Video: “It Needs to Get Better” at Notre Dame

While many videos have told young LGBT people
that it gets better, students and staff at the University of
Notre Dame say it still needs to get better at
their school.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Op-Ed: How Eddie Izzard Inspired One  Lesbian Author

Justine Sarceran explains why her transgender novel was inspired by her attraction to comedian Eddie Izzard.

Popularity: 1% [?]

From Hard Times

I’ve never I am gay ever since childhood. Whilst every other girl would play kiss chasey with the boys, I’d rather have sat under the tree with my head in a book, whilst hiding the fact I was sticking my tounge out in disgust at their actions. When I reached high school, I knew that I was going to be able to hide forever, because whilst my friends were off with their first boyfriends, I was keeping myself busy with activities such as glee and school debates. That was until I was 17 and raped by a boy from our rival school’s football team in an attack that left me hospitalised for two weeks.

Several more weeks passed without me returning to school, due to sickness and trauma. Before long, I was forced to face the fact I was pregnant. This made reporting the issue to the police so much more tramuatising because not only did I have to report the attack itself, but also the fact I was pregnant and convince them I hadn’t consented, as he was saying. It meant telling complete strangers I was gay, and it meant telling my parents their only child was gay.

A woman police officer took my statement. She was very polite, and when I told her that I didn’t consent because I knew I was gay, she didn’t question, she accepted. She then asked what my intentions were for my unborn child and I said that I hadn’t really had time to think about that because everything else was so overwhelming. She offered to call a counsellor for me and arrange for me to visit regularly, and she also called the local clinic. I attended my first appointment and came away sure of what I wanted to do. Six and a half months later I would give birth. At that time, I would give my child up for adoption.

The police officer stood by my during the lenghty court proceedings. She sat with me at my family home when I told my parents I was gay and was going to give my baby up for adoption. She even cried with me when he was charged with my rape and aggrevated assault and given a jail sentence. Tears of joy that he was taken away and that I was safe.

On February 18th, 2008, I gave birth to a chubby baby boy, 9lb. 8oz, and handed him over to his new family. In the months that followed, I became depressed and twice attempted to take my own life. The police officer stepped back into my life one cold, snowing night when I was found passed out at the park, having OD’ed on perscription drugs.

After that, she pretty much refused to leave my side because she was that worried about me. My parents didn’t approve, they wanted her to go back to her job and leave me to heal. What they didn’t understand was that she essentially became part of the healing process.

I fell deeply for her. It wasn’t until almost a year after I gave birth that she told me she was gay, too. That wasn’t big enough, though. She then told me she had a five year old daughter, the result of a rape. We began dating, casually at first, but before long I knew this was it!

Now, some eighteen months later, her daughter says she loves me and she likes that I make her mommy smile. They both came to my graduation. She came with me to visit my son with his new family. He looks so much like me it made me cry and I wanted to scream because I couldn’t believe that I’d given birth to this perfect thing but I couldn’t bare to look at him because of how he was conceived. She understood that and when I told her I wanted to talk to the counsellor about it, she came back with me and now I’m in a support group for the victims of rape.

Things are so much better than they were back then. I’m slowly, piece by piece, working things out, getting my life back together. She and I now live together, with my parent’s blessing. Yes, people frown because she’s nine years my senior. Yes, our relationship is frowned upon because the old town people think it’s wrong when I’m 19 and she’s 28. To them I say what should it matter? We’re so in love and without her, there is every chance my parents would have lost their only child, my son his biological mother, my girlfriend the only woman she’s truly loved. I’m so happy that from such hard times came something so much more amazing that I could have ever imagined I deserved.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Long Road to The Truth

Well as long as I can remember I have always said I am straight and refused to be anything else. However I always had this part of me that was attracted to girls and I knew it but I just continued ignoring it.

Don’t get me wrong I was raised by my Mum to think that being gay is just fine in fact a lot of my friends are gay and I have no problem with it I just never thought of myself as gay or bi.

A little over a month ago I think it was now I decided oh actually I am bi. Lately I have been leaning more towards being attracted to woman but am also still attracted to men.

When I told my Mum she was great about it but lately she has been really pushing me to be gay. This sounds strange I know but she is constantly asking me if I’m gay and won’t let it go. So for me I feel like she is telling me I can’t like both but the truth is I do.

For me its still a struggle to decide if I’m Bi or gay I’m not sure I am ready to decide just yet. I just hope that at some point my Mum will let me decide on my own and stop pushing me.

Popularity: 58% [?]

What you didn’t know

I was raised in a smalltown just outside of mainstream surburbia, and it had be just mum and I my entire life – my father apparantly left my mother the mere minute she give birth to me. My mum and I have always been close – one advantage of the fact my mother gave birth to me when she was all of 16. We could take about anything – even the topic of sex was a completely open book with her.

Well, that was until I turned 16 and become strangely curious about sex with women. I immediately freaked out -yes, I’d been taught that was perfectly natural (which I’ll always be so thankful for), but it suddenly occured to me that when these thoughts are your own, it doesn’t feel so natural. Part my panic was the fact I’d never even had an interest in boys – I’d seen my friends end up devastated countless times by boys who simply treated them as any less than humans, and assumed the whole male species was this way, as my father was the classic example of male scum.

Well, I became classically bookish – I buried my head in a fantasy world to escape reality, but that was without prevail.

A few months before turning 18, I graduated high school, at which point my mother agreed to me travelling to the big city (many hours away) with a few friends for a celebration vacation.

Well, the trip there was certainly interesting – my best friend asked me about my sexuality after taking note of my growing interest in ‘The L Word’ (something I had longed manage to cover up from my mum, as I was ashamed of watching it, forgetting the fact I was actually highly aroused by it). She caught on when she heard me discussing the storylines with an openly gay friend a few weeks earlier – hell, the words just fell from my lips. “Tia, I’m a lesbian”.

Crap, those cheers will ring in my ears till the day I die – turns out everyone damn well knew it, surprise, surprise!

When we arrived, a few of the girls were bold enough to suggest we spent our first night clubbing at a newly opened lesbian party spot – I was apprehensive but eventually gave in more for curiousity and the need to meet someone who was “just like me!”. It was a roaring success – met my girlfriend there… yes, Lana and I are still together, 3 years down the track.

Cut a long story short, when I arrive home, Lana and I kept contact via telephone and email – I told mum she was a fellow school graduate and we were interested in pursuing similiar things at uni., and hell, she believed me.

So, months passed and Lana and I met up again at uni. – I moved into the city for my first session to see if I could cope with that lifestyle, and work from there was the concept. Things got heated between Lana and I – I was racked with guilt after the first time we slept together cos I was so in love with her and yet I couldn’t tell my mum – the woman I told everything.

I came home at the end of session and bought Lana with me – it was crunch time. I sat down with mum and Lana one night and bit the bullet, although I felt like I wanted to spew the whole time.

“Mum, I’m a lesbian, and Lana and I are seeing each other. I love her and there’s nothing you can do about it”.

Well, I hadn’t expected mum to hit the roof or anything – as I said, she taught me about homosexuality in the first place. But I hadn’t expected her to ask Lana to leave the room because:

“Georgia and I need to talk”.

And then it all came out (pardon the pun):

My mum is a lesbian, too, which is way she and my father were no longer together. Her parents are fundamentalist Christians, devout in every way. She started dated my date only to keep them satisfied, and the fact she had sex with him was apparantly rebellion. She got kicked out of home, of course, but hey, she said “It meant I could finally tell everyone I’m gay without fear of growing apart from mum and dad”. Twisted logic, but she figured her parents already hated her, and couldn’t hate her any more, so she was straight out. Dad knew he and mum stood no chance and left on the basis he would provide child support – it was his wife he was keeping him from me because she was against his past and didn’t want their children finding out.

A relief in many ways – mum and I can now happily attend many gay events together and at least now I know why she taught me the way she did – it all adds up now! She now has a partner and I’ve never seen her happier – I guess my life did a 360 in a matter of minutes.

Popularity: 39% [?]