Things People Who are LGBTQ+ Wish You Knew
If this is part of your life story, please share your insights! What would you like the rest of us to learn? What should we know about people in this community? How would you like people to interact with you? Should people ask questions? What’s the best way for people to learn about this? Do you have any resources (books, movies, YT videos, etc) that will give us greater understanding and empathy and kindness toward people who experience the same things you do?
If you’re not on this journey, please share insights you’ve learned while interacting with those who are, whether family, friends, or anyone else. Share things you’ve read, and ask if they’re true. Share beliefs that you have, ask questions, and more! This is a safe space where you can learn about things you’ve never experienced. <3
Let’s have a gentle, fun, friendly conversation among friends! As a song in one of the Land Before Time movies says, “It takes all sorts to make a world!” <3
@ShadowFaerie @unassumingEyes @Sunisshiningandsoareyou @sadcat13 @Amanda84 @goldenduckling @mytwistedsoul @Tinywhisper11 @LovemyMoonflowers @GreenLime3141 @7Bear7 @Phoenixthepoised @Torean @GentleHealingInitiative @cyanessence @YourCaringConfidant @CaringEzra @NobleSeeker @fossilfellow @BastionKnight @trueconfidant123 @safeplace288 @lovingCat6978 @reservedOwl321 @dapperNest2125 @Creamyyy @naturesbeauty1234 @bubbleSummer9800 @peachThinker662 @warmheartedHuman836 @Mansbestfriend @Paliloveyourself @Magicpawsoffuture @SelfCareMatters @TovaCares76 @sabeyesofblue3535 @Ailuraphilelove8tear9 @charmingApple8098 @luvArisu @BlueDarkAurora @curiousbookishness @sympatheticPlace3743 @musawva @KindleMissie @WellsFiction @Angelanj @SlappyMcGee @SunshineJazz @LexListens2025
I’m adding a taglist to start, but this post is open to absolutely everyone! <3
Looking forward to learning more about the LGBTQ+ people <3
I am in the Group B aka not on the journey🙃
As a Muslim and a med student I have many thing to say about it.But the most simply put form is that;
I belive in pure relationship between men and women.😊
I belive in convetional family system since the crearion of humans.
Nikah or any other form of marrige ceremony is respectable in my eyes.As a Prophet Muhammad SAW answered the question of a companion "wether we should remarry a person we married before Islam"and"who can we marry".the answers were:
"No need to remarry" in other places"no because any form of sacred union between a man and woman with strong tie and good will is marraige"
The answer to the second question is anyone who is pious and belive in one true entity.
Now!!! As for things i dont know about it and want to know is.
Why chose the unconventional path?
Why oppose the social norms?
Dose it feel at home?
Any sweet soul to answer that🤗🤗
@curiousbookishness the answer to your question is: LGBT+ people don't choose the "unconventional" path. It's a not a choice to us. It's simply who we are. We don't choose who we love, just like people don't choose what their voice sounds like or what their eye color is. We experience attraction and love just like everyone else, we engage in relationships that can be caring and loving just like everyone else, the only thing that changes is the gender of the person we feel this for. So we don't oppose any norm just for the sake of doing something different. It's natural for us, it's part of who we are, it's how we love. Fitting into a conventional straight marriage would never bring us happiness, only misery. No one would ever face the backlash of a society that doesn't accept LGBT+ people if this was not the only way for us to live a happy life and be ourselves.
And yes, it feels good, and safe, and happy and full of love. It's only hard and painful when other people judge us and try to take away our right to live life in a way that feels good and natural to us, a way that doesn't actually harm anyone, because queer people marrying who they love does not in any way affect other people's choices or their freedom to follow their religion or their traditions if they want to do so. All we ask is respect for us and our choices.
Thanks dear for the answers🤗
I may agree or not agree with them but Allah bless your sweet soul that you took some time for it and answered😊 and may he guide you through your life to righteousness.
I'm straight and not on the journey. In my opinion, love is love. Love whomever you love. If you're happy and it's a healthy relationship between two people, then have at it! ❤️
I don't know if I'm late to reply, but:
People figure their identity out at various different ages, and sometimes they never fully figure it out, which is completely fine. I knew I was homosexual at 11 years old, soon after puberty. Some people find out when they are much older.
You really can't change it just by wanting it to change, it is out of your control. However, people sometimes switch labels. If you have ever seen someone go from calling themselves homosexual (for example) to bisexual or something else, that doesn't mean they changed their orientation willingly. Most likely they just discovered more about themselves and realized the previous word just doesn't fit anymore.
As a lesbian, the most jarring thing to young me wasn't the fact I am attracted to women, but the fact I am not attracted to men. Our society is near-constantly talking to girls and women about future husbands, marriage, dating and boyfriends, etc.
I like when people ask questions respectfully and actually listen and try to understand. It's great! The best way to treat a LGBTQ+ person is to treat them like anyone else. Be respectful and kind, don't be pushy. If they are in the closet, never tell anyone else about their identity without their permission, it might put them in danger.
That it's not "Trendy" for most people. A lot of conservative people tend to think that being LGBT is just people wanting to feel accept in a community. Which is so far from the truth it's crazy. It's actually really isolating and hard to go through life as anything other than straight and just because people now are becoming more accepting then the West has been in the past couple hundred years doesn't mean that anymore people are feeling this way just that they feel like they have a better chance of living now
Hi, I'm ace, nonbinary, and go on and off in questioning if I'm bi. I'm happy to answer questions about any of that 😊
A few general things that it'd be nice if more people understood:
- "Gender" and "sex" are different. Gender is about self-image, and sometimes can be reflected in personal identity choices like name, clothing, pronouns, appearance. Sex is biological parts. I wish people didn't assume that "gender =/= sex" means that people are lying to their doctors and denying themselves proper care.
- "Nonbinary" can mean a lot of different things as a blanket term for people who don't identify with their assigned gender. For me specifically, it's like opting out of my default gender because a lot of the life experiences and social rules that came with it just don't suit me or even made me feel wrong or excluded from a club I had no choice in being expected to be a part of. I also feel like gender can influence how people interact with you, and I'd rather just be treated neutrally than have those assumptions made about me - i.e. personal lifestyle, comfort level with certain things etc. The reality often ends up being pretty different than what people first expect from my appearance!
- We don't do this for attention or to chase trends. I often find myself downplaying my queerness and not talking openly about it to a lot of people in my life unless they're extremely trusted and outwardly LGBT+ themselves, because it's easier to just stay quiet than get questioned or harassed. I've also spent a lot of years thinking about it and my feelings haven't changed much so I feel pretty certain I'm not "making it up." The first time I ever felt gender dysphoria was around 9 years of age, and I kept it to myself because it just wasn't openly talked about back then.
- "Asexual" is also an umbrella term with a lot of subcategories, with different attitudes on sex. Some aces are repulsed and want nothing to do with it, some are neutral but may do it for certain reasons like the fulfillment of a partner who they're romantically attracted to, some only feel attraction under specific circumstances, some are positive but express that very differently than an allosexual person would. Etc.
- "Bisexual" doesn't have to mean liking men and women equally. It just means "attracted to more than one gender" so if you're mostly attracted to men and like 5% of women, or if you're attracted to women and nonbinary people but not men, you may still be bi.
- Bi people are not any more likely to cheat on their partners than straight or gay people. Having potentially a bigger pool of people to be attracted to (which isn't even always the case, i.e. if you have a very specific type(s)! ) doesn't reflect on how committed you are in your relationship or how good of a partner you are.
Thank you so much for your post!
I love asking questions <3
Why on and off?
Do non-binary people change their names? Is that just a trans thing?
What do you mean about lying to their doctors and denying themselves proper care? (Sorry, my brain is fried atm)
Do people who are non-binary prefer to wear clothes of a specific gender, neutral, or switch back and forth?
Is being ace a natural thing, caused by trauma, or something else?
What’s allosexual?
What if you are attracted to both genders, but you wouldn’t date one gender?
I thought bi meant you liked both sexes. Where does non-binary come into it? (Referring to your sentence about being attracted to women and non-binary people.)
Why would people think the bottom part???
I hope that I come across as I’m hoping- genuinely curious and loving and accepting. I always worry about how I sound. Please correct me if I come across in a negative way! I love and accept you for who you are <3
@jesusredeemedme2425
Hey, thank you for your interest and for the kind and respectful questions! I’m happy to answer and help clear things up further 😄
- I say “on-and-off” because this is the part of my identity that I have the most internalized self-doubt about. I’m in a long term relationship with an opposite sex partner and for a long time I assumed that was pretty much it. Then about 5 years ago, I realized I had a small crush on a celebrity of a gender I didn’t expect to be attracted to. It opened my mind to re-examine my criteria for attraction and I realized gender is not as important as personality and appearance for me. It also made a few other things make sense in hindsight. Since I’m happy and secure in my relationship and therefore most likely won’t ever act on my bisexuality in any visible way, I sometimes feel like it “doesn’t count.” I know someone can have this apply to them and still be bi but sometimes I still get caught in feeling like “what if it’s just in my head?”
- Some nonbinary people change their names, others choose not to. It’s entirely up to personal preference! I have not changed my name. I’ve considered it before but it’s not important enough to me to outweigh the legal and personal complications that would come of it. I do go by a shortened form as a nickname which helps me feel like I have more agency over it and like it’s more “my own.” I also go by an unrelated nickname with a specific friend group who I met online (and also happens to be mostly LGBTQ). It was my screen name and I just rolled with continuing to go by it after we knew each others real names and started hanging out in person 😅
- No worries! There’s a common (and rather transphobic) misconception that trans and nonbinary people will try to hide their birth sex from doctors to avoid getting misgendered. It’s a myth that gets spread around to further harm and stigmatize. I don’t know why anyone would ever actually do that though?? Most people are honest about it so they get proper care and treatment.
- It can depend a lot on the person! For me personally I feel most comfortable in gender-neutral clothes (t-shirts, jeans, converse or vans is the usual casual outfit). Some nonbinary people don’t mind gendered clothing that matches their sex and choose to express themselves in other ways. Others might lean more heavily towards whatever doesn’t match their birth sex. Some do switch back and forth between masc/fem/neutral clothes depending on how they feel at a given time, but this can also be associated with being genderfluid (identifying as more than one gender).
- Being ace is natural for many people, me included. It potentially could be related to trauma, but not always. In my case there is no trauma involved, just genuine confusion around the time I was high school aged. I understood and felt romantic attraction just fine but didn’t really “get” that understanding of sexual attraction in the same way my peers seemed to. For a while I thought everyone was just over-exaggerating those types of feelings or doing things because of peer pressure and feeling like it was a life milestone they had to achieve just because 😅
- Allosexual = a person who is not asexual, and experiences sexual attraction in typical expected ways.
- If you’re attracted to multiple genders but wouldn’t date one, it may mean a few things. It’s possible to have a different exact romantic vs sexual orientation (ie you can be biromantic and heterosexual, meaning you have romantic interest for multiple genders but only sexually attracted to opposite sex), you might be more strongly attracted to one gender over another, or you may just have different personal preferences and comfort levels with certain gender-related aspects of a potential relationship. I.e. certain things you’d be interested in doing with a woman but not a man, even though you are also attracted to men in some way.
- Bisexual can mean liking both men and women, but the definition has evolved in more recent years into liking at least two distinct genders, even if those genders are a different combo than male/female only. There also isn’t a limit on how many different gender identities a bi person may be attracted to, though they may have different preferences or levels of attraction to each. It is similar but not quite 1:1 to pansexual, which is defined by potential attraction regardless of gender.
- The bottom part is unfortunately a dated stereotype that was more common in the 90s-00s than it is now, but you still hear of it from time to time. The stereotype is that the partner of a bi person has to compete not just with their own gender but with everyone else for their partner’s attraction, and that a bigger dating pool makes the bi person less likely to be loyal when they have “more options to choose from.” It’s nonsense though.
I can’t imagine the paperwork and such for changing your name lol. That would drive me crazy! Ugh now I’m imagining all the paperwork I’ll have to do after I get married someday and change my last name lol. I hate paperwork with a passion. And don’t even get me started on taxes XD
Well… You couldn’t exactly hide your birth sex from your OB/GYN (and whatever the equivalent is for males, is it a proctologist?? I’m female, can you tell? lol). I wonder if it’s easy for doctors to tell if you’re “natural” down there, or if you’ve had bottom surgery. I’ve never seen photos of after surgery. (I’m not trying to be gross or inappropriate. I’m just legitimately wondering about these things.)
I wonder if they’re worried about being judged, which is why they hide it.
I prefer gender-neutral generally, too. Girly stuff just isn’t me. And I occasionally shop from the men’s section because their clothes are way more comfy. And why don’t women’s clothes have pockets?????
What’s the difference between non-binary and genderfluid?
What’s the difference between romantic and sexual attraction?
I wonder if it’s a low libido thing? Maybe hormonal differences? I’m just wondering what would cause ace, scientifically speaking. (I like science. Hehe)
I’ll be honest… allosexual sounds kinda like allosaurus XD
Bruh. Straight (if that’s the right word?? I have no idea) can be cheaters and players too…
I like lengthy! And deep <3 And you’re also educating all the people reading this who haven’t posted yet. So thank you! <3
You’re welcome <3
@jesusredeemedme2425
Oh yeah 😵💫 I've gone back and forth on changing my last name if/when I get married for the same reason. I likely will on the basis of my partner having a cooler last name than me lol but there's soo many things that'd need to be updated.
Haha, the equivalent for men is urologists. I don't have a lot of personal experience with physical transition in that sense but I imagine it'd be noticeable. And would also definitely appear in someone's medical chart. Even so, many trans men go to OBGYNs/trans women to urologists, and it can be extremely helpful to know that a specific medical office is queer-inclusive. I had a surgery a few years ago that while not exactly a form of transition, was gender-affirming as a side effect of the main purpose. I didn't bring it up during my consultation or on the day of, but it really helped me feel at ease when I noticed my surgeon wearing a rainbow flag pin, so if I did need to mention it for any reason I knew I would be treated with support and without judgment.
You're so right about men's clothes. I looove a good pair of pants that actually has pockets and a nice hoodie or flannel that doesn't fall apart after a few washes lol. Fem clothing can be such a scam 😩
Nonbinary may include anything other than identifying explicitly as female or male. Genderfluid is like a subcategory of nonbinary/trans where someone may feel like a mix of genders rather than just being like "I'm a man/woman/nonbinary" and only being one of those things. They might use multiple sets of pronouns and make different identity and personal style choices depending on what gender they feel most aligned with at a given time.
Romantic attraction is when you feel affection for someone and want to do "couple things" with them, i.e. going on dates, holding hands, spending a lot of time one-on-one with them, building emotional closeness, and potentially planning a life and future together as the relationship becomes more serious. Sexual attraction is when you are attracted to someone in the sense of wanting to do physically intimate activities with them, often to the point where it's a biological urge. There are some types of attraction that fall into a grey area between romantic/sexual and a specific person's comfort level may vary. For example, some asexual people really enjoy kissing and cuddling their partner while others aren't interested in doing that. There are also lots of forms of non-sexual physical attraction, like being attracted to someone's looks or enjoying the way they give hugs.
(Also, it is possible to experience sexual but not romantic attraction! This is called being "aromantic," while experiencing typical romantic attraction is called "alloromantic." It is also possible to be both ace and aro, thus "aroace" is its own distinct identity label too.)
Sometimes asexuality can sometimes involve low libido and hormonal differences! There are likely a lot of physical, emotional, and psychological factors that can influence someone's asexuality, but there isn't one conclusive answer and there's a lot that still isn't known. There are also some categories of asexuality that notably do not have low libido, but have conditional/limited or no desire to share intimate experiences with a partner. They might engage in such activities alone, read erotic literature, etc but not be interested in actually involving another person.
Oh yeah, absolutely 😵💫 being a player is not at all specific to any sexuality or anything like that.
Glad to help educate <3 let me know if there's anything else you'd like to know about!
I’m kinda bored with my last name. I hope my husband’s name is cooler than mine, too. Lol
Wait so… what’s the difference between urologists and proctologists???
I would assume there’d be scars or stitches or something.
What is WITH women’s clothes not having pockets???? It’s like a conspiracy to sell more purses lol
Thrift stores. Try there. <3
Wouldn’t genderfluid be confusing to the people around them? Like… how would you know what pronouns to use on a given day?
Yeah, any gender can cheat.
I love your username btw! <3
@jesusredeemedme2425
Urologists are male anatomy doctors, proctologists deal with colon and rectum related health topics!
Ahh yeah thrift stores can be really great for this stuff! Though I sometimes get overwhelmed by the searching + how crowded my local one gets 😵💫
Genderfluidity can be confusing for close ones in the genderfluid person's life. The genderfluid person might decide to disclose their identity only to people who know them well and are trusted, or some are more lenient about pronouns and such and mostly just care that people put in the effort to learn at all even if the people around them don't get it right 100% of the time. It's not reasonable to expect others to be mind readers! Often times too it's more to do with other ways someone wants to express themselves - ie the genderfluid person might feel more empowered and confident in masculine clothes/style/mannerisms for some period of time, rather than specifically being super insistent about he/him pronouns. Patient communication about it from both the genderfluid individual and the people around them goes a long way though <3
Thanks so much!
I must be a Minion. My first thought was basically “hehe butt doctor” XD
Yeah, they can be WAY overstimulating.
Have you seen those stuffed octopuses that turn inside out, depending on your mood??? Something similar would be super cute and helpful if someone’s genderfluid <3
@JackalopesExist was coming to say a lot of this myself! thanks for saving me the trouble 😉
you can't tell what i am by looking at me. i'm a big guy with a big beard and i'm nonbinary. i've got the male equipment, but I just don't feel like i'm on either team. they both feel alien to me.
And i'm bi, but have a pretty small dating pool. first of all "bi guy" is an immediate no to too many women. not sure why. and there are certain guys who rev my engine, but they have to be gay or bi and also into me so really my odds of finding a boyfriend are low.
@blueHuman3349
Thank you for sharing all of this :) I'm glad it's relatable to someone!
I always enjoy hearing perspectives from AMAB nonbinary folks. I'm AFAB and sometimes feel like life would be easier and more freeing in so many ways if I were born as a dude. I also tend to find socializing with men a little bit easier. But being trans in that way doesn't feel fully right to me either, somehow, like there's kind of a sense where it'd be giving up parts of myself that I'm not sure I could fully let go of.
"They both feel alien to me" is such a real way to describe it honestly, like not fully column A not fully column B.
Ahh that's rough, I hate that bi is still a dealbreaker for some folks :( hoping the best for you, the right person is out there and will be so worth it when you find each other!
What does MOGII mean?
@jesusredeemedme2425 That being queer is not a trend, and the reason more people are coming out nowadays is because we have the knowledge and language to describe ourselves. I did not suffer through my adolescence, fighting intense internalised homophobia and self denial, to finally get to a place of acceptance with myself and be told I'm not valid.
What does queer mean? Is it a positive or negative term?
Thank you! <3
