Representation Matters: Why kids need LGBT characters
When I was growing up, I didn’t realise it was possible to be bisexual.
This post will be about how a novel introduced me to the idea that I am bisexual, and why I believe LGBT representation in media for teenagers (and possibly even younger) is important.
I can remember having “crushes” on boys from quite an early age. Certainly by the time I was 10 or 11, crushes were a common topic of conversation with my friends, and everyone knew I “liked” a boy in my class. It was normal, and even expected, that every child in the class “liked” someone of the opposite sex.
“Gay” was used by my classmates as an insult. I’d never met an openly gay person (to my knowledge), and LGBT people were just sort of hypothetical to me. I had no particular feelings towards them at all; they simply weren’t part of my world. I never could have imagined I was actually part of this community!
There were signs, which I entirely missed/denied. When I was twelve, I borrowed a Destiny’s Child CD from my friend purely for the photo of the band on the inside. I just couldn’t stop looking at Beyoncé. I was obsessed.
“I like that picture, they have really cool jewelery on,” my friend said, and I clutched this excuse like a life ring. I must just be interested in the jewelery! I didn’t know how else to explain my obsession. It didn’t even occur to me until years later that I had a crush on Beyoncé.
I started attending an all-girls high school when I was 13, and I quickly noticed a girl who was a couple of years ahead of me. She was one of those confident, bouncy, loud drama types. We never once spoke, but I admired her from afar. I had no idea why. I reasoned to myself that it must be hero worship – I just admired her confidence, as I was quiet, shy and introverted, and uncomfortable in my own skin. I probably just wanted to be like her – right?
On the bus on the way home from school, I’d look out for this girl from the window, hoping to get a glimpse of her. If I did spot her, I’d quickly shrink back from the window so she wouldn’t see me staring at her. I didn’t know why I was staring, but I was very aware that I didn’t want to be caught. It felt shameful, and I was so confused.
When I started my second year at that school, at 14, there was a new girl in my class. I thought she was beautiful. She was effortlessly cool, creative and individual, and everything I would love to be. Again, I found myself drawn to her. And again, I told myself it was just hero worship. I couldn't be a lesbian - what about those crushes on boys? I was deeply in denial. That is, until I found a life-changing book in a secondhand bookshop: Good Girls Don’t by an Irish writer named Claire Hennessy.
Good Girls Don’t is about Emily, a 17-year-old bisexual girl trying to navigate her love life and grow into herself. I was immediately hooked in by Emily’s voice. She was a revelation to me. She spoke of staring at her friend Abi, who she had kissed once and had unrequited feelings for, and feeling a little creepy for looking at her. She worried her friends thought she was “corrupting” Abi by kissing her. She wished that her classmates would just get over the kiss - “my love life is not that exciting or unusual”. That line affected me so much, I still have it memorised.
What an amazing new thought: being drawn to girls, staring or wanting to kiss them – that could be normal! It didn’t have to make me weird or unusual! Some people could just be this way. Some people could like both. So many things about myself started to make sense.
I gave the book to my new classmate (by this point, one of my best friends) and insisted she read it. Long story short, the book allowed me to start a conversation with her about liking girls, and we ended up in a “relationship”. We were only 14, but I felt like it was love. It may only have lasted 4 months, and I did temporarily lose all my friends over it, and have my entire school turn against me and treat me like a disgusting leper...but I don’t regret it. I am a stronger person with a better understanding of myself because of that period of my life, and Good Girls Don’t was fundamental in me figuring it out.
If I ever have children, I’d love them to be aware of the LGBT community from the word go. I’d love for them to find it completely normal that some boys like other boys, and some girls like other girls, and some people like both, and so on. I want that to all be so accepted that they don’t even think of it as “a thing”. It should just be the way it is, like how all kids were just assumed to have opposite-sex crushes at school. Totally normal. No big deal.
One way this can happen is through representation of LGBT people in children’s/teenage shows and books. I kind of wish I could write fiction so I could be part of this myself. I’d love to give my kids books that portray being gay or bi as the “not that exciting or unusual” life that it really is. Maybe my kids will hit puberty and realise they’re interested in the same sex, and not be as confused and scared and sometimes ashamed as I was. Or maybe they’ll be able to support a friend, or just refuse to spread nasty gossip about an LGBT classmate.
I want them to have a proper understanding of this community; I don’t want LGBT people to be hypothetical, in that “nothing to do with me” way of my childhood. That’s why an openly gay Disney character (as was recently announced) or a bisexual book protagonist are important. It matters. It’s all about normalising something that can be misconstrued as abnormal. And I’m hopeful that we’re getting there. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited for our future.
(Images from Wikipedia and Goodreads)
Thank you for reading! I'm sure I'll write more LGBT-themed posts at some point, so maybe you'll come across those too :)
Oh yes, that would be awesome! Oh and i don't know if you already saw this, but i showcased your post in the new edition of the LGBT Magazine on Steemit, maybe you are interested to read it! I hope everything i wrote about your post is okay :)
I hadn't realised, thank you! That's so nice :) It's great that you're making some noise for LGBT people on steemit, I didn't notice in the beginning but we don't seem very well represented here. There's definitely room for a bigger community. Keep up the good work!
Thank you so much maracuja! Yes, there is not much lgbt related stuff, but i try to change that with this account! There is almost a community for everything here on Steemit, so why no lgbt community? :D We just need to make it more present i think. So again- thank you for your post!
Goodness- it sounds like we shared pretty much the same teen-hood- apart from the key book and breakthrough early relationship! I'm very lucky that I come from a very open and accepting family, and yet even they tried to 'normalise' my behaviour as 'hero-worship' of other girls. I knew that it wasn't that, but didn't really realise that I was bisexual- and that this was an option (!)- until I went to uni and met people from outside of the tiny farming district I was from.
I completely agree that there is huge importance importance in the representation and normalisation of the LGBT community within the media - including books, films and whatever else is available is key to reaching young people (and not so young who still don't know!)
Thank you for sharing such an important post. E x
Thank you so much for this comment! I'm delighted that this post made it to somebody who really gets it. It's so interesting to hear from someone with such a similar experience, and I'm glad you were able to figure it all out in the end. Here's hoping that in the future it'll only get easier for other kids to understand themselves too!
I hope so too - especially for those who live in very small, rural or closed communities. There is so little input from outside that it can be so tough for them to explore themselves, not feel the need to try to conform- not to feel "other". Thanks again for putting such an important post out there. E x
I do think that people are moving towards it. Growing up my school would have been the same as yours. Being gay was always a slur and nobody even really knew the depth behind it. In the past 5 years I have seen a huge swing in public thinking.
From my parents generation where is was actually illegal to be engage in a homosexual act up until 1993, we were then actually the first country in the world to vote in legal same sex marriage in 2015. Now that is a huge swing in a short time. While there are obviously still people who are biased and hold different views, i like to think that it is a sign of more openness in the country.
Since July 2015, transgender people in Ireland can self-declare their gender for the purpose of updating passports, driving licences, obtaining new birth certificates, and getting married.
Hopefully there will come a time when it is not even talked about any more as kids will understand these relationships in the same way as we looked at our parents marriages and didn't need to think about it, they just were what they were.
It's crazy to me that I'm the same age as homosexuality being legal here in Ireland. The 2015 referendum was amazing though. I'm originally from England and not an Irish citizen, so I had no vote. It was hard to sit back and trust in people and hope the outcome would be positive. My cynical thinking at the time was "It's a lovely idea but it just won't work in Ireland", and I've never been happier to be proven wrong!
As for your last comment, that's my hope exactly. With how quickly things are progressing, I do have faith that we'll get there.
The whole thing kind of took on a life of its own. It really was amazing to be in the middle of it and hear how people felt. I've had plenty of lgtb friends over the years and the whole concept had never really occurred to me or bothered me before this. I hadn't even though of it as an issue. But when the campaign caught momentum and people told their stories it put a realness to the whole thing....
There were so many people whom it did effect and when people realised how they felt it swung the whole thing around and became very one sided. Even the older generation who we though would put up huge opposition due to there religious upbringing realized that there were no good reasons to oppose it. Legalising it would not harm anybody and just allow people in love to make it an official marriage. For me watching thousands of irish fly home from all over the world was what made it.
No matter where in the world you are, you know that the irish will always look after their own and this was the greatest example of it that I have seen.
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Oh yes @maracuja, this sounds quite a bit like what I went through. I dearly wish everybody have learned in school before ... that I am"normal" ....
This would have made our live so much easier.
I am so sad I experienced in Germany, that it is even worse today, than it was years ago. Many friends from our LGBT community moved out of the country and so did I and my husband. I hope so much, that there will a time in the future, a time in that we all have no longer to fear for so many things that can happen to us.... .... ... I think it is still a long way to go ...
xx
I'm so sorry that you had to leave Germany because of this, and I'm glad that you've been able to make a life elsewhere where you feel safe. I lived in Germany for just over a year and loved it, I had no idea the German LGBT community was struggling. I hope things will improve there soon.
Germany changed a lot within the last year. I remember the time when I felt free in Berlin. Those days are long gone unfortunately. The metropolitan areas are so different today. So glad you had a good time!
come here! Vancouver is welcoming for LGBT community and everyone is super tolerant here.
I would love to visit Canada. Maybe some day! Ireland still has a way to go when it comes to embracing the community here.
Nice read. I leave an upvote for this article thumbsup
Thank you very much.
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Hi maracuja,
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Thank you! This subject means a lot to me so I really appreciate it being given a wider audience. <3