Gay and bisexual stories
“What Was It Like? Stories by LGBTQ Elders” is a new program by I’m From Driftwood, in partnership with Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, and SAGE, the country’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBTQ older adults. Learn more about the program here.
David R. Matteson’s 6 Video Stories and transcripts can be seen below.
1950: “That Was The First Time I’d Had Sex With Another Guy.”
When I was 12, which would have been about 1950, I made my trip to my grandparents’ farm. Each of my brothers and sisters had a chance – a period of a week or two or sometimes even three – on the farm.
One summer, they asked me when I was about 12, if I wanted to appear during deer hunting season because they knew one of the hunters that stayed in this – their home had get a tourist home – one of the hunters had a son about my age named Carl. So I would stare forward to meeting Carl.
We slept out on a sun porch and two cots that – and that was far away from the bedrooms, where Grandpa and Grandma and Aunt Lu slept.
Carl was a very handsome, juvenile guy and more traditionally masculine than I. And we were sleeping right next to each other and we
AVERT - AVERTing HIV and AIDS
Fatih
'Can a Turk be a gay? 'That's a question asking to the public in my country.That's a question about me. Because I'm a Turk and I'm a gay.
I grasp that I was lgbtq+ since I was born. It was only a part of me, hiding and a silent part.
When I was in Qur'an Course in a mosque everyone says: 'Homosexual demons are invading the world.This is the doomsday!'
And so I hate homosexuality.It was all a demon in your soul and must be punished at once.Everyday I went the mosque and prayed God to get a normal and rescue myself from this devil.
What happened then? I continue living with the devil.I can only fail to remember the devil when I was reading a manual. So I become a wormbook. But the books doesn't only help me to forget the devil. It also expands my vision. My perspective to the life. I look homosexuality exists before I was born. It really shocked me(Guess how we not acknowledged are). It's just always hiding in a place of our lives.I wanna show people this,the truth.They of course don't wanna understand me. When I say I was a gay to my parents, I was immediately send a psychologist to become a normal.
| Olivia
Demographics
First Name: Katie
Age: 21
Gender/Pronouns: Nonbinary (she/her or they/them)
Sexuality: Bisexual
Region/Area: moved around often
Race/Ethnicity: White, Greek
Story
I realized I was part of the community when I was about 14 but really knew when I was 15. I then met my first girlfriend and was happy exploring but was not ready to come out to family yet. I came out to my sister sometime while I was 15. A few months later my dad start out I was virtual dating a girl (first gf) who I had around as my friend for months by then because we had a mutual iCloud and he started reading my texts. He confronted me and said gf one evening and threatened to call the police on her as she was 18 and I was 16 and he claimed we had sex (I lived in NY and 17 is the age of consent). My gf left the house, I ran outside, and my dad proceeded to chase me around the house at bedtime. He sat down with me the same darkness and said that he understood I was born this way and I couldn’t change and asked if I was queer or how I identified. I memory blocked a lot from that darkness but I think he took my computer cell etc all forms of communication because I recall sneaking onto the family com
Coming Out: 5 Women On The First Time They Admitted They Were Same-sex attracted Or Bisexual
'Coming out' - a.k.a. publicly revealing your sexual orientation and/or gender identity as a lesbian, gay, bi or trans individual - can be an extremely daunting prospect.
For some, there's a apprehend of how people - especially friends and family - will respond; 'Will they support me? Will they be disappointed?'
It's super scary, because the planet is still sadly, but decidedly, a heteronormative place. Bathroom genders are still binary, gay marriage is still up for debate (ahem, we're looking at you Australia) and Trump's trying to get transgender soldiers banned from the military in the USA.
The Office for National Statistics in 2013 found that 93.5 per cent of people detect as 'heterosexual' or 'straight,' meaning that a mere rare years ago, 'coming out' was still extremely rare and extremely brave.
To produce matters worse, Stonewall has recently create that abuse against LGBT people has risen by 78 per cent in just four years in the UK.
Clearly, we still have a prolonged way to travel in building a society with respect, tolerance and adoration at its core.
The 'coming out' exposure is unique to everyone
Realising I was bisexual: Pippa’s story
So, I’m Pippa, and I’m bisexual. Hi!
I didn’t realise I was bisexual for a long time. I’d always been friends with girls, but as a kid I never mind about girls in a romantic way… whereas I had ‘crushes’ on boys, who I obsessed over, and who I wanted to kiss and grasp hands with and be with foreeeever. But the first time I watched a film or tv show and felt sexually attracted to the person on the screen, it was a woman – a scene in American Pie, I think! I assumed the feelings were because I wanted to “be” as attractive and sexy as the woman on screen, so I didn’t think too much about it!
It wasn’t until I was 18 that I properly started having sexual fantasies and desires, and more than half of them were about women. I was freaked out, but I was in denial and firmly convinced myself that the thoughts about women were just a phase, or just something I set up sexually exciting because it’s a bit ‘different’.
But by the time I was 21 I realised I was unhappy, that organism in denial about my sexuality was affecting my relationships and that I couldn’t ignore it or make it go away.
I realised that, opposite to what I’d thought all