The Human Experience is Infinite
Marta Peters had always known that she liked both boys and girls, but growing up, she had no interest in actually kissing anyone. She had trouble relating to her friends when they talked about their crushes, and she could not relate to movies in which characters jumped into bed together.
In high school, Ms. Peters began using the website Tumblr, a social media platform popular with teenagers who post about everything from anime to feminism. There, she discovered a language that went far beyond the familiar labels for gender identities and sexual orientation. She learned about asexuals, who do not experience sexual attraction, and gender dysphoria, the distress people feel when their gender identity is different than the sex they were assigned at birth.
Ms. Peters, who recently graduated from Penn State University, today identifies as biromantic and demisexual. She can fall in love with more than one gender, but does not experience any sexual attraction unless she has first formed a strong emotional bond.
“There are a lot more of us than you might think,” said Ms. Peters, 22. “We make all these labels to try to describe the human experience, but that’s kind of impossible because the human experience is infinite.”
Less than two decades ago, those who struggled to understand their sexuality and gender identity had only a few mainstream adjectives to describe themselves — straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. But for the generation of Americans who are coming of age amid social media, marriage equality and a growing understanding of gender fluidity, today’s descriptors are far more wide-ranging.
These days, many teenagers view gender identity as existing on a spectrum. A person’s pronouns, too, are not limited to binary male and female, with the gender-neutral they/them gaining wider usage and acceptance. And there are those who choose different pronouns depending on the gender they most identify with on any given day, and those who at times ask to be referred to by different pronouns in the same sentence, a practice known as rolling pronouns.
More than one-third of Americans who are in their teens and early 20s know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns, according to a recent survey by Pew Research — double the number of those who are in their 40s and triple the number of those in their 50s and 60s.
And nearly half of the 23,000 L.G.B.T. students between the ages of 13 and 21 who were polled in a 2017 survey by GLSEN, an L.G.B.T. youth organization, said they identified as bisexual or pansexual. A quarter identified as transgender, an increase from less than 10 percent in 2013.
Transgender and nonbinary gender identities are not new, but modern technology has enabled young people to easily learn about different identities, said A.T. Furuya, the youth programs manager at GLSEN.
“What’s different now is our mass connection to each other,” said Mx. Furuya, who identifies as a queer, nonbinary transgender person, uses they/them pronouns and a gender-neutral courtesy title. “As we grow into our identities, we’re finding new ways to talk about it because we’re allowed to.”
The rise in transgender and nonbinary identities has prompted some schools and summer camps to become more inclusive, while lawmakers in six states have introduced bills to add a nonbinary marker to driver’s licenses.
But the increasing visibility has also come with a backlash from social conservatives. Several states have passed laws prohibiting transgender students from using bathrooms that do not match their biological sex. And the Trump administration two years ago rescinded Obama-era guidelines for schools to allow such students to do so. Last month, it proposed rolling back civil rights protections for transgender people.
Such policies can have fatal consequences, warned Amit Paley, executive director of The Trevor Project, a group that provides crisis intervention services to L.G.B.T. youths.
The day after President Trump won the 2016 election, Mr. Paley said, the group’s suicide prevention hotline received double the typical number of calls. The group also saw a spike in calls after Mr. Trump announced on Twitter in 2017 that he was reinstating a ban on transgender people serving in the military.
“Words really do matter,” Mr. Paley said.
Lesbian, gay and bisexual high school students are almost five times as likely to attempt suicide compared with their heterosexual peers, according to a 2015 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A study last year found that gender nonconforming youths are at even greater risk, with more than half of the transgender male teenagers who were followed for 36 months attempting suicide. In that same period, 30 percent of transgender female teenagers attempted suicide. Among nonbinary youths, more than 40 percent have tried to take their own life.
But transgender youths who are supported experience notably lower rates of depression, researchers have found.
As a young teenager in Rapid City, S.D., Haley Erickson often watched coming-out videos on YouTube, marveling at how anyone would put themselves in such a vulnerable position. But during her sophomore year of high school, when she began thinking that she might not be straight, Ms. Erikson had no one to compare herself to in her conservative community.
“Being L.G.B.T. wasn’t talked about at all,” said Ms. Erickson, who grew up in a family of cattle ranchers.
So she turned to the internet for guidance. On Pinterest, a digital platform that lets users save images on virtual pinboards, Ms. Erickson, now 18, made a secret board called “My Secret Bi Life,” which she filled with screenshots of supportive memes and photos of happy gay couples.
“A lot of it was letting myself know I was accepted and that being bisexual is valid,” she said. “It allowed me to be comfortable with myself before I was comfortable with telling other people.”
During her junior year, Ms. Erickson came out to her family, together with her gay younger brother, and in February she attended the rodeo with her girlfriend and grandparents.
For Caden Farley, a transgender high school graduate in Fort Lee, N.J., who uses they/them pronouns, figuring out their identity was more complicated.
“I’m in between masculine and feminine,” said Mx. Farley, 18. At first, they came out during freshman year as transgender male, but it was only after discovering the term “nonbinary” online that they felt truly comfortable.
Although L.G.B.T. youths have found refuge online, they often encounter challenges to their sexual and gender identities not only from social conservatives, but from other members of their community. While many L.G.B.T. people have reclaimed the historically pejorative label “queer” as an empowering umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities, others reject the word as offensive.
At the same time, some gender nonbinary people say the term “bisexual” excludes them, and instead prefer “pansexual,” even as some transgender men and women say that term invalidates their gender identity. And many question whether asexuals deserve to be included in a community of minorities that face legal discrimination and violence.
“Some people view this is as ‘L’ versus ‘G’ versus ‘B’ versus ‘T’ versus ‘Q,’” said Kevin Short, 18, a gay man from Lily, Ky., who is starting an organization that provides resources for transgender people. Such debates, he said, can be hurtful to young people struggling for acceptance.
“There are all these queer folks who want to bash other people for their definition of queer,” he said. “If we can’t unify when our rights are being attacked, what’s the point of pride if we can’t be proud of who we are?”
Victor, 18, a bisexual transgender man in Baltimore, said he began to feel gender dysphoria when he started going through puberty in seventh grade, though he did not have a label for those feelings. One day, while online his freshman year of high school, he discovered the term “transgender.” But when he came out as a transgender man, he was criticized by people he thought would be the most supportive: his peers in his school’s gay-straight alliance group who claimed his male gender identity was not legitimate.
“Everyone labeling themselves as transgender was some sort of nonbinary or gender fluid,” said Victor, who asked that he not be fully identified for privacy reasons. “I wasn’t fully accepted because I was a trans man. It felt very isolating.”
Still, Victor said he is thrilled that young people, however they identify, can now find labels and communities that match their personal experience, both online and in the real world.
“It’s validating,” he said. “Being able to discuss these topics openly lets us know we’re not alone.”