An introduction to myself before we start. Hi, my name is Sam, I am a first year Music Production and Sound Design student as well as one of the LGBTQ+ Network Leads. If you don’t know what that is, we (or are trying to) provide information to people about identities and the issues facing them and the community. This is also relatively new so it will take time to get everything out there. 

So now it’s time to get into what I want to write about. If you can, imagine yourself in my situation. You are 18, no one from your college or high school is around (mainly because they have no idea where Keele is,) you have this chance to be yourself. You are finally free to simply just be. That was me. I had gone through the majority of my life thinking I was straight but when I realised I was demisexual and gay, a lot of different events happened all at once which then meant that I both didn’t and couldn’t want to come out at that point. I had my family know, some of my close friends on the final days that I would see them and then just wait. All so I can be who I truly am at uni. 

The story doesn’t end there, in these past 2 months I questioned whether I was even a boy, something I had grown up with all my life. I have now got notes and ramblings of me trying to figure that out, not quite a boy but also not far from it. A demiboy. I came out to my closest friends last month and now it has been this process of coming out to everyone else. Telling them that I want to use he/they pronouns, and then the subsequent explanation of what a demiboy is. And then the acceptance, the relief, the happy feeling that you get afterward I could go into so much detail on all of the things I’m now appreciating because of it but I have limited words. 

I wanted to become a network lead so that I could give advice in my limited wisdom of lived experience of about 8-10 months and then in turn, learn from people who have been in this community for a long time. As network leads, we (there is another) both knew that the only way that people could have reliable, top-quality information about identities was if people who identified as such wrote about them and helped us with our understanding of them. I wanted to learn so much more about the community, the challenges, the history. Quite simply everything. 

I don’t know whether I’m doing a good job, only you can decide that for yourselves, but I know that I have a massive debt that needs to be paid back. I know that the past is riddled with people treated unjustly for loving someone of the same gender, for not feeling like their gender assigned at birth, for simply just existing. And whilst we have gotten rid of most of it, we still have it, we see it in the news all the time. That brings us to today, I have a massive debt to friends, the friends that accepted me, the friends that don’t see me any differently, the friends that are always there for me, the friends that give me old badges that don’t suit them anymore. The only way that I can do that is to pave a future, create a community of acceptance and respect regardless of the walk you have had to do through your life to come to be who you are. 

I hope that you are doing well this month. I hope you remember the progress that had to be made to get this far. I hope that you remember the unjust laws that did and do exist to this day that would criminalise and discriminate against people like me. I hope, however, you remember the joy of being yourself. I hope that I can facilitate the voices of people in this community, here at Keele. I hope I can do good by you and for you. I hope for the day where no one has to come out, that no one has to be in fear of coming out, that one day we might simply just exist, and the world moves along with us.

Thank you for reading this blog - Sam