It’s very hard sometimes b/c I’ve spent an huge amount of my life fighting for LGBTQ rights — probably more than any other single political issue — so I have very very very very strong opinions about these things. Morally. Pragmatically. Personally. Politically.

And now I love in San Francisco where everyone is queer.

Obviously I mean that as a euphemism & joke. But it’s not *not* true. And it’s also not *not* why I moved here!

But it puts me at odds with queer activists sometimes in very very painful ways.

I’ve been beaten up and bloodied (literally) for my activism. I have nearly died for it.

And yet, here, we have so so so so many folx who have been young and proud and queer and just living life the way I want every human to live it the whole time.

Does that mean I get to talk down to them?! Of course not.

But it’s just a lifelong experience disconnect.

I used to go around talking to GSA high school groups in Carolina as a sort of motivational speaker.

(I was a founding member of the first GSA in my 5-state area)

And I adored doing this (which is probs why I got invited back constantly)

Because it never stopped being powerful to me what these kids were going through. The bad, but also especially the good.

Because, even in Carolina, the diff between 2002 & 2012 was rocks thrown at heads

It was a life and death change in less than one generation.

Not that being an LGBTQ+ teen in Carolina in 2012 was easy. Or is easy now.

But also being a teen sucks! And it was semi on that same “it sux” spectrum now, rather than “I will be literally murdered for this” spectrum

I loved talking to them. I loved talking about my story. I loved talking about the court cases to establish that GSA I was involved in.

And I really really really loved how fundamentally my stories rang as weird to them

Now I’m in SF where almost all my friends are queer & amazing, & these stories are even weirder (to them). MUCH weirder.

My current partner was a radical queer activist teen who grew up in this same queer neighborhood I live in (b/c no surprising fact there ).

But somehow, even though she & I spent our teen years caring about the same things + fighting the same fights, we have almost nothing in common in those ways.

She has the lived experience of never being especially ostracized ever.

& I have the lived experience of near death.

So we talk past each other on all of it.

This has been my TED talk I guess

I’m really glad that LGBT activism is not notable anymore. I hope it never is again.

I’m happy my cohort is small & love living somewhere it’s extra small. But still.

My typos in the first couple tweets are deeply unfortunate. I care about this tweet thread topic on a profound level and boy does it not look like that from the typos.

Oh, and I want to say per my tweet before last, that LGBTQ+ activism@is still desperately necessary. And it’s also@still obviously life or death for the young folx in our country (although, differently) & still more literally and daily life or death in most of the world.

And if we talk about even just one thing on #NationalComingOutDay it should that “coming out” in most of the world right now is still a literal fucking death sentence.

And I apologize about how much and how@many privileged and also super duper white ways this tweet thread of mine was exclusively about the extremely limited experiences of (mostly) rich and (mostly) white and (almost entirely) western LGBTQ folx in the last 15 years.

I was being deeply introspective but not even remotely empathetic.

My point was a somewhat optimistic one about how fast things can change. Let us all pray and more importantly WORK WORK WORK to make those fast and good changes come true for most of the LGBTQ folx on earth.

Ugh. Sp@many typos.

^
Like that. That wasn’t planned but it is emblematic of what happens when you type very fast and w/ powerful emotions & slam the send button.

There are like ten “@“s in this thread that should have been some other character (mostly spaces)