Real stories from the World - LGBTQ+

a story from New Zealand

 I live in New Zealand and I'm ftm transgender, and at the start of last year I started a new school and I was stealth for the most part, only the teachers and some of my closest friends knew. I knew that one of my "friends" who I didn't tell wouldn't accept me because she were well known for making offensive jokes about trans* people and how they were just something made up on tumblr and how they all are just special snowflakes. I still don't know how she found out, I'm guessing someone told her or she overheard someone talking but she ended up knowing. She didn't tell me she knew at first, but the way i ended up finding out was when she added me and about half or more of our school year to a group chat on Facebook where she told everyone. I left the chat straight away because I didn't want to see people's reactions, but long story short, word travels fast and the next day was a nightmare, but she ended up getting in quite a bit of trouble after a teacher found out. Luckily the rest of the school wasn't extremely transphobic or at least didn't act on their opinions and I ended up having an alright year, but it was horrible getting outed like that. 

 I think New Zealand is generally pretty chill when it comes to the lgbtq+ community, but I think we have quite a bit of work to do before it's widely accepted. I think bigger cities are probably more generally accepting as they may have seen a wider variety of people. Schools probably could find ways to make it safer for the trans community but it's not all that bad. I know a lot of openly gay people at my school who flaunt it to the max and have no serious trouble with homophobes.

I do have quite a lot of support online, probably more so than in real life. I probably wouldn't have come out until years after I did if it wasn't for certain YouTubers and people on Wattpad. There are some really good books involving the trans community to which have helped a lot, especially with me accepting myself. Also just interacting with people through private message on all different types of social media has helped a lot. The Internet had sort of become a safe place for me when I was questioning. 

Anonymous