I still have trouble accepting that I'm a queer elder. I'm 43 now. I am well past the delineation line drawn at 25. I remember things. I remember being a young queer. Figuring things out slowly in the last years of the 1990's and then in college in the early 2000's. I was the secretary of the campus LBGTA for a while. Helping folks who came to our group. Giving that gentle guidance on how it's okay to question, to try and figure yourself out. Whether you're queer or not. It's a good thing to do.

Sitting in on a gender studies course on a whim because I was invited by other friends from the campus LBGTA was eye opening. I learned things I had never had words for before. Things that just didn't enter the consciousness because to be queer then, well, there were no elders. No one to teach us. They all had fucking died. Journeying to the Castro in San Francisco in 2000 with other kids from college was just- it was like going to some queer stronghold. There were rainbow flags hanging from light posts. There were /so many queer folk/. We were welcomed we were told we were valid.

I learned I was trans, or at the very least, had a nascent awakening. I'd wind up shoving myself back in the closet to try and get along in modern America. Getting shouted down, called a faggot, laughed at and beaten up. It weighed really heavily you know.

I'm late Gen X, right on that cusp of things getting handed off to the Millennials. All that music, all that counter culture energy, it wasn't as prominent as TV or history makes it seem. The truth was being queer, being counter culture, Goth, Punk- we were rare strange wild flowers that didn't fit in with the rest of the Garden. We were outcasts. Despised. Fitting in only in rarified strange niche's ignored by the mainstream. Theater, Computer Science, Art- the places where the odd could go and not be judged for being /odd/.

A queer elder, me... fuck. That's still heavy to think about.

We were hated still, in the late 90's and early two thousands. I held the AIDS Quilt. I lost people I knew to AIDS. The queer elders I probably could have turned too. I helped hang the section of the quilt on the wall of the student union when it visited our campus. It was such a heavy thing, so tragic that I couldn't help myself but cry as I handled it. Each swatch was a /life/ that was gone, and there were so many swatches.

I thought about all the times I was beaten up. All the times I /didn't/ die. I thought about Matthew Shepard. I thought about my first kiss with a boy. I wasn't out of the closet as transgender yet. I guess the kiss would be straight now. Heh. Bizarre. Life is a strange thing. But- there is so much that goes into the milieu of being queer. So many stories so many of us could tell.

What wild times were those. The freedom of discovery.

Queer elders don't hate on you for being young. If there is any hate, any disdain. It comes from the queer youth who come into the spaces we were beaten and murdered for building, and shit on our culture, on our identities, ON WHO WE ARE, and instead of listening when we try to explain why things such as assimilation are dangerous, you scream slurs and obscenities in our faces.

A dash of humility and a willingness to understand where we come from, where we've been, and where we are travelling towards would truly go a long way.

Oh god you know what? Eff it I do wanna say something for Trans Day Of Visibility lol about lisening to trans elders and shifitng of identity.

One of many reasons why I'm greatful to be able to hear the experience of my trans elders, or even trans people my age that came out younger, because I've seen my feelings lately reflected in their experience.

I hear how they've been trans for so long it's become background noise, in a sense it's not the part of their identity that they still think about or is transforming. It's not that they don't feel solidarity or kinship with their trans siblings, it's just... After over a decade for some of them, like they got other shit going on lol

I've had a weird imposter feeling lately in regards to my transness, like i'm moving away from it or something because of these very same feelings. I'm trans, but when I introduce myself as nonbinary? At this point I'm lying. Agender? Closer, but still no dice. I'm at the point where gender labels, while once they were liberating, but these days feel just as much of a mask and preformance as 'Man' does.

I'm not gonna get too into cos these deserve posts of thier own. But in terms of exploring? I'm only just begining to explore my plural identity again post-degree. On-top of jumping off Neurodiverse theory about what genuine idenetiy outside of Humanity (if we frame 'Humanity' itself as something trapped under the white eurocentric lense, never mind decades of text from Autistic about feeling like they're on the Wrong Planet) looks like.

So yyeeaaahhh lol even in just a few sentances, you can see why celebrating TDOV like "Yep it's me Seb, I am the big third gender" is somewhat disengenuine lol it's another mask for me now. And I feel better reading accounts from elder queers who feel a simmilar way. I think being Neuroqueer is always going to be the focal point of my indentity and it's what informs my transness. And visibility? I am clocked and opressed for being Autistic way before people consider I may also be trans lmao that's my life and that's okay, it's okay~

Still I am -visably- coming up on 2 years on HRT and I'm still adjusting to my new body and that's cool as hell.

I still have trouble accepting that I'm a queer elder. I'm 43 now. I am well past the delineation line drawn at 25. I remember things. I remember being a young queer. Figuring things out slowly in the last years of the 1990's and then in college in the early 2000's. I was the secretary of the campus LBGTA for a while. Helping folks who came to our group. Giving that gentle guidance on how it's okay to question, to try and figure yourself out. Whether you're queer or not. It's a good thing to do.

Sitting in on a gender studies course on a whim because I was invited by other friends from the campus LBGTA was eye opening. I learned things I had never had words for before. Things that just didn't enter the consciousness because to be queer then, well, there were no elders. No one to teach us. They all had fucking died. Journeying to the Castro in San Francisco in 2000 with other kids from college was just- it was like going to some queer stronghold. There were rainbow flags hanging from light posts. There were /so many queer folk/. We were welcomed we were told we were valid.

I learned I was trans, or at the very least, had a nascent awakening. I'd wind up shoving myself back in the closet to try and get along in modern America. Getting shouted down, called a faggot, laughed at and beaten up. It weighed really heavily you know.

I'm late Gen X, right on that cusp of things getting handed off to the Millennials. All that music, all that counter culture energy, it wasn't as prominent as TV or history makes it seem. The truth was being queer, being counter culture, Goth, Punk- we were rare strange wild flowers that didn't fit in with the rest of the Garden. We were outcasts. Despised. Fitting in only in rarified strange niche's ignored by the mainstream. Theater, Computer Science, Art- the places where the odd could go and not be judged for being /odd/.

A queer elder, me... fuck. That's still heavy to think about.

We were hated still, in the late 90's and early two thousands. I held the AIDS Quilt. I lost people I knew to AIDS. The queer elders I probably could have turned too. I helped hang the section of the quilt on the wall of the student union when it visited our campus. It was such a heavy thing, so tragic that I couldn't help myself but cry as I handled it. Each swatch was a /life/ that was gone, and there were so many swatches.

I thought about all the times I was beaten up. All the times I /didn't/ die. I thought about Matthew Shepard. I thought about my first kiss with a boy. I wasn't out of the closet as transgender yet. I guess the kiss would be straight now. Heh. Bizarre. Life is a strange thing. But- there is so much that goes into the milieu of being queer. So many stories so many of us could tell.

What wild times were those. The freedom of discovery.

Queer elders don't hate on you for being young. If there is any hate, any disdain. It comes from the queer youth who come into the spaces we were beaten and murdered for building, and shit on our culture, on our identities, ON WHO WE ARE, and instead of listening when we try to explain why things such as assimilation are dangerous, you scream slurs and obscenities in our faces.

A dash of humility and a willingness to understand where we come from, where we've been, and where we are travelling towards would truly go a long way.