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Our Community's Future
Posted by Meredith on Oct 4, 2004 at 04:38PM in News Reports - permalink

Do you remember what it was like growing up as a queer woman? Books like Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues tell of life for a young lesbian in the 1950s and 1960s. Following Stonewall and the gay liberation movement, it was easier for adults to come out as gay, but teenagers still had to struggle along in the closet, fearing ostracism by friends and family. Even when I came of age just a few years ago, there were few resources available to me - I didn't know anybody else at my high school who was queer. Now you can fill a whole shelf with books about gay and lesbian youth, including information on coming out.

One great example of a young proud lesbian is 17-year-old Felicia Holt of New Jersey, who was profiled in a recent Washington Post article called Braving the Streets Her Way. (Registration required; alternatively visit BugMeNot for a free login.) Felicia was friends with Sakia Gunn, a 15-year-old lesbian who was killed last year, and Felicia could very well have met the same fate. Instead, she stood proud as a young butch woman who digs femmes. Like tens of thousands of queer teenagers before her, her family is struggling to understand who she is - and that she's not going to change. Felicia is also an accomplished singer, as today's continuation article Using Her Voice to Rise Above attests.

There were no girls like Felicia twenty years ago. There were no girls like her ten years ago. Five years ago, they started to appear. Now their numbers are growing, and they are the future of lesbian America.