This is a revised version of a poem originally posted on October 11, 2016. Spoken word version can be found here.
Seventeen things you have to
learn for yourself
as a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transgender, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Pansexual
or otherwise Queer youth
by the time you are
seventeen.
One is that the first Pride
was a riot
I don’t mean that it was full
of laughter, or that it was some grand party
where everyone spiraled up to
dance among the stars
because the only glittering
that night
was broken glass on
cobblestones.
The first Pride was a riot
on the backstreets of New
York
and they never tell us
that that night
we won.
They never tell us
that it was the only protest
in a decade full of turmoil
where the cops had to hide
from the shouting, dancing rioters
who fought to reclaim the
only ground they had ever been able to say was theirs.
Stonewall is only an echo of
a name in our history
Christopher Street Liberation
Day even less
but I swear to you
the first thing you need to
know is
the first Pride was a riot,
and two, around the same time
it took place
it was a debated topic in the
gay community
whether or not it would be
too bold to say
that they weren’t mentally
ill
which, three, homosexuality
was only removed
from the American Psychiatric
Association’s list of mental illnesses
in 1974
congratulations
all it took was a riot
and five more years of
protests, before they decided with a vote
that whoops, we were never
actually mentally ill
except, four, there are still
teenagers being tortured today
in what some dare blaspheme
as “therapy”
used to destroy their
self-identity
in the hopes of making them normal.
except, four, the queer
community still carries overwhelmingly high rates for poverty and homelessness
and depression.
Did you know that, five,
over half the children forced
into conversion therapy
commit suicide?
Or six, that before the AIDS
crisis
lesbians were considered
“hangers-on”
by much of the gay community.
Because it turns out, seven,
you can wear a rainbow on your shirt
and still be a bigot.
There are people who stick
rainbows in their ears
or wear them on their fingers
or slap them across their
cheeks in badges of defiance
and will still hate you for
the color of your skin
or the size of your thighs
or your gender
or the genders you like to
kiss
or don’t.
Don’t ask me why this happens
it just does
I think it might be that
we’ve all been taught to hate ourselves
for so damn long
that we don’t know how to create
a space with no hate.
Or maybe it’s that the space
seems too small, because
eight, there are people who
will tell you that you are not enough
that you do not reach the
magical benchmark of “gay enough” to pass through the gate even
especially
when you are some flavor of
the rainbow other than straight-out gay.
eight, this is bullshit
eight, those people are
bullshit.
eight, you are enough.
eight, there is always enough room.
nine, there is no overarching
“homosexual agenda”
sorry
we’re all kind of flailing
along in here trying to figure out some way to make it work
when most of us have nothing
in common
except that society looked at
us in different ways and decided we didn’t fit
so we could all go be misfits
together
under one big rainbow flag
but just so you know, ten,
there are plenty of other flags
there is one for you, I
promise
and eleven, misfits may not
all need the same things
but we need to stick
together, especially in a world where
twelve—refer to point seven—there
are lesbians who hate other lesbians
for having the audacity to be
born in a body
that the world looked at and assumed
“boy”
which brings me to
thirteen, there is so much to understand.
fourteen, you need to understand
because we need to stick
together
and to stick together we don’t
have to be the same but we do have to understand
and it will be hard because
you were probably thrown into
this world with no warning because
fifteen, being queer is not
genetic
and we are not unique among
minorities
in that we must collect our
heritage through broken bits of history and research in a world constantly
working to erase us like we are yesterday’s wrong answers
but we are unique in that
when we try to prove our legacy
we can be laughed down
or re-erased
or flat out ignored
but I swear to you
you have a history as old as
Alexander the Great
as brilliant as Sappho
as dignified as Abraham
Lincoln
and as proud as Eleanor
Roosevelt.
But even with that behind us—
sixteen,
they have always watched us
die.
because, sixteen, even though
the bystander effect is bullshit,
no one ever mentions that Kitty
Genovese was a lesbian, sixteen
Ronald Reagan was a mass
murderer and needs to be remembered that way, sixteen
our children, your brothers
and sisters and siblings of all stripes and all colors and sexualities and
genders are being murdered every day
through neglect
and rejection
and hate.
Sixteen, there is an entire
generation of gay and bisexual men
missing from history
because the government chose
to do nothing
when they were dying by the
thousands.
sixteen, we died from the
disease and died from going back into the closet and died for staying there and
died for coming out,
sixteen, they laughed at our
deaths because they believed their god was punishing us for daring to love,
sixteen, the grieving ensured
the ashes of your forerunners rest on the lawn of the White House because
SIXTEEN, THEY HAVE ALWAYS
WATCHED US DIE.
SEVENTEEN
Seventeen, you are allowed
to be angry.
You do not have to be one of
the nice gays
or one of the nice trans
people
or sweet or kind or educate
the rest of the world in anything less than a yell
you are allowed to be so furious it scalds your bones
at the way we are forgotten
and passed over
at the way, as soon as June
becomes July
we are expected
to go back to dying in
silence
and mourning our dead
and kissing in closets
where no one can be offended
at the sight of us.
You are allowed to be angry
and scream down the stars
so they shatter like broken
glass at your feet
because you know what?
One
the first Pride
was a riot.
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