one last thought on this before i fall asleep, which is a half-baked ponder about this particular social impression that queer folks are immature/young/childish, and it feels like this combination of: a society that refuses to acknowledge the validity/existence of queerness, history that disrupted an entire generation of queerness, and the lots of us who are legitimately trying to reclaim/heal from lost parts of our own childhood
basically, that the idea that queerness and immaturity are aligned by default comes from the fucked up notion that there are no queer adults, and we can think about why we don't think there's a such thing as a queer adult.
this will take time to heal from. a lot of us are feral, orphan queers trying to raise ourselves; this is the life we have. next generations do not have to have this life.
in 2007 my partner and i were holding hands on a bench in a city park and a parent with young kids nearby said it wasn't okay for us to do that because her kids could see us and that was just "messed up" and when we ignored her, she called security on us, who told us we weren't doing anything wrong but it would be better if we just left.
a decade from today, teens pretty much won't have to remember a time that gay marriage wasn't legal. makes my heart sing to see queer teens.
i just want them to know that there are also queer adults everywhere because when i was a teen i never got to see queer adults because it was much more illegal
i don't want to just be a weird creep at the teens but sometimes i walk down the street and it's full of very, explicitly, gay teens and i wanna give them all noogies because i remember being a teen and absolutely would not walk around literally displaying queerness on my literal lapels especially not with people over 30 witnessing but can i just be like "hey cool pins" at them sometimes??