Jan 8, 2018
Online Identity and LGBTQ+ Community
First of all what does LGBTQ+ mean? Quoting from Wikipedia it is an acronym that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. The Q stays for queer/questioning, while the plus stays for all other sexualities and genders. So that i
Why did I decide to write a story about it on Medium? Because I think this is a topic that has a lot to do with online identity, and if you keep on reading you will understand better. Moreover, every post here is related to my life and I’m writing about this community because I feel like I am a member of it.
I understood that I wasn’t straight during the last year of high school thanks to social media. A friend showed me a video of a lesbian youtuber in which she was vlogging with her girlfriend. The rest is history.
I think that thanks to the spread that social media, but more in general the internet have, the LGBTQ+ Communitity is growing a lot. It is not just increasing its members but it’s acheaving more and more visibility, and thanks to it, always more people are becoming more aware about the existence of this. Awareness and visibility are, in my opinion, two things that are needed in order to make people believe and understand that this topic is relevant, and especially real.
I would say that today the identity (both online and offline) of the LGBTQ+ community is almost entirely made up by it’s online identity. The social media give us a sort of window that allows us to have a look on the external world. A sort of space that is potentially seen by everyone, in which we can post, write and share all kind of stuff, from a meme to a text, we can speak about all kind of topics, from Donald Trump to sexuality.
The online identity of this community is fundamental not just for its reputation and its credibility, but also and mostly because of the people. As I said before with the social media we can raise awareness between people. They get to know concepts, ideas and definitions. And when it comes to LGBTQ+ in social media, sometimes you can have the wow effect. People that might had an hard time figuring out what was wrong with their selves might search on Google something and get to know about someone that feels the same as they are feeling, and all of a sudden everything comes together and they are no longer feeling alone. For example that is a summary of what happened to me: “Wow, that means that I am not wrong and alone, wow.”
When I came out as bisexual, I had to explain to a lot of people what that ment, and someone was arguing that bisexuality was not a thing. That is really hard because people are not just questioning your feelings, they are questioning all of your existence and your identity. I felt like I was wrong, but than thanks to the social media I came across other people that were identifying as bisexuals, I saw videos that were about bisexuality and I started feeling better, not wrong, not different, just better.
In Facebook there are various groups of support for all the different sexualities and I think that this is a great use of the social networks. They are literally networks of people that socialize. If you are feeling bad or you are not able to undestand what is going on with you, these groups are really helpull because the members are people that felt or that are feeling the same. Maybe you will not have the answer to all your questions, but at least you will feel less alone and less wrong.
Maybe saying that the online identity of this community can save lives is too much, but what I will say is that it can change lives, make them better. Because it changed mine and it made my life better.
Before letting you go I have a question for you. Some webstars revealed their identity (here as sexual orientation), or better said a part of it, on the social media, so that other people could identify with them. Here I see the relationship between identity and identification, but the question is: Do I identify my self with something so I am that something, or is the identification a tool to make the identity stronger?
