Queer Life in the Backlash: Stories of Peril, Pondering, and Positivity
Prism & Pen Weekly Digest 18 August 2024
by Kaylin Hamilton and James Finn
Sick and tired of defending your queer humanity? Fed up defending your children or other beloveds? This week’s P&P is for you! Join us as Tucker Lieberman writes that nobody needs evidence to presume transgender humanity, as James Patrick Nelson reflects on a lifetime of queer-rights pendulum swings, as Rowan G Marci proclaims that her trans child is no reason to feel sorry for her, and as LibrariAnna comes out to her homophobic mother — for her own sake and for her queer children.
But we’re not all serious this week! We offer lovely queer reminiscence from across decades and generations, thoughts on laughing at social-media homophobia, practical tips on weekend de-stressing, and as always, very cool fiction — with a murderous lesbian demon, a clever gay detective, and even a gay easter bunny coming out at church!
Prism & Pen brings you authentic queer voices every morning…. Come read with us!👇
Read stories for free by clicking the links that say “Read in P&P.” Want more daily stories from across the rainbow? Follow us on Medium, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Mastodon, or Bluesky! Want to help support P&P? Join Medium.
* Discover P&P Diversity in Four Stories *
No One Needs ‘Evidence’ That Transition Improves Trans People’s Humanity
On August 13, Lydia Polgreen wrote an instantly beloved opinion piece in the New York Times. It’s 5,000 words in defense of trans kids getting to live trans lives.
People who are curious or anxious about the idea of trans kids should read her essay because it gives a helpful reframe.
Here are my 10 takeaways from her column. All are ways you, too, can respond to politicized claims, such as those found in the Cass Review, that trans kids shouldn’t be affirmed in their gender and that physical changes should accordingly be discouraged too.
How Much Longer Will Queer People Be a Political Scapegoat?
My life has timed out in such curious symmetry with the evolution of queer civil rights in this country. Each new era of my development has coincided with a pendulum swing… and I keep praying it won’t swing back.
I was born the year after Reagan begrudgingly acknowledged AIDS for the first time. I was 10 when protease inhibitors finally began to turn the tide. The first decade of my life was defined by gay people’s fight to survive.
But of course I didn’t know this at the time. I was blissfully ignorant about politics and government. I never saw any protests on TV or in the streets, and my parents never told me what happened to all their friends.
Don’t Say You’re Sorry My Kid Is Trans
“Sorry” is something you say when someone has died. My child isn’t dead, he’s right here — still the same bright, bold, beautiful person he’s always been. Even more so, in fact: more confident, more self-assured, more comfortable in his skin.
What you mean is you’re sorry for me, which implies that you pity me for some perceived misfortune. So tell me, how is having a transgender child unfortunate? As we’ve already established, my child isn’t dead. I don’t seem to have lost anything, except for …
It’s Time I Tell My Homophobic Parents That I’m Bisexual
… In the same vein, she and my father both constantly talk about politics. LGBTQ issues are one of their favorite topics to trash, likely because they feel it their holy duty to fight for the sanctity of marriage — that is, marriage between a man and a woman.
To top that off, they believe that being gay is a mortal sin — a straight path to Hell.
Needless to say, I withheld my bisexuality from them.
In part, I wasn’t ready to get into it. I always knew on some level that I’m bi, but I only accepted it about five years ago.
* This Week’s Essays & Creative Non Fiction *
Precocious Puberty Ended My Queer Athletic Career — Or Did It?
I was never into sports. During grade school, I was always the last boy picked for any team. Everyone in school liked me, but they knew I couldn’t perform on the field, didn’t know the rules, and didn’t care much about any of the games. For example, with baseball, I’d be assigned to somewhere in the backfield, and whenever the ball came right at me, I’d scream and duck and try to get out of the way. They were right not to pick me.
Gay Awakening: Everybody Deserves a First-Time Story
The first girl I kissed had a mole on her cheek like Marilyn Monroe, and she was smoking a cigarette out the window of her dorm room in France the night my world was rocked for the first time.
I glanced at it while she was talking, because I found the way the smoke curled around it beautiful. She thought I was looking at her mouth. (Yes, also.)
When she smiled, it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was captivated, and she knew it.
Her next move was to slide toward the corner of the windowsill I was sitting on, too close and too determined to be mistaken for anything other than what it was.
She kissed me so abruptly, I almost fell out of the window.
Dear Weekend: It’s Not You, It’s Me
Picture this: I’ve just survived another week of juggling work, social obligations, and even a concert and a bar night. By the time Friday night rolls around, the idea of hitting the town feels about as appealing as revisiting that Scruff hookup gone wrong.
What I really want? To curl up on my couch and disappear into a weekend of blissful, indulgent nothingness. Yes, darling, I’m here to celebrate the fine art of doing absolutely zilch, and I’m doing it with the flair of a bear who knows how to savor the finer things in life.
Join Me to Discuss Bi Visibility on Medium Day, 2024
Hi, I’m Rand. And, I’m bisexual.
There, I said it, right out loud, right here, in front of God and everybody!
No, this isn’t a 12-step meeting. No, I’m not in recovery from my ambivalent sexual orientation. I didn’t come here today to declare my helplessness to an addiction or to hand control over my native desires or my non-normative behavior to a higher power.
But, the reality is this: I seldom identify right off the bat as bisexual.
Usually, if the subject comes up at all, my initial statement, is “I’m queer.”
I’m more comfortable with queer. And this is why…
LGBTQIA Stories and THE WORD
The reader can make implications regarding my attitude towards organized religion and/or the Bible, Old and New Testaments, Koran, or any one of many, many other religious texts. For me, it does come down to LOVE IS LOVE, and I do not accept how any institution, religious or governmental, can be so anti-LGBTQIA+ based on who loves whom.
I’ll Never Forget the Day I Got the AIDS Call from My Ex
It was a phone call I was dreading.
If you were around through the eighties and nineties, and especially if you were gay or had gay friends, your worst fear was an HIV diagnosis — either yours or someone you love.
This was before any real effective treatments. We all knew the progression — HIV to AIDS to early death. It was inevitable. A diagnosis was a death sentence in those days.
From the first time I heard of the so-called “gay cancer” in 1981, I was terrified. I was in a monogamous relationship and the more we learned about this disease, the safer I believed I was.
But Bo broke my trust.
According to Project 2025, I’m a Pornographer and Should Go to Jail
The authors of Project 2025 consider the following to be pornography, and the author (me) deserving of prison:
“Lex bent forward and brushed his lips across Clark’s, just a hint of a kiss, then pulled back, watching him carefully.
A shiver went through Clark and he stared at Lex with wide eyes. Then he reached up, curled a hand around Lex’s neck, and pulled him down for another kiss.”
— from I’m Glad It’s You, a fanfiction story (fanfic) written by me
I’ve been writing fanfiction for close to twenty years, and I started posting it online on Fanfiction.net in 2005, then on Archive of Our Own (AO3) in 2012. I wrote and posted my first fanfic with a same-sex romantic pairing, “I’m Glad It’s You,” in 2014. The scene quoted above is the closest thing to sexual content in this fic, a single kiss between two boys.
It Really Wasn’t Difficult to Laugh at Homophobia on Social Media
As a Brit, my tolerance for bigots has sunk to an all-time low this week. Rational arguments never seem to work, so I employed a different strategy: using their online hate to be silly AF. I was going to have some fun with them, and I did.
There have been a couple of weeks of racism and violence towards people of colour, Muslims and migrants in the UK. Three children were stabbed to death, and fake news spread that the perpetrator was a Muslim and an immigrant. He had no connection to Islam and was Welsh, but that didn’t stop the far right.
The riots briefly distracted me from how angry people get about companies supporting Pride. The homophobia hadn’t gone away. Rainbow flags still get some people very, very angry.
Are Queer Soup Nights the New Gay Bars?
In dreary January 2017, the month of former President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Queer Soup Night (QSN) served its first hearty bowl of soup in a backyard in Brooklyn.
Within months it had mushroomed into an epicentre of solace, connection, direct action and nutrition for the local queer community — who were otherwise doom-scrolling at the state of their disjointed nation.
Seven years down the line, as Trump looms like a spectre over the United States once again, there are now Queer Soup chapters peppered all over North America, from St Louis to Oakland, Toronto to Miami.
Every month, thousands of queers gather around the dinner table to dine on delicious bowls of home-grown comfort food, prepared by talented local chefs — and it’s a whole vibe.
Major League All-Star Suspended After Homophobic Outburst
On August 12th, an All-Star player for the Boston Red Sox was given a two game suspension without pay.
His crime? Hurling a hateful, homophobic slur at a fan.
27-year-old Jarren Duran told reporters that the fan had been “… heckling me the entire game and I said something I shouldn’t have said.”
What Duran “shouldn’t have said” was: “Shut up, you f — -ing fa — -t!”
Duran expressed contrition about his “mistake,” telling the Associated Press… “I’m sorry for my actions and I’m going to work on being better.”
This apology sounds real and sincere.
All well and good. Right?
A Total Eclipse of the Sun and A Total Eclipse of my Not-Straight Heart
I want to tell you a falling-in-love story, one that changed my life.
From an early age, I assumed that most people, including myself, experience some degree of same-sex attraction while also welcoming the prospect of marriage and family. I saw no contradiction in this.
Indeed, I was not averse to occasional dalliance with both men and women. With a few exceptions, it was all good. Still I never doubted that I would eventually settle down and have kids. This story is about the first time that I thought I was falling in love with a man.
How Much Impact Did Being Queer Have on My Career?
My formative years in high school and college were preoccupied with dealing with being gay. It was a long process for me. I stayed in the closet for a decade.
During that time, I didn’t need to consider my job prospects or a career because I had a job lined up for me immediately after I graduated. I had enlisted in the Navy Reserve in high school, which exempted me from the draft until college graduation, when I was required to go on active duty for three years.
My early years were a period of internal conflict.
Growing up in small towns in Texas in the 1950s caused me to hide in the closet for a decade. I was a preacher’s kid, and that formed my religious belief. Being gay was the one unforgivable sin.
Moving Past My Trans Obsession with Feeling Fake in All I Do
Fat thumb pressing against my phone repeatedly, I lose count of how many pictures I take. I crane my neck a little to the left — snap. My chin tilts to the right — snap. I pull my phone back, searching for a new angle to obscure my edges — snap.
I am the modern-day transgender Narcissus, enraptured with my reflection.
Trans with a Little Help from My Doctor
Take two of these, and call me in the morning,
as the adage goes. With any luck, you’ll wake up a woman.I looked down at the script now literally in my hands. I blinked to remember the moment. “So, you want the good stuff?” she had said. The words echoed in my head.
Tingles pulsed briefly through my body
like an emergency distress signal test.
* Fiction Shorts*
The Gay Detective: Life and Death in a Goldfish Bowl
“Looks like blood to me, Boss.”
Looked like blood to me too. “Better get Hansen down here.”
Harry headed for the control room while I started on the next crate. I heard a sound behind me. “Back already”
Something hit me hard across the shoulders. Drove me to my knees. My head smacked the front of my helmet. As darkness closed in, my last coherent thought was that somebody down here had a one-track mind.
The Easter Bunny: A Gay Romance
I was hot. Really hot. We were inside an air-conditioned church, but I could still feel sweat forming along my hairline. This was April — early April — and it just didn’t seem fair that I already had to double up on my deodorant to keep from stinking up the place.
Not only that, but I was also a tad hung-over, thanks to my stupid college roommates and their superhuman knack for peer pressure. I didn’t overdo it, but a tad hung-over is still a tad too much when you’re only eighteen and you have church in the morning.
Easter church. Did I mention that? It was Easter Sunday. That was like the Super Bowl of church. Well, maybe Christmas was the Super Bowl of church. But Easter was at least the Rose Bowl. Or the play-offs.
I don’t watch sports.
* Fiction Series *
Her Witch, Her Demon
An awkward family dinner. Meredith must make an impossible choice
As she helped her mother make dinner, Meredith couldn’t help but sense the tense atmosphere. It had been this way ever since her parents returned from the council meeting. Before her parents left the house, they were cheerful and full of life. They couldn’t wait to meet Meredith’s girlfriend. But now, watching her mother go about the cooking lifelessly, Meredith wondered if something was wrong. Even worse, her father kept asking her more and more personal questions about Onyx Castle. Many of these questions, she didn’t even know the answer to. Maybe they just wanted to prepare themselves before meeting Nyx.
By the time it was 6:30 pm, they had finished making dinner and set the table. Nyx should be here in thirty minutes.
The entire family sat silently in the living room, waiting for their guest. They were too silent. Once in a while, they would exchange glances with each other and then shake their heads.
Read Episode 12 & Episode 13
That’s it for this week!
Happy reading! Keep shining the love, and send your stories to Prism & Pen.
We need you all!
And writers, time for a new prompt. Any idea? Hit us up below!
