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Quote by Grace Perry

“Thus is the defining characteristic of gay millennials: we straddle the pre-Glee and post-Glee worlds. We went to high school when faggot wasn’t even considered an F-word, when being a lesbian meant boys just didn’t want you, when being nonbinary wasn’t even a remote option. We grew up without queer characters in our cartoons or Nickelodeon or Disney or TGIF sitcoms. We were raised in homophobia, came of age as the world changed around us, and are raising children in an age where it’s never been easier to be same-sex parents. We’re both lucky and jealous. As the state of gay evolved culturally and politically, we were old enough to see it and process it and not take it for granted–old enough to know what the world was like without it. Despite the success of Drag Race, the existence of lesbian Christmas rom-coms, and openly transgender Oscar nominees, we haven’t moved on from the trauma of growing up in a culture that hates us. We don’t move on from trauma, really. We can’t really leave it in the past. It becomes a part of us, and we move forward with it. For LGBTQ+ millennials, our pride is couched in painful memories of a culture repulsed and frightened by queerness. That makes us skittish. It makes us loud. It makes us fear that all this progress, all this tolerance , all of Billy Porter's red carpet looks can vanish as quickly as it all appeared.”

Quote by Grace Perry

Work

The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture

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Author

Grace Perry

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“My mind was caught up in an inexplicable mystery! I had changed, and it bothered me. Not like a subtle adaptation one would deem a nuisance, but vitally enough to eat at my gut. Like a snake slithering out of its old, scaly skin, I had somehow shed my previous self—a person whom I feared was my better self. How had this happened? And so fast! So drastically!”

“So, as I sit shaking in my boots and shitting my pants at the mere thought of all this change — of these paradigm shifts that are unseen in any lifetime before ours — I keep reminding myself, always be a beginner, always realize there is something to learn, always remember that you know far less than you think. Be a novice. Be a blank page. Be embryonic in your sense of yourself. You are just learning the steps. You are just starting out. It is okay to be stupid or blind or to not have the answers. It is okay to be wrong, to make mistakes, and to muck it all up. This is all part of the process of becoming. Of enlightenment. Of living. Love it all. The confusion. The mess. The raw, red rims of your eyes. Love the experience of being born. Love the experience of watching the old way of life die. Watch everything burn. Watch everything go. Don’t be afraid. This. This is how you find your way. You don’t notice the changes as they come. You just wake up, one bright morning — sky the color of robin’s eggs — and you realize that you are there. And you open the door and smell the restless air and say a prayer of profound thanks.”