GSST 001 Photo Essay by Christian Valencia

Don't Ask Don't Tell

cvale057_ — 2023-11-28 00:06:38 UTC

I realized I was gay in middle school and this realization horrified me because it meant that I actually was all the things that people had said about me. If we look at Suzanne Pharr's work we can better understand how this kind of homophobia is weaponized against young people. Pharr states that at puberty, "the full force of society's pressure to conform to heterosexuality" becomes very daunting . This has to do with children being taught at a young age that if they "deviate from standard expectations" then they will be "treated as an outsider" (Pharr, 635). This made me live in constant fear that I would be found out and be forced to come out. I spent most of my life in the closet for fear of being rejected because ultimately I did not want to bring shame to the people that I loved. I became very good at hiding who I was, which made me feel detached from my family and friends. As I got older this fear started to become bigger and it got to the point where I became fine with the idea of never coming out. This made me become a very depressed individual throughout my early teens. I hated life because it felt unfair that I could not proudly be my authentic self while others could. After I graduated high school I started to spend more time with other queer individuals. This made me become more comfortable with who I was, and the summer I turned nineteen I finally grew the courage to tell my parents the truth. To my surprise I was met with love and acceptance which is something that I am forever grateful for since it is not the case for many others. After coming out, I noticed a big shift in the way I viewed the world. I started to become more hopeful for the future since it meant that I was capable of being loved for who I was.

Queer to Stay!

cvale057_ — 2023-11-28 00:08:39 UTC

Looking at where I am at now in my self-acceptance journey, I can honestly say that I am proud of where I have gotten. Never did I think I would actually come out of the closet because of how people in my community are treated if they are found out to be gay. I now live unafraid of people's opinions because ultimately I cannot let myself live my life dictated by other people's bigotry. I want to continue this journey because I have fallen more in love with myself because of it. I am now able to envision a future for myself where I am happy and full of love because I was able to overcome my fears. By being brave and trusting myself I have also impacted the lives with the people around me too because now we have even stronger bonds. I think it is important that others are able to experience what I have because I genuinely feel that I would have fallen through the cracks if I did not allow myself to explore my identity. I have been unhappy for a good chunk of my life and that has to do with how I have lived my life in the shadows. No one deserves that and so I hope to grow so that maybe one day I can inspire someone else to live their lives authentically themselves.

El Machismo

cvale057_ — 2023-11-28 00:12:15 UTC

As the first child of Mexican immigrants, the idea of what it means to be a man has been instilled in me long before I could talk. In the Latinx community, boys are taught to be aggressive, and if they show any sign of sensitivity they are punished. This has to do with how men are viewed in society and specifically within Latin America. Men are conditioned into being the sole providers in Latin households because of the idea that women ought to take care of the home. This becomes the model for Latinx children which creates strict rules on how boys and girls should behave. By looking at Messner's work we can learn more on how masculine identity is shaped at an early age. Most boys are introduced to masculinity in the form of sports because that is what is expected of them. This has to do with how men often are not emotionally present with their children. Through organized sports, boys are able to finally find some form "connection and unity with other people" (Messner, 128). In my case, I was always considered more feminine than most boys. I cried a lot, I mainly played with girls, I did not like sports, and all the other things that are forced onto us as boys. This caused a lot of problems for me at school and within my own home. I was made fun of for being "girly" and would often be ostracized by my peers. This created a big insecurity within myself that made me become very aware of the perception people had of me. I often found myself scared of being thought of as "gay" because of how people treated those that were. The word gay became synonymous with weird and therefore I made it my goal to blend in. I hid my inner traits in order to fit in better and this lasted for years. I became very introverted and hid my emotions from others. This created many problems with my family as well because I felt that I could not trust them since I would hear the same rhetoric from their mouths. I felt very isolated growing up because of the fear of being seen as overly sensitive which led to a lot of mental health problems. This is something that happens a lot with queer youth as they often feel that they have no one in their corner or anyone that they can relate to.

PRIDE

cvale057_ — 2023-11-28 00:20:18 UTC

After I came out I started to see my confidence grow in ways that I would have not imagined. For example, I began expressing myself through fashion and I became more social. It became something that I would even receive praise for which was foreign to me. I loved that I could finally feel confident in my own skin. Not only was I becoming more comfortable with my sexuality but also in who I was as a person. I realized that by being in the closet for so many years I had started to lose my sense of self, and this made me question what I truly was capable of. I did not see myself as someone who could take up space within academia or even society. I began avoiding opportunities that were presented to me because I had become afraid of my own potential. Growing up, I felt that queer people were never taken seriously and therefore were not allowed to have the same opportunities as everyone else. I felt that I had to work twice as hard to be seen as equal to my peers, which stemmed from the fact that I had never seen queer people in positions where they could be praised. I went to my first pride parade this past summer and it was one of the most healing moments of my life. Never in my life had I seen so many queer people be celebrated with love.

Couple of Queens

cvale057_ — 2023-11-28 00:21:29 UTC

Gender has always been something that I have been hyper aware about. Growing up I was always more comfortable expressing myself in ways that are considered more feminine. However, I started to hide this aspect of myself when I started to face homophobia, I felt that if I presented myself more femininely I would open myself up to hate and violence. This fear became a hindrance to the way I expressed myself because I felt that there was someone inside me locked up. It was not until I started to become interested in the art of drag that I realized that I could take up space as a feminine person. I looked at drag performers as people who did not let society dictate how they should present, and this inspired me to do the same. I admired how they could walk out in public and perform for others all while being covered in glitz and glam. They are able to make a living off doing what makes them happy. This idea of being unapologetically queer and fem has been something that I continue to work on, but now I am able to feel proud of who I am without feeling fear. By embracing my feminine aspects, I have been able to feel more comfortable with masculinity as well which has been interesting to see. By embracing both sides of the gender coin, I feel that I present myself more androgynously which has made me feel a lot more comfortable in my own skin. It has also allowed me to kill off the toxic masculine ideals I used to make myself follow in order to fit in because I now realize I get to decide what gender means to me. By looking at Lorber's work we can see how as a society we have made gender become something that is used to divide us rather than unify. This is because gender has become a type of social institution that is used to create "distinguishable social statuses for the assignment of rights and responsibilities" (Lorber, 60). What this means is that we create gender expectations based on the social interactions that we have with one another. Since our society is so divided by gender, it also means that there is inequality. What men do is usually more valued than what women do. Therefore, it is important that we try to educate as many people we can about gender in order to try to minimize the gender inequality that is very present within our society.