Why we need to keep telling queer stories and why we need to keep listening

Imagine a world with enough queer stories to reach everyone. A world with enough representation for everyone to have felt a connection to at least one queer person, real or fictional. I believe this would do so much to normalise being LGBT+. A world where every person on the planet had been exposed, even a little, to the variation in human experiences of sexuality and gender - and a world where everyone had learnt to be open-minded on these topics - is the world I want to live in.

As a Just Like Us ambassador, I go into schools to give talks on LGBT+ identities and how students can be allies to our community. No matter how long the talk will be, we always prioritise the section where we, as ambassadors, share our personal stories of what it was like growing up, in my case, asexual.

Education of the basics is important – we go through many LGBT+ terms and concepts in our school talks – but our stories make the biggest impact. They teach the kids why being inclusive is important and how these topics could affect their peers. There will also be teenagers in the audience who are queer themselves or questioning. Our stories provide them with hope that you can have a good life if you are LGBT+, and show them that they are not alone in how they feel and experience gender or forms of attraction.

I am a big reader, and in my school talks I speak about some of the books and the stories that have made a difference in my life.

Enter Alice Oseman and their book Loveless. Loveless follows Georgia as they start university and question their sexuality, and it is still to this day the closest piece of fiction to my real life. That story reflects so much of what I had experienced and struggled with, and it gave me the permission I needed to call myself ace. It was also one of the things that led me to my asexual community: my ace book club which discussed Loveless at the first meeting I attended.

But, for me, it was immensely important to hear Alice’s story too. I remember watching YouTube interviews of them speaking about being asexual and aromantic and how they wanted to capture that in the character of Georgia. This queer author openly talking about being aroace and writing about aroace lives changed my life, because this person is real. I may not know Alice personally, but hearing what they had to say made me properly realise for the first time that I could be happy with who I am and be valuable to the world by sharing my queerness too.

Not everyone knows an LGBT+ person. Queer stories – whether that be in books, shown in YouTube videos, or those told by Just Like Us ambassadors in schools – all give a glimpse into the lives of LGBT+ people. Queer stories normalise LGBT+ people and our experiences; they educate people in a much more memorable and impactful way than the bare facts and statistics.

I don’t think it’s possible to have too many queer stories, or even enough queer stories. That is not what I think we’re striving towards. I think there will always be a need for new stories to be told. To make them relevant to new generations. To change as politics and society change. To turn up the volume on topics important to the present. So, for that imagined world of mine – a world where queer stories are everywhere - to be a reality, we need to keep telling these stories and keep listening to the ones being told.

I proudly call myself a storyteller. I have experienced the power of queer storytelling time and time again and I will keep telling my story, and the stories of others, for as long as I can.