Coming Out

"Transgender Canadians are coming out at younger ages than ever before. Support groups for transgender teens report growing memberships, and are sprouting up beyond the major cities in areas such as Kitchener, Ont., and the Niagara region. One by one, school boards are amending their human rights policies to include gender identity...

In recent years, the success of the gay-rights movement has helped to pave the way for transgender rights, some say. For teenagers, the increasing presence of transsexual role models in the mainstream media has helped make it easier to come out at a younger age."

I think you see a lot of this "coming out at an earlier age" thing among gay, lesbian, and bisexual teens as well, mainly because we do now have so many people who publicly identify themselves as being GLBT.

What I like about that idea is that you're no longer neccessarily struggling in the dark for so long to try and figure out what the hell it is you're feeling and what it means and who that makes you.

The downside is that by giving everything a label and a name, I fear that GBLT identities could become just as fixed as het male/female identities (which are changing, but a lot of people still grow up with fairytale templates).

One more reason to knock them all apart.