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Into The Outside

Building a Contemporary Queer Youth Archive in Brighton & Hove

Acceptance

  • “Consider why you feel the way you feel”

  • “I talk to my mum a bit. My family I think are aware, but we don’t really talk about it much”

  • “I started out thinking I was cis and straight, like most people”

  • “I expect it to be respected the same as anyone else’s gender identity, no more, no less”

  • “Sex ed. is just straight and for us that’s living hell”

  • “Everyone questioning an identity or an orientation wants to find out more”

  • “I love the fact that they’re building in new LGBTQ+ness into the media, as we know it”

  • “Politicians are there to represent us. We need to be political about our rights so that they get it”

  • “I have a lot of LGBTQ+ friends. A lot of them identify as many different things”

  • “The LGBTQ+ community is vibrant within my college, but is being drowned out when it comes to identity”

  • “There are genuine points when I decide ‘Let’s pop this skirt on and let’s see the world!’”

  • “My friends, luckily, are really accepting”

  • “There was a time where I wasn’t at all comfortable with this and I was very sort of isolated”

  • “I’m still actually quite new, to be completely honest, it hasn’t been long”

  • “We are only beginning to reach a period in culture where representatives of the kind of broader definitions of LGBTQ+ culture are being able to speak for themselves in the media”

  • “It’s hard, but generally person-to-person I’m accepted”

  • “It’s nice to feel a part of something”

  • “You can still hear people say fag and stuff. You still hear that”

  • “I’ve always kind of dressed like a tomboy since I was a kid. I hated girly things, but I’ve never really thought much of it”

  • “In the future it will become a lot easier to be yourself”

  • “It’s like a remembrance day. You remember a war because something bad happened. It’s the same for Pride. So many bad things have happened in history to gay people”

  • “If they know about it when they’re young, they won’t be horrible to people who are queer”

  • “Don’t worry if you don’t know, it might take you a while. It has taken me three years”

  • “We don’t have equality yet and that’s really shocking”

  • “I have never seen so many openly gay people. Never”

  • “I’ve had quite a lot of hate. My grandma is really religious and she made me have an exorcism”

  • “Certainly, in the last few decades, we’ve made great strides towards LGBTQ+ equality”

  • “At the end of the day, all we can really do is accept each other”

  • “I think in this age and generation, nobody should be afraid to do anything”

  • “My sister’s girlfriend, her mother didn’t approve of it really and spent a long time trying to make sure she didn’t feel comfortable”

  • “So me and my mum came out to each other!”

  • “I went to quite a religious school where it wasn’t really acceptable to talk about being gay”

  • “I feel happy with how I identify. I’ve got a lot of choice. That’s quite nice”

  • “I remember the one time I actually said to a group of people that I was straight and it was when I was really uncertain”

  • “I’d almost been out a year and so I wanted to feel like I was really part of the community and fully comfortable with my identity”

  • “It shows we’re a part of society. Everyone feels like they can express themselves in their own way. They don’t have to hide away”

  • “I took a long time to figure out exactly what my gender was and I’d been questioning it for a very long time”

  • “You could scream anything from the top of your lungs about your sexuality, or acceptance and everyone would probably just yell ‘Cool!’ back”

  • “I’ve always questioned my gender and I’m still not really sure”

  • “I talk to most of my friends. Quite a lot of them are queer, so it’s fine. Then the ones that aren’t, I try and talk to them and they ignore me”

  • “I enjoy being open and feeling like part of the community”

  • “It should be a Pride Day, Day of Pride, everywhere has it on the same day.”

  • “My dad’s side of the family is actually Muslim and I haven’t come out to them”

  • “I think we need to have, globally, acceptance of everyone and unknown identities, unknown genders”

  • “My friends are completely accepting”

  • “One thing I’ve noticed I start doing now is when I meet someone new, I don’t just ask their name, I ask their pronouns as well”

  • “This is just part of who I am and I should accept that. Everybody else should accept that and if they can’t, then that’s their problem”

  • “If everyone was just accepting, that’d be cool wouldn’t it?”

  • “I haven’t worked it out. How do you come out to your mum?”

© 2021 Into the Outside *