Why am I here? Writing a blog of all things. How are my thoughts beneficial to our already oversaturated online social discourse?

I have struggled with these questions myself. Self-serving writing is well, exactly that: self-serving. Writing for one’s own benefit feels, perhaps is, narcissistic. Regardless of format – journaling, blogging, influencing on another social platform – expressing your own thoughts in a tangible realm can become conceited. Older generations struggle with that more frequently, but for those of us who matured with the digital age, we lack the fear of judgement and repel claims of narcissism. Instead, our collective sharing is based in the ideology that each individual story is unique, worthy, and is the key to understanding one’s position in society. In sharing my story, my experience, I am inviting the outsider in. I can not, and do not, expect any person to understand the queer experience without having lived through it. Though a blog cannot provide this, it can allow light to seep through the cracks: Kintsugi. 

My queerness is an essential asset of my existence, but is not all-encompassing: I occupy a multiplicity of identities. I am gay. I am genderqueer. I am masculine-presenting. I am white. I am Latinx. I am Midwestern. I am able-bodied. I am neurodivergent. I am middle-class. I am an academic. My identities conglomerate, intermingling with one another, sharing my physical body. They influence my presentation, my comfortability, and my passions. I am not my identities, but they are of critical importance. 

My identities influence my experience, and perhaps my experience will influence the reader’s perspective; However, that is not the goal. The goal here is documentation. Queer history lacks exactly that.

You see, a common notion amongst the LGBTQ+ community is the lack of existence of queer elders. The queers who gave us rights, who created our history, were killed. And erased. The Depression Era set fire to queer literature and books on sexology in Nazi Germany, sparking similar events across the globe. During the US-AIDS crisis in the 1980’s: thousands of queers were left helpless at the hands of their own healthcare system. Today, state governments are attempting to ban specific queer-inclusive literature from the public education system and are presenting the Trans Community with new oppressions daily. We will never be erased.

So I ask you, to join me on this blog. I ask you read my words, digest my thoughts, suspend all normalized beliefs, and, at least while you are here, queer your experience.

Talk soon.