Thanks for checking out Queer Girl Blogs! Part personal, part political, and part pop culture, QGB is my little corner of the internet. Because every queer voice matters.

When I was first coming out, the Internet was pretty much my savior. Thanks to the good queer people who showed me the way online, I read every book, watched every show, and followed every website I could that would reflect my experience in some way, anything that would make me feel less alone, more part of a community.

And those things really helped me. But I still saw lots of stereotypes reflected back at me, in pop culture, in literature, in public opinion. And it was difficult to find a book or film that really reflected the kind of journey I was taking.

In a certain way, of course, blogs are vanity projects. But I feel like the more we add our voices to the fray, the more gorgeously diverse and nuanced our collective representation will be. There is beauty in the history and collective consciousness that brings us together, and also in our many amazing differences.

Notes

On ‘Queer’

Queerness – as I am happy to call an all-embracing, foundational tenet – is really a state of mind brought about by an understanding: it is understanding difference, accepting your own truth, desire and identity, and lovely, lovely choice.

 

It is the final, completely obvious contemporary acceptance and understanding that this enormous world of beauty, sexuality, identity, lust, feeling, excitement, and love isn’t just black and white, or simple, at all. It is literally every shade and gradation of the rainbow.

 

It doesn’t just lie in one of two camps. It includes accepting and supporting positions that you may not even completely understand; and to arrive at that conviction is so, so beautiful, and to quote my great friend Casey Legler: “Fierce!”

— Michael Stipe, for The Guardian

On Personal Truths

I get in trouble all the time, saying what I think plainly, as though it were the truth. It’s my truth. And my butch self has learned that when you betray doubt or uncertainty in your words, sometimes people try to take them away from you or change your mind or make it sound like you said something very else. So I just lay it down as it lives for me, but of course, here and everywhere, I mean—for me. I think. In my experience.

–S. Bear Bergman, Brother Dog

On Anonymity

So that I can fully explore themes which are deeply personal, I have chosen at this time to write anonymously. To protect my own privacy and the privacy of the people in my life, all of the names in personal essays have been changed.

On Comments

I love to engage with readers, and I welcome your comments, as long as they are relevant and civil. I will not approve comments which contain attacks or hate speech. Finally, while I enjoy a friendly dialogue, if you use the comment section of my articles with a closed mind and a (figuratively) open mouth, and it’s clear we will never see eye to eye, I probably won’t engage with your argument. Life’s too short.