I'm absolutely dying imagining the gingerbread people twerking or pole dancing or whatever they were doing

"The history of lesbian life is laced with this story of invisibility, always in tension with who is being forcibly hidden, who is hiding themselves and those unaware there might be another way to live." 🥺

"I was completely unaware of the existence of of anything even resembling a queer community where I lived. I knew no gay people growing up, saw hardly any in the books I read or the TV I watched. If there was, they were usually gay men, camp and effeminate and played for laughs. Certainly, no lesbians that I knew of. Growing up I had no idea I might be gay ... The evidence laid out in front of me of lesbians living their real everyday lives - all these stories of joy, heartbreak, pain and hope unknown to me until now. Who would have guessed that one day I'd happily count myself among them?"

I often wonder if I had more positive representation in my formative years, would that have allowed me to be true to myself earlier? Would it have saved a lot of pain? Would I have been more comfortable being myself in my teens and early twenties and formed healthier relationships? The only gay people I knew or knew of were my biology teacher and an ex-friend of my mum who had suddenly left his family. Both were gay, pretty camp men. I didn't really know of any lesbians, and anyone who was assumed to be one was talked about in a derogatory way. Later on, I realised a lot more friends and acquaintances were queer, but it wasn't really spoken about in an all girls Catholic school, in a city where even as recently as 3 or 4 years ago pride flags were burned down. I was really lucky to find some lesbians in their 50s - 70s who really guided me as I started to become more comfortable in myself in my mid twenties. This summer I bumped into my Biology teacher and his fiance while I was at my favourite queer bar with my girlfriend and my chosen queer family. It kind of felt like a full circle moment, where I could see how far little me had come. I know when I was in his class I had so much internalised homophobia. I'm so glad that kids he is teaching now have a little more representation on TV, in books, on social media, so that they can begin to love their real selves sooner.