagers when I was in high school, sucked. When I was 16 I had never met a single queer girl. I knew lesbians and bi girls existed in the way that we know things like dinosaurs are real but they seemed so far removed from my day to day reality there was no way I could figure out if that was me. The only media I was aware of and the only real life representation I saw was queer men. In some ways this is why I think I also went through a period of time where I was questioning my gender. My problem though was never actually my gender. I just had internalized the idea that I was seeing all around me, which was that “being queer was a male thing to be.” Boys liked girls but they also sometimes liked boys. But as a girl I didn’t know how a girl liking girls looked. It wasn’t really until I started actively searching for any and all media I could as I got older that I started to really see that yes, I was queer, and a wlw relationship was something I really wanted. I feel like I could have come to this conclusion though much sooner if there had been more age-appropriate shows and books readily available and promoted though for girls. I didn’t really understand my sexuality until I was an adult because I had to turn to movies for adults to see what I wanted to see. I love movies like Blue is the Warmest Color and Carol and movies like them, but I wouldn’t say those films were really made with teens in mind or that both are entirely appropriate even for a very young teen to be watching. Blue is the Warmest color is a pretty sexual film, and that’s fine, but it would have been nice to have something so innocent as Heartstopper available. All this to say, I really am happy we’re making strides in terms of making queer media for young people, but I don’t want to see young queer girls get left behind.

[femmingway-blog]

“I Know You” : On visibility and support for LGBTQIA+ youth and children

Today I want to discuss welcoming spaces, supporting LGBTQIA+ children, and the importance of queer visibility.

My partner and I recently had the pleasure of being invited to speak at two churches in the small village in which I grew up. Long Reach United Church, and its sister congregation Westfield United Church, form part of the Two Rivers Pastoral Charge. They invited us to speak as part of their efforts in becoming an “Affirming with a capital A ministry” (as the minister put it when speaking to us about the invitation). As part of the Affirming Ministry application process, they have accepted the challenge to bring in people from various backgrounds and walks of life to discuss what it feels like to not always belong, and ways that they have felt welcome and belonging, so that the congregation may learn to do it more adeptly.

[Image description: A wooden table outside the Sanctuary of Long Reach United Church. On the table is a cream coloured cloth with floral embroidery in earth tones, a vase, guest book, pamphlets, and in the foreground of the photo is a sheet of cream paper with the words “Entering Guilt-Free Zone” in large, bold capital letters.] This was not only an incredibly admirable and humbling goal to consider, but we could not possibly have felt more welcomed, loved, and appreciated while we were there. The focus of our particular talk was on welcoming transgender people, and I touched on the subject matter of LGBTQIA+ children, particularly trans children.  It occurred to me as we spoke that I have a lot to say about finding ways to make sure that young queer people have something positive to look up to or envision for the future.  I think it is so important that no matter what, whenever we are discussing issues to do with LGBTQIA+ people, that we be aware that children hear these conversations happening. While children may not currently have the necessary vocabulary, understanding, and self-knowledge it takes to actually put a label to their identities or experiences, LGBTQIA+ adults will remember and look back on the times they were allowed to feel joyful and safe in their ways of expressing attraction and gender identity, rather than ashamed or abnormal.  Children may not have the language to identify the problem, but they do still know when something doesn’t feel quite right about themselves - and that feeling is a direct result of a world that has been built without them in mind.

These experiences will shape the ways they engage with those identities later in life, and how safe they will be able to feel in any given situation. In a world that is still so full of hostile stances on queer and trans people, it is difficult to feel secure in trusting that silence could mean quiet support; when one is accustomed to being excluded, they will rarely make the assumption that they are invited in.

In terms of consequences for a lack of support and visibility for queer and trans youth: according to the TransPulse research project done in Ontario , strong family and parental support can account for a 93% reduction in suicide attempts for a trans youth, who are already at an astronomically high risk for attempting suicide:

Consideration of suicide was common [among youth participants], and was reported by 35% of youth whose parents were strongly supportive and 60% of those whose parents were not strongly supportive. Particularly alarming is that among this latter 60%, nearly all (57%) had actually attempted suicide in the past year. In contrast, only 4% of those with strongly supportive parents attempted suicide. While 4% is still far too high, the impact of strong parental support can be clearly seen in the 93% reduction in reported suicide attempts for youth who indicated their parents were strongly supportive of their gender identity and expression. 

These numbers show that having a supportive family has an unfathomably deep connection to a desire to continue living for young children facing a scary and unfamiliar existence. They can be compared to the general national average, which shows that over the course of a lifetime, 14.7% of Canadians think about ending their own lives, and 3.5% ever make an attempt. 

Something that I mentioned to the Churches’ minister when we spoke to her last week about what to focus on in our talk was the issue of how to address someone who expresses the somewhat common the fear that their child may become gay or trans themselves. I believe that it is important to have honest discussions with people who express this kind of worry, to help them to identify where it may be coming from, and to question its foundations. We must also question any assumptions we hold that this kind of fear is founded in something inherently negative, unsupportive, or harmful, or that it something impossible to change. We must consider whether, for example, it founded on the fear of a hostile world’s effects on a child who grows up to adopt a non cis-heteronormative identity, or if it is a fear that is based in stereotypes and assumptions about what kind of person holds those kinds of identities. It is not enough to answer that question, because that doesn’t help anyone cope with or confront their fear; after naming it, we must consider what can be done to alleviate it. In the examples above, if it is the former, we have a responsibility to make the world safer for the child in question; if it is the latter, we have a responsibility to learn to engage with people as individuals, rather than walking embodiments of something we dislike or with which we are unfamiliar.

Support can come in the form of having conversations, and discussing the basic fact that other kinds of people, other kinds of families, other ways of seeing the world, all exist and can all simultaneously be genuine, beautiful, and worthwhile. When I considered what it meant to me to be given the chance to speak to a group of people about our perspective and experiences, I was struck by the idea that there have more likely than not been times when a young child listening to me - or a friend of mine, or another out and outspoken member of the community - has learned something more about themselves, or has potentially been given, for the first time, an opportunity to see a possible future as a queer person that isn’t frightening or lonely. Consider the way trans people  are represented on tv and in the news. As well as bisexual people, and queer people of all kinds. The choices available through the mainstream media are: extremely unstable, tragically lonely, dead, and/or a criminal of some sort. Choose at least one. And it’s usually dead. This ties into some work that my partner did a while back for a queer literary magazine called Vitality - the premise of the magazine was to publish creative content (stories, art, poetry) by and/or about queer people, and the only other criteria was that it had to be happy or positive - no sad endings, no deaths of one partner leaving the other completely alone, no “overcoming harassment” narratives, and no focus on deviance or criminality. The magazine eventually shut down, unfortunately, for lack of funding.

Consider our cultural narratives about LGBTQIA+ people, often the first exposure young LGBTQIA+ children have to a world where these kinds of people exist. Often, they are demonizing, and even when trying to supportive, they often rely on a form of tragedy porn that necessitates the death and sacrifice of a noble queer character who may serve as an example to us of the importance of acceptance. While it may be humbling and inspirational for onlookers, what we teach our children is that queer people can expect to grow up to be freaks or to be dead. We need to expect better for them.

This idea also ties into a number from a musical that is very close to my heart. Based on the illustrated strip-comic-style memoir of prolific lesbian cartoonist Allison Bechdel of the same name, Fun Home the musical is the story of a young girl growing into a woman who is forced to confront the very real effects of queer invisibility in our families and communities.  Alison Bechdel is also known for her famous comic strip Dykes to Watch out For and as the creator of the now-familiar “Bechdel Test” used to gauge a given film’s portrayal of women.

Bechdel’s memoir in Fun Home focuses on the reality she knew as a young girl growing up in Pennsylvania, never really feeling that she fit with the role that she was told to strive for - one of femininity, softness, attraction to men, and a desire to fit in. The book spends a good deal of time focusing on her feelings of confusion and alienation with the ideas that she was taught to value, when she felt that the things she liked were perfectly legitimate as well, especially when she saw young boys being encouraged to do the very things she was barred from. When Bechdel finally came out to her parents after going away to university, she was immediately confronted with the revelation that her father was also gay, and had been secretly (and clumsily) concealing his affairs with men (and sometimes young boys) from his family and peers for decades. Not only was this a complete surprise to Alison, but she was thrown into further chaos and confusion when her father took his own life only a few months later, before ever having the chance to truly speak to her about their unique yet similar experiences of living as an LGBTQIA+ person living in a world that denies their very existence.

The musical contains a scene between Allison at 43 and her younger self at age 7 or 8, which I consider to be one of the more powerful and moving vignettes I have ever seen. This scene stuck with me for a good deal of time after first seeing it, and comes to mind for me often. I had to do a good deal of unpacking in order to process the emotions it brought up to me, and I would like to share it. Here is a video copy of the scene being performed at the Tony awards in 2015.

This scene in particular is made up of so many subtle and important details, not the least of which is the strong sense of recognition and joy expressed by Young Al when she sees an adult exhibit a way of existing she hadn’t even known was viable until that moment. This scene is so important to me personally because it perfectly embodies the ideas behind why queer people know that visibility is important. We all know at this point that Allison does not know she is gay yet - she will not know this about herself for more than a decade to come. But she knows that there is something about her that she isn’t able to name, but with which she is familiar enough to recognize when she does see it in another person.

[Image description: two panels from the Fun Home book. The first panel shows a large, butch woman with short curly hair, a plaid button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and tucked into jeans with a belt and a large ring of keys hanging from the belt. She is speaking with a server at a cafe who takes her order with tired, uninterested eyes. The woman stands with her back straight and her hands on her hips. In the background of the first panel, Young Al can be seen in a booth, looking right at the woman with her hands between her knees and a fixed, interested expression. She has a bob that goes to her chin, held out of her face with a barette. She wears a striped long-sleeved cotton shirt and blue jeans. Across from Al, her father looks back over his shoulders at the woman as well. The caption at the top of the panel reads: “I didn’t know there were women who wore men’s clothes and had men’s haircuts.” at the bottom of the panel, the caption reads: “But like a traveler in a foreign country who runs into someone from home -- someone they’ve never spoken to, but know by sight -- i recognized her with a surge of joy.” In the second panel, young Al and her father are facing each other in profile. they are sitting in the booth of the cafe but are shown from the neck up (Young Al) and shoulders up (her father). The Caption at the top reads “Dad recognized her too.” and there is a speech bubble in which her father says “Is THAT what you want to look like?” in a strong suggestion that she should not, in fact, want to look like that. ] Not only is this a charming demonstration of the intangible internal struggle that comes with having experiences that aren’t reflected in the stories and examples given to us in narratives our society tends to produce, but it is also one of a very few LGBT coming-of-age narratives that are not heavily reliant on sex and sexuality. In fact, it is the only one I can personally remember encountering that is not. This small scene, meant to represent just a few seconds’ worth of real time, is able to express a very intangible concept about identity, representation, and innate self-knowledge combined with a profound sense of alienation, all the while not relying on the imagery or act of sex - or even romantic attraction - just because the subject of the story is gay.

Ring of Keys is an excellent reminder to us that children pay attention to the world of adults; they do not live in a world that is separate from our own, nor are they sheltered from the values and prejudices we hold as adults. I think Young Al is an excellent reminder to all of us that we don’t need to have the “right” vocabulary, or any of the answers, in order to make children feel safe and values regardless of how they like to dress or what excites and pleases them. Making an effort to acknowledge and celebrate difference, including exposing children to different ways of being an adult, different ways of shaping a loving family, and different ways of structuring one’s life, can do and incredible amount of good to that child’s own self-esteem. At the end of the day, kids may not know exactly who they will grow up to be, but if they know that the possibilities are only limited by their creativity, and if they know that their families and communities will celebrate them as long as they keep a caring heart and are honest to themselves, they will inevitably be more equipped to handle the world they will travel through.

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[Image Description: The sanctuary at Long Reach United Church. The pews are a warm golden brown colour and sunlight streams through tall windows to the far right. The Church is empty and service has not yet started.]

On Sunday March 26th, a young child walked to the front of Westfield United Church’s sanctuary and helped an adult light a white pillar candle brightly banded by the seven colours of the rainbow. The first point of order in the church bulletin was to acknowledge that the church stands on unceded Wabanaki territory, and the microphone system and electronic display of readings and song selections demonstrated an active effort to include people with disabilities or impairments. From the moment we walked in the door, we were warmly welcomed with smiles, handshakes, and hugs from strangers and family friends alike. We heard from many adults who expressed a desire to find ways to show LGBTQIA+ people that they are welcomed and loved in their community. They spoke of wishing to find ways to show that support, to make it real and tangible to those who otherwise may not even be fully open about their identities.  The longer we spent there the clearer it became that this was an example that, while communities may not have as much access to information and resources they can clearly understand about LGBTQIA+ people, the first and most important step is seeking it out in the first place.