When Jessica N. first signed onto Tumblr, he had no idea who he was.
Sure, he knew some of the things he liked — Dr. Who, introversion — but at the time he didn’t have the vocabulary to describe himself. He was young and lived in a small city.
Now in his twenties, the words come easier: transsexual, non-binary, pansexual. They weren’t handed to him on a silver platter. Jessica reached out through Tumblr, then learned them with love.
Most teenagers, at some point in their development, feel “alone in this world.” But couple that feeling with the words “queer” and “trans,” and that sense of isolation only deepens. Teachers might teach you how to put a state-sponsored condom on a store-bought cucumber, but only a few will tell you what it means to be trans or how it feels to be gay. While cis and straight kids have (something of) a dating pool, LGBTQI youth often scramble to find just one more kid who looks like them. Read more…
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