My Dear Lgbt+ Kids,

My dear lgbt+ kids,

“You are too young to decide you are lgbt+, what if you change your mind? You’ll ruin your life and regret it”.… Let’s do a little reality check on statements like that.

They are based on the idea that identifying as lgbt+ is this huge, life-altering, irreversible decision - but is that true? Let’s assume you identify as lgbt+ for a few years as a teenager and later, as an adult, you don’t feel that way anymore.

Asexual and aromantic: The worst case with those two labels is that you don’t have sex or not date for a few years. This wouldn’t hurt you and is actually not uncommon at all - straight, cis people can also be single for multiple years or start having sex a few years later than their peers without ruining their entire life. If anything, we should be happy about that: Even if you only identify as asexual because you are young and not ready for sex, it still means you won’t have sex before you are truly ready for it (and there’s no risk of STDs or accidental pregnancy!).

Gay, lesbian, bisexual etc: Worst case here is that you date someone you later aren’t attracted to anymore. This is a fairly common experience anyway: Many adults look back at their teenage crush, think “What the heck was I thinking” and laugh about it. First loves are often “experiments” that just teach you more about yourself and what matters to you in a relationship. Your first love doesn’t need to be true love, so it’s not the end of the world if they were the “wrong” gender.

Trans, nonbinary etc.: The worst case for a teenager is in almost all cases simply that you have to go through the effort of telling people to use your birth name and your old pronouns again (and maybe you will change your clothing style or get a hair cut). The only medical option available to teenagers are puberty blockers and their effects are reversible! So, next to changing back your name and pronouns, there may also be the task of talking to your doctor about stopping puberty blockers. But that’s about it. No matter how much transphobes yell about it, it just isn’t true that doctors take one look at their teenage patients and go like “You get surgery! And YOU get surgery! Everybody gets a surgery!”. Generally speaking, doctors do not perform gender affirming surgeries on (or prescribe hormones to) minors at all. (Even as an adult, the journey to surgery is so long and oftentimes difficult, there’d be plenty of time to change your mind.)

Even if you end up changing your mind, you’ll be okay. There’s unnecessary fear-mongering around this topic. Teenagers (and adults) constantly change their mind about all kinds of stuff - exploring and learning new stuff about yourself is a normal part of life. You won’t ruin your future.

With all my love,

Your Tumblr Dad