What was high school like for you?

submitted by BonesReds from self.Lesbians

What was high school like for you? Around what time were you in high school? What was the LGBTQWTF+ rhetoric like at the time? Were you able to be out, or did you need to get a beard? Did you enjoy or hate your high school years?

As for me, I was in high school from 2010-2014 and the TRA and LGBTQ+++ stuff was just getting started once I was about to graduate. I went to a private Christian school and they expelled kids for being gay. No one was out, but a few of us banded together to support each other and shoot the shit at the end of the day. I still dated boys at the time to throw people off, although it didn't always work. I had a lot of fun in high school, but I'd never want to go back. The stress of being possibly expelled and being told I'm going to hell as a dyke was not my favorite experience lol.

How about you guys?

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[–]VioletRemi 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

We don't have such thing as high school, but near ending of school, society was still super homophobic and I did not even know that homosexuality exist (as all info was banned and there were no internet around back then), so I was not really aware that I am a lesbian and thought it is normal to not be attracted to men (I learned about homosexuality 4-6 years after). I mostly had big troubles because of that, tho. I hate whole time being in school and both kids and teachers making fun of me. Gladly people were less agressive to me during later times than when I was in younger classes. I wish I had born in LGB-friendly country instead.

And we do not have american style graduation parties and other similar american things.

[–]SailorMoon2020 6 insightful - 5 fun6 insightful - 4 fun7 insightful - 5 fun -  (3 children)

It was awesome!!! I loved high school and I loved elementary school. Middle school was boring. Spent a lot of time stealing books from the library or browsing Harry Potter and Sailor Moon websites, reading fanfiction during lunch since my friends didn't have my lunch.

For HS, it was cool. I was involved in sports and other organizations, so I traveled throughout the U.S. to numerous states and cities for competitions, games, and conferences.

My friend group was small on purpose; however, I still intermingled with different cliques and groups. The school was racially and economically diverse, so you met a lot of kids from different backgrounds.

The school was very open minded. I had plenty of gay male friends. Knew of bisexual and homosexual females. A lesbian couple won couple of the year in one year because everyone loved them together.

Senior year was my play year. Lol I did nothing because I had all my credits already. I was graduating at the top 10% of my class so I was automatically accepted in the college I wanted to go to. And I began to date three girls.

It was innocent though for the most part since none of us knew how to have sex until much later in the year.

[–]sootsprite 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Why did you steal books from a LIBRARY?

[–]SailorMoon2020 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I liked and still really like books. There were books I wanted to read over and over again, so I stole them. Me and my gay best friend who I actually known since elementary school and he's still my best friend to this day. He would steal all these Goosebumps books while I tended to steal books about female friendship, holocaust stories, and fantasy. I don't know what we were thinking. We just wanted to read!

[–]sootsprite 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I guess we all do weird stuff when we're kids

[–]WildwoodFlower 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

High school stats: 1980s, USA, public school, 99% white, suburban, mostly working class/middle class.

LGBT rhetoric: The initials "LGBT" weren't used together back then. I knew almost nothing about any larger political movement, although this was at the dawn of the AIDS crisis. ACT-UP would have been around back then, but I never heard of it, or the Stonewall riots, or anything else like that until I was in my 20s. The "T" back then stood for transsexual or transvestite, but outside of The Rocky Horror Picture show, I didn't hear much talk about T. "Gay" could refer to either a boy or a girl. I was not raised in a religious home, but there were plenty of preachers and politicians on TV who were happy to tell kids like me that we would go to Hell when we died. For the most part, gay/lesbian meant "bad" or "weird." I could not envision any future for myself with a woman because that just was not part of my world. The "good" news was that popular culture and pop psychology reassured us kids that our same-sex attractions were probably a phase that we would outgrow once we met the right member of the opposite sex. And yes, I believed that.

Was I out? Oh, hell no! Nobody at that school was out. You couldn't take a same-sex date to the school dance, or hold hands with a same-sex friend. Even my lesbian English teacher was in the closet because she would lose her job if she let it be known that her "roommate" was more than just a friend.

Did I have a beard? I had a lot of beards. Nearly all of them were boys who grew up to be gay. But we did NOT talk about that then. I also had a straight boyfriend who didn't like to be touched because his stepfather was beating him. (We didn't talk about that, either. I found out about it after the fact.)

Did I enjoy my high school years? There were certain moments I enjoyed. I made some lifelong friends.

Did I hate my high school years? Not entirely, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live through all that again.

It's also worth noting that there is a lot I don't remember about high school. When I reminisce about elementary school with my friends, I find that I remember things more clearly than they do. But with high school, it's the exact opposite. My friends and my sister have these vivid memories of all this stuff that happened back then, and I just draw a blank.

[–]hatsofpotato 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Trauma erases memories ;) I did a cute little winky-face there because the implication of why you can't remember your experiences is huge. Just my fucked up sense of humor. (I have the same memory problem.)

And isn't it crazy how all us gay kids found each other in those times? All your beards being gay and all? We might not have known at the time, but we somehow subconsciously knew. The gay kids always stuck together, not even knowing each other was gay.

[–]WildwoodFlower 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Oh, I know I spent a good chunk of my high school career mentally checked out. (No, I did not do drugs.) Not all of it was because I was a baby gay; some of it was just plain old boredom.

Yeah, it amazing how the gay kids all found each other. My friends were mostly involved in choir, theatre, band, literary magazine, and newspaper. I also had my share of female friends who were burnouts, but they were all straight.

[–]knownasness 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

it was fun. i goofed off way too much though. it was the early 2000s. there were a dozen or so of us(out of nearly 400) that were out. we didn't wear rainbow gear or have a coalition or club(but we all did play on 1 or more of the same sports teams), it was just another thing we had in common. some of us were involved(not with each other) but we didn't date inside the school. it was normal to us back then but now i'm wondering if it was a gay thing? like maybe subconsciously we didn't want that on display for whatever reason? idk. but yeah. it was a super 'normal' hs experience, i even joined in with the straight girls when they talked about the cute boys in the school. one of said boys had a crush on ME for one year. which was weird. cause i'm masculine. but i mean. whatever. hahah. hs was dope man. if i could do it all over, i def would, but i would hate to have to do it during THIS time. not the virtual learning part, but the TRA taking over everything part. i was able to have a normal hs experience because i didnt center my entire personality around being gay and neither did anyone else. i cannot say that that would be the case if i were in hs today and that sucks. sorry you didnt get to be your truest self at such a critical age <3

[–]lmaonope333 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I graduated HS in June 2019, I went to a Jewish all girls school, same like you, i would've gotten expelled if the administration knew I was a lesbian. there were several other lesbians in my grade but we never really spoke about it. I didn't need a beard, where I come from its so religious that girls weren't allowed to even be friends with boys, theyre expected to get married in their early 20s and the marriages are semi arranged. But thankfully I realized I'm a lesbian before anyone could pressure me into marriage

[–]TzimisceTheEldest 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Pretty mild. I had a steady gf from year 11-13 (that's age 15-17, IIRC) so most people knew, and I only ever got invasive sexual questions from straight girls and some teachers taking us aside for very mild PDA that a straight couple would've gotten away with. This was a private school in a small city in England, for reference, and as angering as some people there were, reading through the rest of this thread, I got away lightly. On top of that, the alphabet soup crew seemed to all be in the year below and only really booming after I left, so that nonsense wasn't a problem, either. Uni, on the other hand...

[–]Anniesworld 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I was in school from 09-2012, at the time in my school people still though it was cool to make fun of something by saying that's so gay.I was quiet and shy so I really didn't date or make my gayness known to anyone. Being shy probably made me more of a target for people to bully me. You know the kind of bulling where you can hear people whisper dike and lesbian but not to your face.That happened a lot in highschool and college, I usually tried to ignore it ,but I stood up for myself a few times. I really hated that people used "that's so gay " and told one of my coworkers how offensive I found it since I was gay. He was actually a very polite mormon guy and he felt bad that he was saying something hurtful so nonchalantly. Another time where things got physical was in culinary class, I used to wear plaid shirts in school and I heard some guys making fun of me in the back. I was in the middle of chopping vegetables when the jock guy if the group came up behind me and grabbed my hips to pretend he was humping me for a laugh. I turned around and showed him the knife between us and said "are you serious I'm holding a knife". He never tried anything again and I actually made some friends with the guys who were laughing at his jokes. High school was an awkward time for me but I really became more of myself during college and at work.