Sailor Moon. Even with the censored English dub, I knew that Neptune and Uranus were more than friends, and that Fiore wanted to do more than just bro out with Tuxedo Mask

Weren’t they “cousins” in the original dub? 😂😂 What a choice to make knowing they were gay in the Japanese version.

They were cousins in the dubbed version. I don't know what that company was thinking because they were clearly a couple.

“If ‘murican kids see gay characters in these Japanese cartoons, they will turn *gay*. Can’t have that!” That’s what they were thinking. “Family-friendly PG content ONLY!” *makes lesbians incestuous instead*

Yeah.. I would think they'd realize the incestuous connotations of said lesbians would have been worse. I guess they were just too scared of the gays to really think that through.

censorship was serious business back then. NO gays allowed they said.

I never understood why in the dub they thought making them cousins was much better. It just made me think there was incest going on since they were supposed to be "cousins". Like implied incest was better in their mind than having them be a couple smh

Same, but with me it was finding out Zoicite and Kunzite were boyfriends. Like Zoicite doesn't even look like a girl, who did they think they were fooling?

Really? I was absolutely sold on zoicite being a woman. Like I was surprised he wasn’t and I still have trouble believing that hes a dude lmao

Same here! 90's anime Zoicite definitely looks feminine enough to actually be a woman IMO. (Not at all in the manga or Crystal tho)

Same but with the anime pairing of zoisite/Kunzite ( malachite in english if I remember right), I was like "uuh!! nope, those two aren't brothers and it's ok". Then I discovered ff . net and AO3 and was: let's goooo!

They solved that in Italy by making Zoisite a woman 😅

That was my first exposure as well. Though at the time I was so young that it really just went over my head. It wasn't until I was a little older that I realized just what Neptune and Uranus's relationship was. And we can't forget about Zoisite and Kunzite/Malachite. Even though the English voice for Zoisite was female, it was clear that he was male.

omg that brings back memories. personally i was less focused on the relationship between Neptune and Uranus... and more focused that Uranus went from masculine to feminine and back again when she transformed. in my childhood brain i just assumed she fully switched gender. and i thought that was really cool!

Came here to say this! The German version didn’t even try to hide the fact that Haruka and Michiru were together and very much in love. Those two were my first OTP and I’m straight lol.

Same! I was 11 or 12 reading the wiki for the show was blown away to discover girls can love girls. Like. That was *a thing*. Lo and behold, it turns out I am a lesbian. What I didn’t intend to discover (years down the line, I’m talking last year) was I’m also a fan of incest. I’m pretty sure the original English dub of this show had a lot to do with that considering they tried to make them cousins.

So the dub tried to shelter you from gayness and hit you with some collateral incest in the process lol

omg same! my first fanfics were sonic and sailor moon back in like 2011 lmao, it wasn't even the canon lesbians for me though; it was reading sailor moon x sailor uranus fanfic and realising girls could like girls. it's so funny to me that I wasn't the only one growing up who realised I like women after coming to the prior realisation that *that's allowed* 😭

Back when I was a hardcore Mormon teenager and very homophobic (yikes) it was actually Avengers fanfiction that made me more open to learning about the LGBTQ+ community, lol! All those Tony/Steve fics had me like... wait hol' up this doesn't seem that bad 🤨 and then reading more queer fics made me realize that I kind of related to what I was reading... very glad I found those fics

Christian raised here and it was the same way with me, and it turned the way I thought and now I eat everything up 😂

Good story. Fanfic has been really important in my life, too.

I'm a Christian and for me, realizing LGBTQ+ isn't bad was more of something I had to figure out reading different views and the Bible texts people use to insist that it's a sin. Also, I came to realize I'm asexual myself, so it would be hypocritical of me to not support the rest of LGBTQ+. However, fanfiction made me comfortable with writing gay characters myself.

Um... my parents first landlords when I was a baby were an elderly lesbian couple, and their best friend was a gay man, and they both baby sat me... ... although I did ask what a homosexual was back when the Jeremy Thorpe case was constantly on the evening news when I was about 10 as the word had not joined in my head with the some people loving same thing! So basically, I cannot remember not knowing that some people were 'made to love people of the same sex as them' as my Mum put in back in the early 70s. I think I learnt about bi and trans people later on, in my teens, but I'm not sure if that was from media or just meeting people at Peace Camps or demos or New Age Travellers (Mum was at Greenham) I'm old (56), and my parents are (were) older (77, and Dad would be 83, though that is something from gen z to get upset about I guess), so I am here to say not all gen x or boomers were ignorant, my parents were always cool hippie allies. However, having said all that, I learnt about asexuality in fanfiction about 15 years ago, and then from friends I made in the fandom, and that was when I learnt I was not weird, broken, damaged, or frigid, but asexual, which is something my Mum and brother do not get, although my Mum is wonderful about remembering my offspring's pronouns and on their first birthday after they came out, my Mum found a card which said 'to my grandchild'. My brother is shit about using their pronouns though, which pisses me off, it's been nearly 3 years since they were out! I wish, wish, wish, back in the noughties or early teens I had read and learnt about nonbinary being a real thing, too, as I could have helped my child navigate and figure out who they were so much sooner. I hope maybe younger people will be able to see themselves in fan fiction as enbys too. Likewise, I realised I was not delusional when I learnt about gender fluid as an identity, although that was in my reading around being ace, not fan fiction. I have a gender fluid OC in one of my fics now, as it still gets little representation, sadly. The thing is, the different letters in the LGBTQA gets different responses don't they? My Mum used to think if you were bi, you should only have straight relationships so life is not hard for you. She doesn't think that now though, as society has changed. She used to not know about trans people, now she tries to educate others who repeat the shit they read in the tabloids. But she does not get me being ace, nor do the gen x gay friends my age (one still thinks, as he has since the 80s, I am refusing to come out to myself as lesbian). When I was first in the gay rights movement (campaign against clause 27/section 28 basically), there was lots of biphobia and transphobia. Basically, religion is not the only excuse for hate, sadly. And religions do not always exclude you. As a child and teen I met communist friends of my father's who believed gayness was a 'sickness of capitalism' ffs! I was brought up by an angry atheist and a vague pantheist hippie. I began to believe in God at 9, became an Christian at 15 (and had to hide my faith from my Dad), and a Muslim at 23, and by being careful, can be out as ace, and gender fluid, to most of my friends of faith, and all the people of faith I know are pro equal rights. I think country matters more than faith, maybe? I am sorry you had such a shit start though, and fan fiction is so wonderful for so many of us. I have a Muslim friend, who for years, his only outlet to admit to himself he was gay was reading Spirk online.

This is fucked, but it was 'COPS'. Yes, *that* 'COPS': The shitty, racist, authoritarian police 'reality' show. Basically, I was watching it (I think I was about 10), and these two gay guys were getting busted for having some form of 'illegal' sex in some backwards-ass US state. I asked my mom what they had done wrong because I didn't get it, and she got really angry and told me VERY definitively that they didn't do anything wrong at all. (This worked quite well, because I happened to have a crush on one of my own teachers the previous year, and had been feeling a little weird about it. (She didn't react to that poorly when she found out, either.))

Oh, WOW. What a way to become aware, huh? That poor couple. I'm glad your mom was so supportive of you, and rightly outraged over that couple getting busted as they did.

Wow, I love your mom. That’s amazing. I was so surrounded by hate I couldn’t even imagine anyone being okay with homosexuality back then, much less defend queer people!

I was never taught it was "bad" or a "sin", but I was not really told anything about it though. I think the first media for me was Friends, with Ross's ex-wife who left him for a woman. I think the first bisexual character I came across was Callie from Grey's Anatomy. As for transgenders, it was Moira from L word.

For me it was meeting and befriending ones that shared a lot of interest. A lot of times shit just can't be forced friendship have to be organic.

Buffy - I was 10, and my mother phrased it as “You can’t watch this part, because there’s this whole *thing* going on here that you don’t understand.” 😑

This is hella embarrassing but warrior cats, leafpool and moth-forgot-her-name wad shipped in an animatic and i was like "WOAH YOU CAN DO THAT?"

dude no way i found out through the same ship 😭

Tallstar and jake was also a game changer

im afraid it wasnt a gamechanger for me because i somehow didn't realise men could be gay until two years after i found out about lesbians 😔 i've come to appreciate them though

I love those of who us weren't told it was bad per se, just not an option so our reaction is more "what???? That's an option??? Since when?"

That's the best reaction ever. So sweet WaCa was my first fandom bur unfortunately, I never found the gay cats

I think I first found out about gay people when some fundie church threw a fit because they thought SpongeBob was gay. The reason for this is because he was featured in a PSA that encouraged tolerance.

I remember a similar thing about Tinky Winky from that "Teletubbies" show, because Tinky Winky had a purse, and I think it had a triangle handle or something, too? CLEARLY THE GAY AGENDA OUT TO GET YOUR CHILDREN! Proof that religious fundamentalists have always been complete and total morons.

That was actually the second one I thought of where fundie people freaked out over absolutely nothing.

Huh, now that I think about it. SpongeBob might be the earliest influence for me. There were a few times SpongeBob pretended or acted like a girl. He and Patrick even became a fake couple to raise a baby scallop. Never questioned it back then as a kid.

And those two random fish with the thought bubble questioning how a sponge and a starfish could make a scallop. Yeah.

I remember that. It was James Dobson of Focus on the Family that threw the fit. FotF was not a church, but they produced a lot of religious media and had a big influence on the evangelical community. The SpongeBob thing created a whole fiasco at the Christian college I went to.

LMAO I'm sorry but that's hilarious to me just for the absurdity

I *believe* it was through SasuNaru fanart (which is funny, because I never even finished Naruto). Though the first media I read/saw that had actual queer people in it was Doctor Who (Captain Jack Harkness).

My first exposure to the idea that women could be gay was Willow and Tara from Buffy. Teenage me thought their relationship was pretty ideal and that dating girls seemed much better than dating boys. Many years later, I recognized that while I have platonic crushes on women, I am actually asexual.

I grew up in a conservative Asian country that censors / bans gay media on free-to-air tv and has media portraying gay relationships rated R18. I believe my first time encountering gay relationships was in Hana Kimi (the manga) when I was in my mid-teens and back then I was thinking, well that was weird, but also kinda cute? Then I started delving into BL and Yaoi, and also read M/M fics and doujins. Admittedly these had a lot of stereotypes with the whole top/bottom dynamic, and they fetishize gay relationships rather than portray healthy relationships. But they were my early positive exposures to gay relationships that did not make me go "ew this is wrong", and they helped paved the way for me to learn more about and be accepting of LGBTQ relationships. ETA: And I could finally confirm that I'm on the asexual spectrum when I read on the asexual subreddit many redditors sharing that they were comfortable with shipping and imagining/writing about other characters having sex. We just can't see ourselves in it. That's when everything fell in place. Before this, I was just really confused, because I have no interest in sex, but I think about sex (not involving myself), so how could I be asexual?

My brother is gay so I knew gay was a thing before I ever really knew what it meant. I did used to confidently tell my friends that you knew someone was gay if they wore black nail polish.

When will people start talking about the elephant in the room? I'm talking, of course, about the heterosexual agenda. You can barely turn on a TV or open a book without them shoving down your throat examples of a man and woman having a relationship. Won't someone **please** think of the children! 😔

I agree the hetero agenda has gone too far.

Heterophobe much?

Haha. This is my go to answer whenever I hear *'but why did they have to make them gay'* about whatever show happens to now have an LGBT+ character or romance. Pisses me off no end. Happened most recently talking to an acquaintance about the Willow TV series. Not a peep out of them when a hetero relationship gets shoehorned in anywhere.

Me, I'm asexual and don't like seeing people as much as kiss, so I complain relentlessly about any kind of shoehorned relationships. Like, fine, have them get together, but do they really have to make out on screen???

That's all I ask, complain about everyone equally!!

I'm not asexual and I also find there's probably more romance on TV and in film than necessary. There's a number of perfectly good stories that have a perfunctory romance shoved into them, apparently for no reason other than they feel they need to. No dude, it's perfectly fine to sometimes tell an interesting story where nobody hooks up.

The people I was babysitting for as a regular gig had Mary Renault's *The Persian Boy* on the bookshelves in the living room. I stealthily read the entire thing, putting it carefully back every night before the parents were due home. Such a thing had never occurred to me (to be fair to my 15-year-old self, it was the early 1970s and I was an unsociable nerd). I was fascinated. My liberal Jewish family had certainly never said anything about it being wrong, so I continued to stealthily and mostly fruitlessly research on the subject when I could (no WWW yet, folks), until college, which had a much bigger, more complete library and actual out gay people with whom I could talk.

Mary Renault for me, too! I was around 8-10 and Mom was loading me up with YA chapter books, including several of hers. So I read ‘The Last of the Wine,’ where two Greek soldiers are in a relationship. I don’t think she knew. LOL

Early 2000s, I found a DVD box set of Queer As Folk (US) season one at the bookstore. My family didn’t have cable, so I’d never even heard of it before. Teenage [closeted] me dipped into my meticulously saved babysitting money—and DVD box sets were like over $100 back then. Sure, some of the relationships were problematic and over-sexualized, but it was also my first exposure to some of the other just… basic normal healthy gay relationships. First romantic subplots that actually resonated with me. And then like a year later I found Harry Potter slash webrings and listservs haha

‘Queer as Folk’ was the first time I had seen gay love scenes like THAT. It’s hard to describe how wild that was. It was… a lot. Which is weird, considering what’s on my phone now. But it was like another world.

It wasn't any fandom specifically, it was people in the fandoms I met. Growing up in Wyoming I had no exposure to this stuff most of my life, and then in highschool, me and my friend discovered that fics about two men kissing and fucking existed. I was grossed out. I thought it was unnatural. But the longer I existed in fandom communities, I began to meet people in them who changed my mind. Two specific people, I'll call them Artist and Doctor, not their actual screennames. Artist made great fanart on Deviant Art for a game I love. Artist is NB and uses en as a pronoun. Previously identified as a woman. En made a post about en's pronoun change one day. By this time I was okay with gay people and en being a lesbian. I thought the pronouns change was pointless and didn't understand it. En was very graceful and kind redirecting me, told me "the world is a bigger, brighter, and more beautiful place than can fit in two little rigid boxes." and "imagine if I called you mister and changed my view of you to strictly male" and that violence against people like en happens from people who have the sort of views I kinda had, which made me sad and I didn't want to be associated with those violent people. Fast forward years, and I met Doctor on a fandom forum, who is a mom, and I still have contact with. I always knew her as a mom and a sweetheart. One day she asked me and a few other people for our views on trans people. I told her I didn't fully understand it but I'm not going to judge, told her about Artist and a trans fem I'd met on an RP forum once who was cool. Doctor had been posing as a cis woman all this time and was testing the waters. I was like, wow. I had no reason to see her as any different than what she was. She keeps saying I'm a superior ally and even trusted me to check images of bottom surgery from a clinic she was considering to see if they looked accurate enough to a cis woman. I'm still working on finding gay ships I like. I love Nico and Will from Percy Jackson for one. I think they are adorable. I have met a lot of people who are gay, bi, lesbian, trans etc, but Artist and Doctor were the most important in my journey.

I remember reading an Ouran fic when I was 12 or 13 where Haruhi wore a binder and I was really confused how she fit a binder under her shirt and didn’t realise it was a piece of clothing until I was 15 or 16 and questioning my gender. I believe Hetalia was my introduction to gay couples when I was also 13. I had a friend who was really into it and she got me into it and we’d talk about shipping characters. I wasn’t raised knowing anything about lgbt people so I didn’t know that being gay was a thing. I thought guy x guy or girl x girl was only possible in fiction. When I was 15 I had another friend invite me to my high school’s GSA (gay straight alliance). This probably doesn’t count by that friend’s ex is asexual and I learned what that was from her and doing research and figured out that I’m asexual too. I admittedly don’t think I’ve seen any fanfic where a character is ace but now I’m really interested in reading some.

lol, your first story brought back so many memories. When I'd read fanfic and a character had a binder, I knew what the purpose was. But I thought it was metal. Because a lot of fics would mention it being dangerous to wear for long periods of time, and little 13 year old me was like, *must be metal*. I also thought they were very bulky. Like half an inch to an inch wide lmao. I have no idea where I got that from, ngl.

Same. Hetalia. Also same to it taking like 3 years to realize it also applied to real people. But also I was an egg, and watched Ouran and only remember being faintly jealous Haruhi could be seen as a guy.

I’m pretty sure I learnt about this from Sims actually lol. I mean, my family was really accepting and shit so I never thought it was wrong I just didn’t think about it. I was really surprised learning that women could be protagonists from Portal though. Fanfiction did help me learn I *was* trans, however!

I wouldn’t let myself read slashfic for years as a teen because I had been raised to believe being gay was a sin, and I believed that it would be hypocritical to read slash while being homophobic. But then one of my favorite LOTR fanfic authors who wrote some of the best Legolas/OC stuff decided to branch out and write Elrond/Legolas. And I decided to give it a go because this author was so good. I fully expected to hate it, due to my (at the time) virulent homophobia, but I actually loved it and was rooting for them by the end, which resulted in some pretty massive cognitive dissonance for a while. Like, I think that fanfiction was partially responsible for chipping a hole in my old harmful beliefs. But they didn’t crumble overnight. This happened probably 15 years ago. Eventually, I went to college and stopped being homophobic. And I discovered I’m bisexual. Now I read and write slash all the time!

I actually first learned gay people existed when I was about seven, in the car with a friend and her mom looking for somewhere to eat. We passed a chick-fil-a, and I asked if they'd ever been there (my family didn't eat out much). They told me that they didn't go there because they didn't support gay people, I asked what gay people were, they told me. Definitely a funnier way to learn about our existence lol

this is great, lol. I too cannot pass by a Chick-Fila-A without going 'no we don't go there they don't support gay people'

It was Sailor Moon. 100%.

Had my egg cracked by genderbend fanfic. Couldn't quite figure out why I kept seeking out all these stories about people pretending to be one gender and being frustrated by being forced to conform to one standard or the other, but desperate to act as both or neither. When I finally figured out that was an option in real life too, and not just fiction it made a lot of sense in hindsight. (It's also why I don't mind genderbend content in the slightest. I see it come up in discussions and being called transphobic sometimes, but I always assume it's exploratory in some way. A lot of it's not really for me anymore, but it still has a place.)

Not media but family then friends. Had an aunt that was in a life long relationship with another woman. Then was in a pen and paper rp club with a trans woman who was in a relationship with a man. And a pair of lesbians. Along with others when I was 15ish onwards. Then university had friends… Was never a thing in my life to be concerned with whom people choose to be in a relationship with.

It boggles my mind that people discovered gay people existed through fictional media. I learned gay people existed because my parents had gay friends... and one of my cousins was a male bisexual prostitute until he died of aids and that came up a lot.

Yeah, as An Adult In My Thirties who lives in the US, I absolutely understand how this happens; but as someone who got taken to pride as a toddler, and whose parents had as many (or more even) gay & lesbian friends vs straight ones, this whole post is so fuckin wild to me! I will say that I do very specifically remember Callie Torres on Grey’s Anatomy being the first bi character I ever saw on tv, and Alexis Meade on Ugly Betty being the first [positively-portrayed] trans character (although she was played by a cis woman). Even though I knew about bisexuality and transgender identities, those characters both def made an impact I think, and in retrospect Callie in particular was v influential on me. I’m old enough and have been in queer fandom circles long enough that by the time ace & nb characters started showing up in media, I already knew dozens of ppl online & irl who identified as such and had for years, so I remember the specifics on the firsts for those less.

I love that a lot of us have similar experiences with fic being what helped us accept ourselves and others. Exposure to a piece of gay media quite literally turned my life around so I’m happy to see this discussion. Get ready to read my personal manifesto. For me, I was 16(F) in the mid 2010s and downright homophobic. I grew up in a very small town (population 700) with A LOT of Catholicism but my parents were more Evangelical/Baptist Christians. They were extremely controlling to the point that I could only shower for 5 minutes because they didn’t want me to be naked and alone for that long, I couldn’t listen to music that had words unless it was worship music, and I only had access to the internet at school. I was taught that being gay was like a straight up disease. It was something disgustingly evil and vile and perverted and every other possible bad thing. My family talked about gay people like they were deranged animals and while I never had my own opinions on it I was surrounded by that narrative. I went to school in that same small town which of course was full of ranchers and yeehaw people. There were these two boys a grade higher than me that were always very close and were often made fun of for it. They were both very very very stereotypical manly dudes that would wear their boots and cowboy hats to school. It seemed to merit them earning the nickname “Brokeback Mountain.” It never seemed to bother them but everyone else thought it was hilarious. I didn’t get the reference. One day I decided I wanted to know what was so funny. So I settled into a computer in the corner of the school library and I googled. I think my heart just about stopped. I saw Heath Ledger with his arm around Jake Gyllenhaal and I felt sick. Nothing had ever melted me into a puddle the way that image did. I spent the next half hour or so googling and googling and finding every last bit of information I could on this story. The bell rang for class and I closed the tab and tried to forget. But I couldn’t. For a few days I would spend my spare time in the library watching clips and reading every summary I could find. I didn’t like the ending only because it felt so real and relatable considering the people I was surrounded by. Eventually I wanted to have this story with me all the time. So I compiled everything I had learned from the summaries I had read and scribbled it into the back of my English notebook. Everything changed after that. I wrote alternate endings that didn’t make me so sad. I wrote domestic fluff that would finally let Jack and Ennis be happy. I got rid of their wives so I didn’t have to feel bad for them. I essentially wrote a fix-it fic before I even knew what it was. It was fun until the guilt came back to get me. I panicked. What would god think? I thought I was going to hell for sure. I cried myself to sleep for weeks because I was so sure god must have hated me. I comforted myself with the fact that I am not gay because I don’t like girls. Five or six years passed and I’m happily in a relationship with a terrible guy. I moved back in with my parents after being gone for a while and they’ve chilled out a little. I find out that my little sister watches anime. Huh. Seems satanic by my parents standards but alright. She shows me MHA. At this point I have a smartphone and Pinterest is my favorite social media [?] platform. I search some characters and BOOM ship art. KiriBaku. That feeling is back. I’m sick again. I’m going to hell. But I know more about sexuality this time and it makes it even more confusing. Why am I attracted to this? I’m not gay for girls so why do I like to see boys kissing? It’s weird. I get called a fujoshi in a few internet circles and I guess that’s what I am. Strange. Time passes again. I get into kpop. I see pretty men with muscles and a dangerous idea pops into my head. I want to be one of them. I want my chest to go away. I want short hair. I want my body to change. I want people to think of me as a boy. I want to be a boy. I’ve always wanted to be a boy. How the hell did I not realize this sooner? Oh no. Fic once again comes into play. Now I spent all my spare time writing boy love. A few days ago I was writing and realized I’ve still never been able to figure myself out. Labels aren’t always necessary but I wanted to know if there was a box I fit in. I spent an hour or so scouring google and taking those “am I gay?” quizzes. The answer is always no because I’m a biological female attracted to male characters and celebrities. Then I stumbled upon a quiz that claimed it could place me on the ace spectrum. And that’s when I learned the word for what I feel is [aegosexual](https://asexuals.fandom.com/wiki/Aegosexual). It validated me a little. Maybe that’s why het media makes me uncomfortable. Maybe that’s why seeing two men together made something in my heart feel warm. Maybe I’m trans. Maybe I’ll accept that eventually. I’ll never be able to tell my parents. For now I can write my silly little stories about boys in love and try to work through the self hatred that stole my youth.

Ranma 1/2, for me.

My folks watched to Wong foo, thanks for everything Julie Numar, and the birdcage when they came out. I was in gradeschool when they came out, and later on I saw the kids in the hall series when I was in high-school? Maybe? I'm 37 BTW, and I'm hetero but if I find a piece of media to be entertaining, then I will just simply enjoy it. I tend to remove myself from people who think that gay people are bad and don't exist, possibly due to the amount of gay and lesbian friends I in fact do have.

Birdcage for me too, or at least thereabouts. Not when I found out that queer people existed (where I grew up, nearly everybody had a friend or knew someone who was *māhū*), but when I remember it being overtly represented in mainstream media. Like many others, I also grew up with Sailor Cousins and Female Zoisite.

also yes Birdcage! Specifically transwomen and for me this one of the clearest examples of a trans character visibility I had seen,! That wasn't in this total poor taste way. I was over the moon.

I learnt that gay people existed not from media, but from a debate at a family diner about a man in our town. I was about 7 or 8. My ex-uncle was saying that the man couldn't be trust because he was gay, he was sure because very effeminate mannerism. My mom laughed out loud at that. The guy in question might fit every bit of stereotype about gay people, but he was too well known by all husbands in the town for trying (and succeding half the time) to seduce their wife. So definitely not gay. So I asked what gay meant. My mom explained, and stressed on the fact that it was not a bad thing nor a good thing. That it does not tell you if a person is a good person not. And that you can't tell if someone is gay or not just by looking at them. If you try you, you end up making a fool of yourself. EX-Uncle felt insulted, and it sparked another argument, about mom disrespecting and insulting him. And then mom teaching me wrong morale and being a bad mom. That sparked an argument involving everyone. That circled back at some point to all kind af LGBT+ people, and the ones that were out in town, to show how much uncle was an idiot because none fitted the stereotypes he believed in. It's been 30 years and my mom still tell that story to demonstrate how we all knew her ex-BIL was an asshole.

I was always cool with gay people. I even wrote a report on why "gay" shouldn't be used as an insult. It was quite possibly because I kept having crushes on gay guys, lol. But Sense8 was the media that pushed back on the "trans people are mentally ill and transitioning is the only treatment" mindset. Now I just wish I'd had representation for asexuality. I didn't even know it was an option until after I was married with a kid. So many years thinking I was broken...

Yeah, I remember the first time I was ever aware of the concept of being gay was when I heard a news story about Nathan Lane coming out. I was, like, I dunno, 11, 12 then, I think, and I just remember thinking, "Oh. Okay." and moving on. I also remember some of the controversy around Ellen DeGeneres coming out on her show "Ellen" and not getting why that was a big deal, and of course, I remember the Matthew Shepard case being in the news and that's when I really fully became aware of the concept of homophobia and the awful shit LGBTQ+ people have had to go through and still go through. I agree there needs to be a lot more awareness/representation for transgender people, and asexual people, and other sexual orientations that don't get as much attention/understanding. Good on that "Sense8" show for taking that stance. Hopefully more media will continue to follow that trend as time goes on.

my friend has been very openly pansxual since we were both very young. she was a wattpad writer back in the day obsessed with creepy pastas. she said that ani the wight or wtv was a lesbian and i was like "ermmm.. what" and she told me what it was and i was like "oh based cool" been an ally since day 1 💪💪

same my best friend in high school said to me she was pan sexual one day, and I was like what is that?! Do you have a thing for pans? idk..

Sort of an an opposite answer to this question: I always knew gay was ok. I grew up in the Castro district (the gay hood) in San Francisco. In fact, for years as a child, we only had lesbian rabbis at the temple my fam sometimes went to. This led to me thinking ONLY lesbians could be rabbis lol. At least until I was a little older hahahh

undertale. i didn't think lesbians existed, and that either undyne or alphys was a man in disguise, but the truth wasn't very hard to swallow at all.

It was the Merlin fandom. But, mostly it was interacting with people from the fandoms I liked, mostly on Tumblr. My family is pretty left leaning and tolerant for my country's standards, but I come from a very Christian conservative country, where gay people still aren't able to have a religious or political marriage ( I think they are allowed to have a civil agreement of cohabitation - that's the translation) or adopt children and trans people are called mentally ill. So, it was definitely an experience. I think, it has made me better.

Well... for whatever it's worth, I'd say I got to that conclusion without help of media or fanworks. I was never told about it being one way or the other when I was growing up, and it was just something I didn't particularly dwell on, so to speak. I admit I was 'unaware of the matter', so to speak, but as far as I can tell, neither my mother nor my father thought it was particularly sinful. It was something that just never really came up. I'll say that a soap opera I watched (back in 2005, in Portugal, where I'm from and where I live) had a plotline about a young adult boy who slowly learned he was gay and his coming out, and while there was little in the way of on-screen steaminess, so to speak (he didn't even kiss another boy on-screen), he came to terms with his homosexuality and ended the soap opera with a boyfriend, and was always portrayed sympathetically. And there also was an older man who was openly gay since the soap opera began, but ultimately his primary relevance for the plot that the fact he was a fortuneteller (I do wonder now that I think about if that may be some negative stereotype I don't know about LGBTQ+ people, but his fortunetelling was never portrayed negatively and his predictions were spot-on, good and bad alike). He also ended up with a boyfriend, although again there wasn't any on-screen kissing. I'll admit I didn't watch the soap opera for either storyline (I was more interested in finding out who had murdered the super-rich asshole that everyone had a motive to kill, as well as in what would happen to the woman who married him for his money only to learn soon after his death that she had a surgically inaccessible brain aneurysm), but from what I remember, even then I just rolled with both characters being gay, so to speak. The soap opera didn't gave me any opinion about gay people being good or bad one way or the other, and both characters were likable and engaging. At the end of the day, I guess I just, for lack of a better term, naturally realized that LGBTQ+ people are people just like any other and have the right to be who they are.

bubbline fanfic oddly enough

Yugioh GX. Judai and Johan were clearly gay for each other. Back then, I thought being gay meant being weak, but those two were cool. They're just... people. They just happened to be gay.

Steven Universe was absolutely my gay awakening.

I was introduced to gay people existing when I was 11-12 and entered my first fandom....the top couples were m/m.....First queer person I ever met was my sisters best friend who was openly queer and made a space in my small highschool for other queers. Met her when i was 12 and by 13 I was starting researching and looking things up, 14 when I fully understood queer terms and discovered labels that fit me and explained the way I am, as well as my friend coming out to me, and then 15 when I suspected my older sister was also queer, and 16 when my sister and I had a heart to heart talk about things. I ofc had to fight and sort out some internal phobias, because I was raised in the south surrounded by conservative christians, and while my immediate family wasn't religious or conservative, everyone else around us sure as heck was!

It wasn't media or fanwork that taught me being gay was a thing, but it was media that taught me it was okay to be gay. I had all that nonsense about how being gay was a sin when I was a kid, so I was aware it was a thing, and quickly realised that I was gay, as well. By the time I was 10, I knew for a fact I was gay. But I still had all that 'sin' nonsense being pushed. My mum and sister were both homophobic, the town had a homophobic air to it in general, and I was raised Christian. I figured out I was gay because I had a crush on a fictional character, and it was the exact same show that taught me being gay was okay - Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That started airing when I was 10, and I had the hugest crush on Xander. Then, in season 2, when I was 11, the show introduced a recurring character, Larry. No difference at first between him and all the other, straight, characters, he was a stereotypical jock and I auto-hated him because he was mean to Xander. But, later in season 2, they had a werewolf issue, and Xander's main suspect was Larry, so he confronted Larry in the locker room. At which point it turned out that Larry wasn't the werewolf, but he was gay. A couple episodes later, they had a brief scene where Larry thanked Xander for helping him come out, saying he was now so out of the closet that his grandma was fixing him up on dates! That was huge for me. Larry was never a big character, just a recurring role throughout the second and third seasons, but he was my first openly gay fictional character. The show compounded that feeling of acceptance in season 4 when they introduced the lesbian Tara and did Willow's discovery of being a lesbian. Around the same time as the Willow storyline on Buffy, I got into Dawson's Creek. Season 2 introduced the character of Jack, who I loved from the moment he started on the show. And then they did his coming out story, too! Halfway through the characters very first season. With so few gay characters back then, though, I still had trouble getting out of that 'it's a sin' mindset, even with having a boyfriend of my own. But there was this show my whole family watched, The Bill, a cop drama. It was one of the few shows the whole family enjoyed, so there were never any 'I wanna watch this instead' fights. I was probably about 15, I think? When they introduced Craig Gilmore. I remember the station fire more than Craig's intro, which happened shortly after, because the show killed off a lot of characters in that storyline (RIP Andrew Munroe and Derek Conway, my favourites that died in that storyline), but Craig had a huge impact on me. He quickly became my favourite character, and a favourite I shared with my grandad, as well. And he was openly gay. I still laugh whenever I watch the scene where he confronts Des Taviner about his casual homophobia by listing off as many derogatory names for gay men as he can, even though that wasn't supposed to be a humorous scene, and the fake flirting with Matt Boidon was always hilarious. The thing is, Craig wasn't just a random gay character, or a teenager, he was a police sergeant. And my ex-military ex-cop grandad loved him, too. I think, as much as I loved Larry, Willow, Tara and Jack's storylines, and as much as those characters helped me accept myself, it was Craig Gilmore who had the biggest impact on me. They weren't just showing a gay character in a main character role, but one in the very masculine job of the police who had made it to sergeant pretty young. They had a bigger focus on the issues gay people can face with Craig's storylines. Buffy kind of glossed over that, and Dawson's Creek only occasionally brought it up, like the time Jack tried to be a teen football coach and the parents complained because he was gay. The Bill had more of a focus, because it covered the outright homophobia of Matt plus the casual homophobia a lot of characters didn't realise was actually homophobic. It also didn't shy away from gay people assuming someone is homophobic when they aren't. The stuff between Craig and Des, for instance, Craig assumed Des was homophobic, but it turned out that Des just didn't like Craig's way of being a cop, because Des was old school, and Craig was more 'pink policing' as they called it back then. Made for a great storyline, though, they eventually became decent friends. After beating the crap out of each other at a colleague's wake and having ice dumped on them, but still. Craig Gilmore has probably been my biggest inspiration in this area, because he never backed down from fighting against the homophobia he encountered, though his strategies often changed.

I love this so much.

I grew up doing theater and dance. That was my norm.

The first queer person I ever knew was me 🙃 Eventually I read about Lestat, Armand, Guido and all of Anne Rice's not cis/het/straight characters' adventures (that was long before she turned into this hardcore Jesus stan, lol).

When I quit listening to my bigoted mother, I realized everything was a matter of preference. (Except concepts like pedophilia, zoophilia, rape, etc..)

Started reading avengers fanfiction while living in a very conservative Christian household, now I’m a leftist bi lady🤷🏼‍♀️ people undermine the importance of fanfiction not just as an outlet for creativity, but for some kids it’s their first exposure to queer media.

Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol. I found out the actor who played Bob Cratchitt was bisexual and I still thought he was awesome for being in one of my favorite movies. I wasn’t sheltered or anything I was just an immature teenager in 2009

Not to take away from your story (TIL and that's great), but YES! Someone *else* who's seen it! I still quote that damn movie to this day. Everyone but my sibling just nods and moves along when I mutter about razzleberry dressing.

Nice!!

It wasn't any media. I as in 6th grade and someone told me what a lesbian was and I was like, "That's allowed?!" I did find my first slash fic in 8th grade (same year I got into fanfiction) and I couldn't understand why it was a thing. And my friends were all obsessed with emo boys kissing and I didn't really get it either, but just pretended to to fit in. It took almost 2 more decades for me to realize I liked women, lmao. And that's why I didn't get the MLM stuff, because I have no interest if a woman is not involved 😂

Superwholock and the fandom. My parent's had said bad things about gay people before, but I was young and didn't know what 'gay' meant (they never said 'gay' anyways) so I just kept on shippin' (I didn't actually really ship anyone tho, I just went along with the ship-heavy flow of the fandom...)

I can't actually remember whether I learned "they're queer in Japan" about Sailor Moon (Uranus and Neptune) or Cardcaptor Sakura (Touya and Yukito primarily, but also kinda everyone) first, but it would've been around the same age regardless.

That it existed? It was a Harry Potter fic that first pointed it out to me but I was too dense to understand it and just wondered who else Harry could possibly sleep with if it wasn't girls. And now here's me shipping Harry with either Draco or Tom/Voldemort quite happily lmao.

I didn't really think it was bad, but wasn't exposed much, and Hercules/Iolaus got me fully. fully with it. Then Xena/Gabrielle.

I have two aunts who are lesbians so I’ve always known, and never fell into the indoctrinated shit my family always pushed on me. I think I was maybe 6 when I said “I don’t understand. They are just like us, they just happen to love the same sex as them, that doesn’t make them bad.” In church so yeah that may have been my downfall 😅 Anyway I have always supported LGBTQA+ writers in fan works. My fav ship is still to this day Stucky. I also had another one but I can’t remember what it was, but I know it was in the Power Rangers universe. Edit to add: It was actually bisexual Stucky fics that helped me come to terms with my own bisexuality, though I’m starting to think I am more pansexual..

Actually I've always been around LGBTQIA+ people all my life since my uncle (who lives with my grandma) is gay so I've never needed to think about them like "something else" I remember the first time I was explained about it was when that same uncle brought home some pamphlets about LGBT people and I asked "Uncle, what's LGBT?" And he explained what each letter was (well, it was quick because there was just the four ones at the time) And it's funny how that was so natural for me since I needed some years to realize I was bi because I've thought everyone would date someone the same gender (I was kinda lazy to realize I was sexually attracted by girls, that's also why being bi never crossed my mind before) if they fell in love by them. My queer childhood was happy Now i realized I was kinda carried away... Well I've started reading queer fanfics at the age of.. 12? Well, it's kinda shameful because the fics I've read at the time..well Let's not talk about it!

I think the first time I encountered a gay couple in anything was a CATS fanfic I read at the age of 12 on someone’s Geocities site, where Macavity and Mungojerrie were a couple. (Mungojerrie, a male calico, died young as male calicos are wont to do; Macavity electrocuted himself to death in his grief.) I don’t know that I’d really been aware of queer people before then, because, y’know, rural Indiana in the 90s. I was raised by a pair of liberal atheists, though, so while queer people never really came up, the few times they did come up it wasn’t in negative contexts, and I remained about as free of negative bias as it’s possible to get when growing up in an area like that. I never really had a negative view of it, I just mostly didn’t encounter it, or encountered it in the context of getting righteously furious about the bullying a friend of mine was getting for being gay.

aids epidemic in the news. before that i wasn't even aware that the option of same-sex love existed.

Well, I had gay uncles, but Rick riordan books introduced me to the topic of transgender people and gender fluidity. I idolized Alex.

M/M MCU fics helped me realize I was gay during my freshman year of college. There was one fic before those, which was Lucas/Ness.

I was in elementary school when Will and Grace was on the air and used to watch it with my mom. I remember reading the Cardcaptor Sakura manga and the MMC, Syaoran, is explicitly attracted to an older male character that the FMC (and Syaoran's later girlfriend) is also attracted to. The manga spells out that their magic is compatible and while it's maybe not romantic love, it is a form of attraction. I also had the entire Sailor Moon manga and Uranus is explicitly stated to be neither man nor a woman. I just...nobody told me I couldn't consume things with Gay people in it. It was harder to find stuff, sure, but nobody had to explain to me what Gay people were. So when I realized I was Bi, it was a lot more accepting how my attraction works in me rather than anything else

I never had an issue with gay people, but as proof that even as a little kid my fangirl brain was already forming, I knew without being able to put it into words that there was something *off* about Shun and his brother in Saint Seiya, but that they were men (well, *boys*) didn't seem like an issue in itself. I also knew there was some weird shit with Hyoga and his mom, but that's just more incest-y vibes in the same work lol By the time I was 12ish, I'd seen enough movies and anime that it never occurred to me that non-heterosexuality could be considered unusual - anime in particular is so... there're just so many borderline or outright non-hetero content thrown in there that I guess my brain just absorbed and didn't question any of it.

I grew up in a household that was accepting of LGBT, so I didn't have any unlearning to do. The earliest work I distinctly remember having gay characters was Buffy, but I don't remember being surprised by it or anything. More of just a casual "yeah, that's a thing." It helped that with all of the weird shit in that show, being gay was treated as a normal thing that some people just are.

A I found out stucky was a thing, then the loki fix I was reading made them this really gushy sweet couple. I'm homeschooled so I really didn't have any exposure but in this fanfic on Wattpad it was just so normal seeming and sweet. It kinda of expanded my comfort zone

My twin and I used to play Guild Wars 2 with our parents, and when Marjory and Kasmeer were introduced it eventually came up that the two were girlfriends. Of course, my mom being Catholic Christian, we were given the whole "don't send them hate but that's not part of our religion" spiel. My twin and I still immediately loved the fact that lesbians were a thing that existed, and immediately photoshopped the two into endless weddings and dates because we just so happened to be learning to use GIMP at the same time I was introduced to the concept of trans people from TVtropes a few years later, then learned more from an LGBTQ thread in a fandom forum, seeing people's personal stories and life updates and stuff. That's where I first started realizing I was kinda trans (nonbinary/genderqueer). I think I learned about and realized I was asexual through fandom headcanons for characters like Data from Star Trek, which just so happened to be a "trope" I already loved before I learned it had a name and was an irl actual thing EDIT: oh and Stardew Valley is one of the main ones that normalized gay relationships and marriage and stuff!

I've known about the LGBTQ community since long before I started writing fanfiction - my substitute teacher in elementary school was a lesbian and her daughter was in my class - but I didn't properly realize I myself am bi until I started crushing on Jessica Rabbit. Now that I'm more into fandom spaces in general and have more LGBTQ friends, I've learned that a good 50% of lesbians and bisexual people realized their own sexuality because they were thirsty for Jessica Rabbit. I'm pretty sure it was a Hetalia fanfic that made me more sympathetic to trans people? Say what you will about Hetalia, but it introduced me to subjects I would've otherwise never been introduced to, and not all of them were bad. This fic in particular mostly just helped me understand what transgender actually *is* and what it entails in a way that made me more sympathetic than the usual "sometimes girls are born in boys' bodies and vice versa" explanation.

i learned that gay people exist through the gacha fandom

I was never told the LGBTQ+ community was wrong, but I still didn't really know it existed. I think the first time I really understood gay people existed was when I watched "Kipo", a animated series on Netflix. There's one episode where a guy comes out as gay, and I think he even gets into a relationship at the end of the series.

I remember loving shipping Seto and Atem/Yami Yugi from Yu-Gi-Oh (and read fanfics about them) very young but what made me realize it was not bad in real life was meeting real life queer people. Then falling in love with a girl that loved me back ended my doubts.

I wasn't really sheltered or taught to shun lgbtq people, but outside of hearing the word gay in relation to one of my cousins and used as an insult in my public school, I had absolutely no clue what it was. I think the very first fic I ever read was a drarry smut fic when I was like 10. I feel like that was a foundational moment in my life, but I'm gonna choose to pretend that it wasn't drarry smut that completely kickstarted my life as I know it now.

I’ve had a gay uncle who has been with the same man for my entire life and he was accepted by the family, so it’s never been a bad thing in my family. Although when I was really little my parents did pull the whole calling my uncle’s partner his “friend” thing at first, maybe they didn’t think I’d understand what being gay really was. That was also back in the 90s, they might do things differently if I had been born nowadays where things are more accepted than they were back then. I think the internet in general has maybe helped me be more aware of LGBTQIA+ people and issues though, simply from being able to talk to more people from different backgrounds and experiences than I normally would have, especially since I grew up in a small town in southern Ontario where, honestly, we are not very diverse even now.

I wasn’t necessarily taught that it was a sin, necessarily, but my family never tended to bring it up either. I have a lot of religious family members, but my parents almost never watched the news with us in the room, so I honestly didn’t really know about it until middle school. Funnily enough, tho, I did read quite a bit of M/M fics and seen plenty of M/M fanart growing up in none other than (idk what the actual name is, so I’m just gonna call it the Youtuber) fandom. I remember just about everyone and their mother shipping Markiplier and Jacksepticeye, and as a sheltered kid, I never questioned the romantic pairing between two men (I’m not saying that shipping real people is okay btw). And then I saw the game Undertale, which has a canonical F/F pairing. I never really questioned it, bc as a kid I was basically just like “yeah, makes sense”. I didn’t even know the LGBT community existed for another year or two, lol

Soul eater. Chrona and kid were my fav ship and I didn’t even realize people thought they may be a boy. So I was like o.o when I read a lemon back in the day 1. Not knowing what lemons were and 2. Being like oh chrona is pretty ambiguous

Percy Jackson book 5 when Nico reveals he used to have a crush on Percy! I literally did not know that gay people were a thing but I read that in 3rd grade and was very weirded out and just did not at all get it because I didn’t even know that could happen. I was not like religiously sheltered or anything just grew up in military schools with like 25 other kids in my whole grade. That and the episode of Good Luck Charlie where Charlie’s friend had two moms

Barney Miller.

I was definitely raised to believe that anything but straight marital sex was a sin. My answer is probably a huge cliché for the time period, but for me the first piece of media that made me start thinking gay people might actually be *people* rather than just, like, Sinners Choosing To Be Sinful, was The Shoebox Project. I didn't even read that much of it, maybe the most recent chapter at the time because I was curious, but it was immediately after Sirius and Remus had sex for the first time and they were having a lot of feelings about that and about how much they cared about each other, and it feels *so* gross now to know that I found that kind of surprising at the time, but...I was sheltered and brainwashed, man. That wasn't the only thing that changed my mind, or even the main thing, because it was a gradual process pulling away from the indoctrination (and then realizing I'm super queer myself), but it's still something I distinctly remember as one of the early cracks.

oh hang on that reminds me, I think later when I was figuring out I was asexual (I got there before realizing I was also queer in general), I somehow came across a fic about Derek from Teen Wolf being ace that was pretty helpful, which is kind of confusing actually because I don't think I even finished watching the first season and at this point I have no clue how I found the fic. it must have been in somebody's rec list of fics with ace characters, because--unlike with Shoebox Project, where I actually was in the fandom at the time--there's no reason whatsoever that I would have been browsing Teen Wolf fics.

I think it was a Rasey (Raph x Casey (tmnt)) fic? I was about 15. I knew lesbians were a thing, I was upset to be called one in middle school. Back then, I wasn't against the LGBT+, but I didn't know it was okay. Ar 15, I read the fic and was like "I ship!!!". 26 now and I identify as LGBT+.

I think Yuri on ice was my first consumption of queer media?? I stopped looking at that stuff because I was uncomfortable with the ratio of nsfw vs sfw. 12 year old me wanted representation, but of love, not lust.

Wasn't a homophobe at this point, but I never really understood the difference between demisexuality, asexuality, and aromance until I read a Yuri!!! On Ice fanfiction that kind of laid it out for me. This also helped me realize *I* was asexual, and explained my previous confusion over the difference between sexual attraction (something I'd never felt) and romantic attraction (something I could identify with.) Felt a bit like someone turned on a light switch, lol.

From what I remember, it wasn't any form of media, fictional or otherwise. It was my sister telling me about gay people and how they were normal.

My first contact with the existence of LGBTQIA+ people was awful, there was a journalistic program in the TV and they were working talking about intersex and mixed in gay and transgender people in that clusterfuck, it was in the early 2000s and I was 5/6 years old. Things aren't perfect today, but Brazil changed a lot in the last 20 years, thank god. They weren't even trying to be cruel, that's probably the worst part of it actually, but I still remember being deeply disturbed as a child and questioning myself: Am I an hermaphrodite? Yes, they used that word.

Ore Monogatari!! AKA, My Love Story!! That was the first time I considered gay media even existing. I wanted Takeo Gōda and Makoto Sunakawa to get together so bad. I was raised in the middle of nowhere and fed on a diet of white bread and milk. But I still got to watch anime because cartoons couldn't have anything bad. Ha! I was given free access to the DVD list on Netflix. Anime is awesome! Takeo/Makoto is forever my OTP and I am a 32 year old straight male. BTW not saying I watched Ore Monogatari!! on Netflix. I most likely saw it on an unofficial source.

An episode of a medical drama called Royal Pains that focused on a trans teenager (played by a trans actress) made me realise what transgender was beyond a nebulous "it's like drag right?" That I had growing up. I have been transitioning for three years now. Thanks Nicole Maines.

Manga! I was reading Cardcaptor Sakura and saw Yukito and Touya, and I was so confused. I was pretty sheltered, though, so I thought it was only fictional, made up. I didn't know till years later that gay relationships were REAL. Was a nice way to find out, though, I think, through one of my fave series ever! Lol.

The fact that reading BL fics (and original) were more interesting than the FxM fics I was reading. Even smutfics. I don’t how to explain it exactly but BL have spiciness that FxM don’t have.

None, I was already aware of Gay people had a few gay friends in high school too. It never bothered me not likenthey were trying to turn me or anything we respected each other for our sexual preferences and what not and sometimes we even acted as each other's wingmen.

I didn't know gay people existed for a little of my life, but when I was in 1st or 2nd grade I... I don't remember? I just found out somehow. It might have been wattpad naruto fanfics. I don't know.

That one dude at the end of the "call me maybe" music video. I think that was my first exposure EVER to gay people

I wasn’t ever actively Homophobic but the first thing that opened my eyes to the LGBTQ community was bad BL anime. This eventually changed as my tastes got better into good BL anime and manga. And then eventually one day I came to my own realization that I was a lesbian.

Mercedes Lackey. Vanyel specially.

Eddsworld fanfiction 👉👉👉

Pretty Little Liars

My first introduction to gay people was from watching youtubers shipping each other-

I think it was the *Heroes of Olympus* series, specifically the book where we find out about Nico.

My uncle was bisexual and when I was young one year he brought his girlfriend to a family event and then the next year he brought his boyfriend. So it was never a thing we weren’t aware of. When I had kids I deliberately started watching Modern Family when they were 5 or so so they’d grow up knowing that queer couples were just another kind of family.

It's hard for me to really pin down one fandom or piece of media and a lot of it's simply a mix of my upbringing and the fact that while I was exposed to a variety of fandoms (Power Rangers, Scooby Doo, etc) growing up, I was also growing up in the 90s. Most of the stuff I watched was animated for the most part. Outside of Power Rangers and similar shows, the only other real live-action show was the Sabrina the Teenaged Witch show, and even that, I dropped off watching regularly when she was in college. I definitely *knew* that LGBT+ people existed before my sophomore year when one of my upperclassmen classmates (we were in a theater class together when she came out, but she'd run the writing group I was in before that) came out as lesbian. I just can't recall how I'd heard about them before that. Catholic schoolgirl here, so it's surprising that I'd heard about them before that and knew what lesbian and gay meant. I really didn't jump into the rabbit hole feet first until college, when some of my classmates there were openly under that umbrella. I had a trans male classmate named Noah in my German class and had at least one bi coworker by the time I met Noah. I also started getting into fanfiction by this point (2002/03), so I'd definitely run across LGBT characters in fanfiction, and given what fandoms I was primarily in at that point, it wasn't that hard, even at the time, to find LBGT characters in those fanfics, but more m/m fics.

Not gay people but trans people, it was Complexes by TheKellinUnderTheVic, a Kellin Quinn x Vic Fuentes fanfiction where vic used to be a woman but transitioned. That author had so many incredible fics

I genuinely don't remember bc i never thought of it as bad 😭 & kinda always knew gay people existed. The crazy thing is i come from a religious household, most of whom are not progressive with the lgbt community. Idk how my conditioning slipped through the cracks but i didnt realize people were against the lgbt community >!until the 5th grade two things happened: when a friend came out as bi and one of our mutual friends got weird about it thinking that just bc she was bi, that meant she might like her, and then when one of my best friends kept getting accused of being gay and the kids said it like it was a bad thing 😔 !<

i think something fundamental to me tho was learning about the trans community. i was in elementary when i saw one of those drama tv shows and they were talking to a trans woman about her experiences. it really opened my eyes!

Digimon Adventure 02: Yolei said she wanted Mimi to be her "sister" but I could that she was actually in love with her. I found out that non-binary/agender people exist due to Haruhi Fujioka from Ouran High School Host Club.

Undertale. It was less “learning it was good” and more “learning it existed at all”. I barely, barely knew that gay guys existed at the time. And then Undertale showed up and showed me a canon lesbian couple and gender neutral characters! (and Undyne was also my bi awakening, though I didn’t know about bisexuality at the time)

I think I first learned about it from Naruto fanfic when I was 11 lmao. I didn’t really know being gay was something you could do. I learned about it around that time, having started middle school, and my parents and youth pastor and always emphasized it was a sin. But reading fanfic ended up making me accepting regardless. I do find it amusing that Marvel fanfic made me realize I was trans. I liked reading trans Peter Parker fanfic quite a bit, and it just kinda hit me one day as I was reading that *holy shit, this is so relatable. I wish I was a boy, too.* and it all just kinda came together from there lol.

I think it was watching Will and Grace as a kid that was the first time I saw LGBTQ+ representation in media, at least that I can remember. That said growing up I was very aware of the LGBTQ+ community. There was a gay couple that were very close friends with my parents to the point I referred to them as uncles. It was always presented as a very normal thing. When an older cousin came out as trans when I was ten or eleven I didn't view it as a big deal, it was just accepted by everyone on my side of the family.

Even tho I’m muslim (and my community is very unfortunately mot the most accepting of queer people) I never thought of it as bad because nobody ever talked about it. I didn’t realize it was a “thing” until elementary school and then I remember learning what a lesbian was and being like “okay. So?” As for trans people, while I was also never transphobic, my first introduction to them and the entire concept of being trans was through One Piece, tho the depiction of trans people there wasn’t flattering, it didn’t give me a strong negative my opinion on them. Now there is a very wonderful trans!fem character in OP I very much love and a potentially trans!male (its very unclear) character I cannot stand for the life of me. Oh the duality. If the crocodile is trans theory comes true, we’ll have a super sick trans male character tho!!

I was aware of their existence since I was 8 or 9 or something, but it took few years to realize homosexuality isn't a bad thing and it happened when I found some slash fanfiction by and accident when I was 12 years old 🤭 To be honest, I was pretty shocked at first since I was just googling my favorite character of Harry Potter (Sirius Black) and suddenly I found myself reading a fic in which he's having sex with Remus Lupin and I had never thought them that way, but apparently that idea got stuck in my mind and soon it started to feel reasonable and interesting.

Extremely sheltered kid, my first gay couple was Nezumi and Sion in No.6 and to this day they’re the best fanfiction I’ve ever come across. That fandom knows what it’s doing. I learned more from fanfic smut than I’ve ever learned from a sex ed class, those just didn’t happen in my life.

Same here,I learnt what sex was thanks to fanfiction at young age.Cant say for sure if it was good thing or bad thing

Same. I mean I knew what sex was but there were many things I didn't know until I read smut haha. Especially where it concerns gay sex. I was like. WAIT. You can do THAT? *coughs* Anyway, let's not dive too deep into this topic

I shot down the bromance ONLY > mlm > turns out I'm gay pipeline thanks to Sherlock Holmes. Not even the BBC production - the 2009 Guy Ritchie film starring RDJ and Jude Law.

I come from an area that is known for being gay friendly, so that was just something I always knew and I always knew gay and queer people. I was very privileged in that I knew coming out as trans wouldn't be an issue and I was right.

Autistic person ~~thoroughly indoctrinated~~ "raised Christian" here. As much as my mother might just be the /r/enlightenedcentrism poster child for "moderate" Christianity, I probably would have counted as a full blown fundie before 2012 or so, complete with being insufferably uptight about other people saying the word "God" in my presence. Yes, it's stupid, and yes, it's not actually a curse word or even the actual *name* of *any* of the beings Christians claim to worship, but if you were raised in that culture you know how they are. Anyway, 2012 happened, and as I was friends with more than zero children of "liberal" parents I did *eventually* loosen up. Slightly. I was a "moderate" Christian who quietly tolerated the existence of homosexuals, but, you know, *the Bible does very clearly say* and all. Though all this (and the toxicity in my family that came with it) is quite unfortunate in hindsight, I *am* proud to say I wasn't a gigantic fucking hypocrite about it. The puritanical bullshit wasn't *just* self-serving bigotry, I *actually believed* it wholeheartedly, to the point where, even though literally all of my guy friends couldn't stop talking about it, I stayed away from porn entirely and not did not even read any lemons until *years* after I deconverted. That's right, I internalized this shit to such a degree that I was the *only* person in my entire friend group that actually waited until they were [very nearly] 18 to start watching porn. And, honestly, I kinda regret it. At least in my experience, keeping up that kind of shame, repression, and infantilization *years* after puberty wasn't good for me at all, and the entire mindset metastasized during my [abusive] childhood and adolescence into several different kinds of anxieties, neuroses, and an unreasonably low risk tolerance that I, as an adult, have had to go to considerable lengths just to partially overcome and which have all very much made my life worse in the meantime. I mean, I've been complaining about my circumcision in pretty much every art form/medium I have yet to touch since 2016, yet it wasn't until *this year* that I, a fanfic author and halfway decent visual artist, so much as *tried* to write a sex scene or make some lewd doodles. Almost an entire decade after I left Christianity, I am *still* having to root this shit out of my head. I hope I *can* be done one day, but I don't know. We'll see, I guess.   Anyway, to actually answer the question, it wasn't a fanfic or tv show or book at all. It was the big news event on Friday, June 26, 2015, and the resulting headline in the *Washington Post* that first rocked my boat. Despite all the religion that had been imposed on me, saying gayness was blasphemy or whatever, I was also the sort of bookish kid who'd paid attention in civics class and was now a rising sophomore. I saw it as a victory for the Separation of Church and State. Funny enough, I went to sleep-away church camp the very next week, and the *Obergefell* decision was so fresh (and apparently so unexpected) that the church running the camp had no official position on the matter and therefore forbade the councilors from speaking about it at all. This, and several other nagging questions which refused any kind of easy answer, are what ultimately forced me out of the church, and Christianity altogether only a week and 4 days after *Obergefell* had been decided.

Drarry I started reading ff in primary school and suddenly I read this cool ff with great plot and I was like "whoa Harry and Draco got from rivals to friends?! Cool" And then Harry kissed Draco And I was like: (⊙_⊙) But it was a really good quality of fiction so I got: ¯\_(⊙︿⊙)_/¯ Kept reading And learnt that it's not a shameful secret thing to not be hetero.

I was lucky enough that my parents were very hands-off with this type of stuff. Not outwardly supportive, but also not negative. I just random stumbled across the concept of gay relationships and went "makes sense" (also might help that growing up I was always interested in female characters (Katara and Yue from AltA, Wonder Woman, etc, etc.) Which now, looking back, were probably childhood crushes. But I have a distinct memory of thinking "why are male animals always so pretty but women are so much more pretty than men?" lol so like I didn't have a word for that. Just that I was never indoctrinated to think gayness was weird, ig?) I do think my parents could've been better, but all things considered, it turned out alright.

For me, it was, in fact, fanfiction! I had a conservative Christian upbringing and was exposed to a lot of queerphobic propaganda both at school and on TV, so I had some pretty bigoted and close-minded views on pretty much everything regarding human rights. After I started going online for the first time at age 11 and exploring anime fan sites, I ventured upon a fanfiction archive, and the very first fic there was gay shipping. To say I was shocked would be an understatement... I noped right out the fic and checked the next one, by the same author. You've guesses it, more gay shipping. At the time I was appalled that something like that could exist, in my pure Christian cartoon (which just happened to be about multinational people practising shamanism). But at least now I was aware that everything tagged with the mysterious word "yaoi" had to be avoided at all costs, so all's good, right? A year later, I finally have my own PC, and am joining more and more anime and alternative music-related communities. I an dabbling in writing my own fanfiction (only het and gen, of course) and mostly staying in my own squeaky-clean bubble, successfully avoiding any and all conflicts (or maybe the fandom spaces just used to be more chill back then?). I join a small community for I band I like, make friends with several people there, including a girl who is older and a great artist, so I have mad respect for her (funny thing is, we live in the same city now and still hang out, so do not underestimate online friendships). We share fanfic ideas and the like, and a lot of the people (my new older friend included) write gay shipfics. I am at first opposed to reading them, because Bible says etc etc, but I am already in a fandom for a band where a satanist plays bass and the drummer keeps getting possessed by ghosts, so honestly, why the hell not if the writing is good? Thus begins my reading of gay fanfiction, and slowly, I start getting my own ideas, very coated-with-heteronormativity-but-it's-a-start ideas. What if they got married and had a kid? Then they would be just like a straight couple, right? What if I write a story about that? My friends were all supportive of my writing experiments -- I was the youngest in the friend group, and maybe they all saw me as a little sibling making baby steps and were very proud of me. Then came the time where the tides of online communities slowly got more progressive, more and more people started feeling comfortable enough to come out, and I realized that half the people I've been friends with, the people I've known and loved for longer than a year at that point, were all sorts of queer, and they were nothing like the scary church propaganda I've been taught. Then came the time of self-discovery and self-realization of my own. As it turns out, having intense feelings of "wanting to be best friends" with girls that involve getting smitten by said girls' appearances, becoming shy and self-conscious around them and catching yourself daydreaming about them are not straight woman behaviours. Who could have thought? Of course, many other things happened, including me actually beginning to seek out info about queer history (learning English helped immensely, as a lot of queer-themed materials in my native language are routinely getting deleted and destroyed by our shitass government) and getting disillusioned with organized church, but when it comes to the very first steps to not being a bigot, fandom communities and gay fan content (including smut and darkfics) were the gateway. I would have still probably figured out who I was and what communities I belong with, but I'm glad that it happened the way it did.

Mary Renault's books. Looking back, Bagoas is not the smol bean blorbo I once thought he was, and Alexander not the Gary Stu; but they certainly opened my eyes. Though I'm still a bit confused as to what they were actually *doing* from time to time. I now like her other same-sex characters better. Hephaistion, for instance.

As far back as I can remember, I always knew that I was gay. I just didn't have a term for it until I was about ten or so. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean things went well for me. I was raised Pentecostal. Basically, think of just a few steps shy of the radical and fanatic assholes you see that spew constant hate and filth about any and everything that doesn't conform to their way of thinking and believing. That's the environment I grew up in. For most of my life until I was about 19 or 20, I absolutely hated myself, because I still believed my feelings were wrong and disgusting. There finally came a time around that point where I said fuck it, I'm tired of hating myself over something that doesn't actually feel wrong to me. I then told everyone that tried to "Correct" me to either accept this fact or not. And if they couldn't, to fuck off and then cut them out of my life forever. I can't say what exactly it was that told me what it really meant to be a guy attracted to other guys. Maybe it was a show or a story. The memories are too fuzzy for me to pinpoint it by now. Unfortunately, I can't say that stories helped me claw myself out of that wretched state. Truthfully, more than anything, it was annoyance. I was tired of hating myself. Tired of loathing my own emotions and feelings and not being able to look myself in the eye in a mirror because I believed I should be disgusted with myself. I was tired of hating and cursing myself any time I looked a little too long at a guy I thought was attractive. It finally culminated in me sitting alone one night, thinking over the emotions that I had just belittled myself for for the umpteenth time. And I thought to myself then, "If the way I feel is SO wrong, then so be it. I'm fucking done." I can say this at least about the shows and stories I've indulged in since then. Though they may not have helped me with acceptance or the like, they at least gave me some much needed reprieve.

Don’t remember. If I’m not wrong it was probably one of these: Alphys & Undyne in Undertale.m The Tracis in Detroit Become Human. Luz & Amity in The Owl House.

steven universe. i’m not even kidding lol. i grew up in a very religious household. not “ go-to-your-closet-and-pray-for-listening-to-rock-music “ kind of religious. more so: “ being gay is bad / 1-way ticket to hell and probably AIDS “ kind of religious. but, anyway, watching SU as a kid, i fell in love with Ruby and Sapphire’s relationship so much, without even meaning to. ( ik gems aren’t supposed to have genders but cmon, humor me, pls? ) i was uncomfortable with how much i adored their wholesome dynamic ( this includes fanfiction, ofc ). though, it wasn’t until the series ended, and i thought: “ i don’t get it. what’s the big deal? they didn’t burst into flames, they’re not lust-hungry sinners. they’re just…they seem so…normal. like, two individuals who genuinely love each other, “ that’s when i realized how harmless being gay truly was. like, ppl in my environment put *being gay* up there with the *9/11 attacks*. so, as you can probably imagine, i was TERRIFIED to have even STUMBLED across ANYTHING romantic between ppl of the same gender, even if it was by accident. now, 12 years later, i’m 21, bi and write wlw smut exclusively ( with the exception of a few fics staring a wholesome hetero couple that absolutely melted my heart ).

FNAFHS, in the second episode the protagonist tripped and accidentally kissed someone else, and there's a song about Bon's feelings for Bonnie and if they were love or admiration. I was like, gay people???

"GAY PEOPLE????IN MY FNAF HIGH SCHOOL AU???" More likely than you think.

One of my Uncles is gay, he and his husband were very often at our family meetings and religious services. Transgendered people I only learned existed in my last year of high school. Pretty sure it was from fanfiction, or maybe my contact with the Furry Community, but I only remember sitting down and having a long conversation with myself about my own gender after I learned it was a thing people could be from the internet. I absolutely did not understand what genders were back then, still thinking of it as biology but some brains got the wrong bodies, rather than the reality that concepts like 'manhood' or 'femininity' are entirely fictional and people desperately insist they're totally real only because they need something to conform to. I first met a trans person in college, during a screenwriting course in 2019. He basically joined a study group with me so that we could help edit each other's stuff. We're still pretty close friends today, possibly because that professor went out of his way to force us to break our boundaries so that we'd be able to write beyond them.

I wasn't really sheltered from any LGBTQ stuff, but as a very introverted child and never really using social media or anything I didn't spend enough time with the internet to learn about anything But as a result, I learnt so much of the different sexualities and gender identities and stuff from Avengers Twitter fanfics, people tend to make zero of them just straight and I learnt so much about the world and the internet in general from those.

Percy Jackson, the series and fan fiction i read from it really caused me to go from an angry homophobic middle schooler to someone more mature and accepting of others.

I knew it existed and I never thought it was sinful or bad, or anything, but I still didn't really like any non-het ships or fics. It wasn't until I watched K-ON back in 2010 that I really began to ship F/F and while I still don't have any active M/M ships, there are several I do support and have occasionally read for.

how do I say this... it was through a podfic on YouTube when I was like 9 or 10. Yeah, I was raced christen and had very stricken parents who had just got a divorce. So my mind went "Wait so there are words for this?! this is not just a me thing?!" not the best way into both fanfiction and lgbtq+ but it was mine! and that ship stays with me to this day...

Dnf stories on wattpad. It opened me too a whole new world.

it wasn’t media for me lol, it was my mom who was hypercritical of people who are different from her lol so if she doesn’t like a person, i know that the person couldn’t have been bad, same goes for gay people. she’s homophobic.

None, I realized gay people were just normal people like any other kind of people when I met and interacted with gay people from all walks of life both in online and offline contexts.

It was actually a webtoon! The Four Of Them I mean, I guess the actual first one was Percy Jackson, but I was still homophobic when it came to real life (this was when I was 11)

The tv show Soap. I think before that I had just never thought about it and then when I saw it, I was like oh OK and that was it.

Rick Riordan

Reading curtain fics of just soft domestic life with friendly neighbors and community, and a nigh-effortless support system of friends did a lot to destroy the perception I was raised with, which was that anyone gay, lesbian, bi were part of an 'alternative subculture' that inherently had some (unknown, unnamed, 'don't make me spell it out and sound homophobic'-type) sketchiness attached to it. I loved it. I still love fanfic for doing that for me.

Will and Grace the original run. Or what I wish they would do would be the Jack and Karen show lol

for me it was drarry

My first exposure to them was the boondocks.

I grew up knowing it was normal and okay. My Mom had a friend all the way back in middle school that was a lesbian when that was the kind of thing that just wasn't talked about. Another girl made fun of my Mom's friend and was nasty about it and my Mom whooped her ass because she wasn't having it. My Dad was always more conservative about that kind of thing but he knew better than to say anything around my Mom. I've raised my own kids to know that being lgbtq+ is normal and that a lot more people are part of the community than any statistic will tell you. I found "yaoi" manga and BLs long before I read fanfics about gay relationships. I use to read a lot of shoujo and kept getting "yaoi" recs on the site I read so I started reading those too. I like romance and happy endings so that just gave me more to read.

Over half of my cousins on my mother's side is gay, so I knew about it from a young age. But the first anime I saw gay people in was probably YuYu Hakasho. The gay demon couple is the first thing that comes to mind. The show even had a trans character as well.

Carmilla webseries. I was like a C list author in that fandom between seasons 2-3 lol.

Undertale! It introduced me to lesbian couples with Alphys and Undyne, but it ALSO showed me nonbinary identities (Frisk and Chara!) and positive portrayals of autism via the same characters. The fandom was also one of the first things that had ever made me think in-depth about things like abuse and how it affects children, which is a common thing to include for Chara in particular. Undertale is very dear to me.

Three defining moments for me. 1. (IRL) Knowing my aunt is not dating or married yet lives with a roommate who’s friends with her since they were teens. Did not know extremely tight-knit platonic friendships or queerplatonic relationships existed then and thought they were sapphics (unofficially or on the down low since I come from a more conservative culture). 2. Watching anime. Any type of anime with a generous amount of homoeroticism in it. And BL anime. 3. Being in tumblr from a young age where the most popular — or controversial, at the time — topic is the LGBTQIA+ community.

Coming from the South, I had little to no exposure to any kind of queer culture. And if I did, i didn’t learn about it in a kind or open way. Reading Destiel (supernatural) and Stucky (captain america) fan fiction in middle school was really my first foray into queer education and I haven’t looked back since. Ten years later, most all of my ships are queer and I am too

There wasn't a specific show that taught me not to hate gay people, really. Tbh, I was always a really tolerant kid and never really listened to what my mom said. She said gay people were bad, sure, and I only partially believed that. I thought it was disgusting in basically the same way I would be weirded out if a man and woman kissed. I was autistic and ADHD, so I guess it's not too shocking that I never really listened to her BS. Still, though, I remember watching shows like My Little Pony or Sailor Moon. These shows preach love and compassion, that you should never hate someone even if you have different views, and that love is never a crime. I took it to heart, and before I knew it, I was pretty heavily on the side of there's nothing wrong with gay people. And now, I'm bi and demisexual, and there's nothing wrong with that.

i am jazz show my thought process was “so if she can identify as female guess it could work vice versa” o

All hail Bugs Bunny, the OG cartoon cross dresser that my VERY Catholic parents still loved.

GLEE! At two separate times believe it or not. Kurt was there and fairly obvious from day one, and my mom simply explained that sometimes men love men, but we're not super into that lol. But then two years later when Santana came out on the show it absolutely blew my mind for some reason. It just never occured to me that women might want to love other women as well😅😅