À Fleur De Peau

Artwork Copyright © Tyler Spangler

What have you been up to? Um well it's getting warmer so I've been having to brush my cat every day.

Like no it's not that interesting of a thing to say. But now they can respond to it. They could say, man yeah it really is heating up, I've been trying to think of things to do inside more often. Or, oh you have a cat? What's their name?

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

aces who feel invalid because they only became ace after trauma

bi/pansexuals who feel invalid because most/all of their romantic interests so far have been a specific gender

enbys who feel invalid because their fashion style is stereotypically masculine or feminine

lesbians/gays who feel invalid because they've had childhood, celebrity, or fictional crushes on the opposite sex

aces who feel invalid because they also suffer from hypersexuality

trans people who feel invalid because they still appreciate some things about their agab

aces who feel invalid because they still get aroused despite not wanting to have sex

lesbians/gays who feel invalid because they were in straight relationships before they were out

trans people who feel invalid because they don't want to go on hormones or get surgery for whatever reason

poly people who feel invalid because they've never been in a polyamorous relationship

genderfluid people who feel invalid because they identify as one gender more than others

trans people who feel invalid because they've enjoyed sex as their agab

aroace people who feel like being on the aroace spectrum invalidates their non-straight identity

non-straight people who feel like being non-straight invalidates their aroace identity

any queer person who feels invalid because they've been "fine living in the closet so far"

any queer person who feels invalid because they change their labels a lot

any queer person who feels invalid because they have a lot of labels

any queer person who feels invalid because they only have a few labels

any queer person who feels invalid because they can't find labels that describe them

any queer person who feels invalid because they don't want to find labels that describe them

any queer person who feels invalid because they've been told they're "too young", "confused", "going through a phase", "wrong", "unnatural", "letting their family down", "satanic", or anything else to suppress their queer identity.

You are valid. You will always be valid. Even if you didn't feel like this until recently, even if you don't always feel like this, your queer identity describes who you are and how you feel right now.

You are loved.

Happy Pride.

Don't give up.