Rainbow Reflections: 7 LGBTQIA+ People Share Their Experiences with Labels

By Olivia Williams

When my friend Hannah was about ten years old, she found herself unable to look away from the sight of Christina Ricci on her television. “I panicked that I was a lesbian,” she reveals, before mentally rationalizing away that identity by focusing on the attraction she felt for men. In fact, it took her until freshman year of college to “finally admit I love women and feel comfortable in that,” an identity she said she hid from herself  “probably from age 13 to 18.” Hannah is now happy in her bisexuality. She says, “I’m comfortable being like, ‘Oh, she’s hot’ when watching TV with friends and not feeling like I have to hide that part of myself.”

Hannah is not alone in her struggle to correctly identify her sexuality. According to Gallup, 5.6% of the population in the United States of America today identify as part of the LGB community: either Lesbian, Gay, or Bisexual. The Williams Institute found 0.6% of the population is transgender. Within these scientific labels, however, there are other identities, ranging in terminology and definition. Each person who makes up these statistics has a story, just like Hannah, and just like The Cloud Dancers Foundation founder, Robina Asti. Their stories differ just as much as their subjects do, and exploring them helps us to connect to each other. In fact, that same little ten-year-old on her couch says today that finding a community helped her claim her sexuality. 

Curious as to the differences and similarities in stories like these, Cloud Dancers sat down with seven members of the LGBTQIA+ community from around the world. We spoke about how they have found the identities that they inhabit now, their personal experiences with internalized homophobia, their coming out journeys, and the advice they’d give to the next generation. Compiled into our Rainbow Reflection series, these stories give voice to some of the myriad of experiences held by members of the LGBQTIA+ community.  

For most of the interview participants, distilling their identity down to a few words was nearly impossible, and many of them use multiple identities. In fact, even the process of finding accurate labels for oneself and deciding what labels to use is a deeply personal process, according to MK, who asked to be identified only by their initials. “The limited information I had growing up gave me only so many labels I could use for myself,” MK said, so they had the “impression that I needed labels [in order] to be valid.” 

Even now, some of MK’s description of their identity is marked by their audience. “In terms of sexuality specifically, I use bisexual as well as queer to say I’m attracted to any gender and that gender doesn’t really influence how I feel about people. [Bisexual is] a more known and recognized term and so outwardly, with other people, I use it, but I don’t always feel it internally,” MK said. 

When not editing for a social audience, however, MK tends to focus on three terms: queer, non-binary, and gay: “I basically use these terms because they seem to be the more vague and broad versions of labels and terminology within queer circles.” Using general labels such as queer helps MK to “distance myself from gender and be aware in my otherness.” 

In fact, the universality of the term “queer” seemed to resonate with several participants, including Miriam. “[Q]ueer is the word that overall resonates with me the most because it can encapsulate more than sexuality,” she says. “Destroying the notions of binaries and sex as [just] a reproductive act appeals to me on philosophical and everyday life levels. For now, I’m trying to change the narrative and be more playful around my identity and presentation.”

Emerson also welcomes the freedom of the queer label, and, like Miriam, turns away from the bigender binary by identifying specifically as genderqueer, an identity that is associated with the rejection of the traditional gender binary. As for sexuality, he identifies as quoiromantic. “For me, being quoiromantic is being unable to tell the difference between platonic and romantic attraction. For most people, there’s a clear line between ‘I want to be friends with this person’ and ‘I want to date this person.’ But for me, that line has always had to be explained.” According to LGBTA Wiki, people who identify as quoiromantic, also known as Whatromantic or even WTFromantic, do not want to or cannot define their romantic orientation. It is a “disidentification with the romantic/nonromantic binary.” 

Although the “queer” moniker specifically was not used by the other four participants, three of them had a similar experience while trying to define themselves. “I went with heteroflexible at one point because it feels the most comfortable and accurate,” says Edward, adding that he has also used the “bisexual” label, as well as “pansexual.” “Most of the time I’ll just say straight if asked,” Edward said. “I don’t want to get into the queerness, which I think might be something of a privilege.” 

Similar to Edward, both Kat and Hannah have experimented with calling themselves bisexual. Hannah has kept the definition, saying, “To me, this just means that I’m sexually and romantically attracted to more than one gender.”  “For a long time I identified as bi,” Kat said. “I had inadvertently excluded non-binary people from the narrative I was telling myself.” She now likes the label “pansexual,” which means “I love and am attracted to people without gender or genitalia being a deciding influence. The gender of a potential partner isn’t a factor in entering into relationships for me.”  

Kathryn, who identifies as “graysexual, demisexual, pansexual” acknowledges that her identity might be quite a mouthful to those who aren’t used to it. Going in order of her labels, she explains, “For me, these three labels explain that I rarely experience sexual attraction, that I require an emotional connection to a person before my brain even considers sexual attraction to be an option, and that I have experienced attraction to both men and a genderfluid lesbian (my fiancée).” 

Several interviewees also struggled with reconciling their identities with the world around them, which operated on a baseline of heterosexuality. Kat details how her mom “wanted grandbabies, wanted us to settle down with nice men. My whole family’s default with heteronormative, so I grew up with the idea that straight relationships were the only relationships in my family.” This was only compounded by Kat being “a child of the 80s” and thus experiencing “a lot of deeply concerning conversations around the AIDS crisis,” which made it “hard not to walk away with the idea that straight relationships were safer and more normal/appropriate.” 

Emerson describes being raised in a rural Catholic town. “In school, I was singled out as ‘the queer kid’ [and] bullied often.” Edward remembers “off-handed comments” made by family members which “definitely altered my perception of queerness to some extent, by making it seem out-of-bounds.” He credits the acceptance and tolerance of his friends in his late adolescence for challenging these beliefs.  

For Hannah, who admits to being raised “in a very liberal and left household” with parents who “had friends that were gay” and ensured that she “always grew up knowing it was an okay thing to be,” the world outside of her house was not as accepting. “Outside of my parents, however, I lived in a really small, rural town in Illinois, and homophobia was pretty common,” she says. Stacked against the accepting ideals of her parents, this made for “a weird dichotomy, because I had really supportive parents and lots of my friends were gay, and I consumed a lot of queer media, but kids at my school and adults in the community were pretty homophobic.” 

There is even bias among the LGBTQIA+ community. Speaking for the asexual community, Kathryn says, “[T]he ace narrative is [not] a big enough part of the LGBTQIA+ community or conversation yet,” she says. “It is so common that we are left out, and when you already feel broken or like something is wrong with you, being excluded from conversations or campaigns or charities or communities adds to that feeling. It’s so lonely.” 

It is this kind of loneliness that the Rainbow Reflections series aims to combat.  Visit CloudDancers.org to sign up for email updates and be first to know when the next article in this series is available. The next topic: addressing internalized homophobia.