The year is officially coming to a close, but as the weather gets colder and the sky gets a little more grey preparing for the clean slate of the new year, I can't help but see the rainbow hue this year has cast on us. 2018, or as many of us in the LGBTQ+ community have been lovingly referring to as twentygayteen (a term coined by the multi-talented singer-songwriter Hayley Kiyoko, a.k.a. Lesbian Jesus), has offered an incredible amount of exciting things for us gays. Our milestones this year range from music to politics, and oftentimes meeting in the middle. Here are a couple things to be proud of from the last year:
The music industry has us all sorts of hyped up on that year-round pride! Representation in music this year has been PHENOMENAL. With the rise of Hayley Kiyoko, to the highly anticipated sophomore album release of Troye Sivan, to the stand-out introduction to King Princess, it is no secret that we have some true community champions in our midst. Whether you're out and proud or still assessing the contents in your closet, you definitely had some quality eargasms coming your way. I think one of the highlights of my 2018 experience was the amount of mainstream music that used same-sex pronouns. In the past, many gay artists often use generalized pronouns in reference to a partner, whether it's addressing them with "you" or "my love".
However, this year, the amount of popular, frequently played radio hits have had men and women referring unabashedly, romantically to their same genders. We can hear this in Hayley Kiyoko's 'Wanna Be Missed' with the lines "wanna know she's only mine / breathe her in, give me life" or in Troye Sivan's 'Lucky Strike' relaying "he knows how to love me better." Personally, I have always been singing along to straight men's tunes and finding them #relatable, but being able to listen to the radio and sing along to other women singing about loving women? Sign me up!
Politics haven't always been our safest waters to dive into, but this year we were able to flood the midterm elections with LGBTQ+ candidates, over 100 of which became victors in their area. Even in our own state, Kate Brown, who is openly bisexual, was re-elected as Oregon governor this year! On top of that, the first openly gay male governor, Jared Polis, took the victory in Colorado. With who is currently in office, these openly gay elected officials that are coming in (... or, dare I say, coming out) are a HUGE deal to the emphasis of the voices in our community. I know I am extremely grateful to know that there are people like me in office reflecting and advocating for the ideals of political benefits for our community.
Now, as we all know, not everything is sunshine and rainbows...
There is much more to work on, in terms of the forward movement of gay rights and the representation of the community in the media, but, overall, I like to think of twentygayteen as one of our bigger leaps forward into a positive era. So many people are becoming more and more comfortable with themselves in finding who they are and who they love. We have the ability to sing about it. We have the ability to fight for it. We have many rights that we didn't have for much of our existence, but we're here! And although 2019 doesn't have a fun slogan to go along with it, I am sure that the new year will be just as beautifully gay as the last. Cheers, Queers!
