I am not going to deny any perspective on this post as invalid but I also think we mustn’t villainize queer youth. We as a community must relearn what it means to have elders. And that takes both ends of the age spectrum to open their hearts and minds.
“Queer youth of today has forgotten all its history” ? When we’re they supposed to learn? And how are they supposed to forget what they never learned. Knowing our history isn’t inherent. How can they know if they never learned. You are placing an impossible expectation on queer youth to just magically know our history. A majority of our history until the past 10-20 years was passed through tradition, story telling, and signaling.
Our history is still not taught in schools in a broad sense. I am lucky that I was able to write a research paper in the aids epidemic when I was a senior in high school, 4 years ago. I became the expert on the aids epidemic in my class because we were not being to aight that history in our classroom, in San Francisco of all places. In many states and schools that would not be allowed, then and still now.
And by forcing queer youth to self educate through website, YouTube, and research papers, you are erasing a crucial part of queer history in of itself, our history has been passed through tradition, from one queer to another for our entire history, the existence of internet archives does not negate the need for queer to queer communication.
Because even these internet archives where they can go to learn the in depth history are not readily available always- schools have firewalls, parents have the ability to track internet activity- it is not always safe to engage this way. What is readily available are shitty people on social media.
And I am saying this as a 22 year old queer person- I am one of the younger ones. I taught myself a lot of what I know and I was privileged enough to live in a place filled with queer history that allowed me access to it.
If they have no where to turn to how are they supposed to learn. And if elders are accusing them of “spitting on our ancestors” they will not feel inclined to reach out to any other elders who may be able to teach them well.
Queer youth misunderstanding and not knowing our history is different than the people who villainized being queer, who erased us from history books. They are scared 15 year olds who are only being told that they are causing harm and not being given the grace and space to learn what they do not know.
If you think that “queer youth of today has forgotten all its history and are spitting on its ancestors…” then help.
And to my fellow queer youths, do not feel threatened by being told you are wrong. Listen and learn, and understand.
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