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While many mainstream depictions of people with LGBTQ parents focus solely on the quality of the parents and how "normal" the children turn out. That can make it difficult to openly discuss queerspawn experiences. My response has been to put even more of a focus into telling these stories. That's how I ended up on the board of COLAGE.
A Queerspawn Perspective
In addition to the focus on queer parents being decent (or
not) parents, there has always been the tendency to view
queerspawn experience through the perspective of their
parents. Even interviews with queerspawn focus on
questions about their parents. And the need to prove
that our families are valid is a powerful motivation to
downplay or ignore the common themes we experience.
This workshop takes a look at the rising representation of
a queerspawn point of view and the significantly increasing
number of books, writings, blogs, and academic research
looking at queerspawn issues, that are created by
queerspawn.
Queerspawn and the media
Drawing heavily on my own experience being in a series of
high profile articles growing up, this workshop details the
role the media has on queerspawn. Quite frequently,
queerspawn are in the spotlight, and we know that the
choices we make in representing ourselves will have
far-reaching impacts. The responsibility to create a
"positive" representation can be excruciating.
Queerspawn and coming out
Coming out as straight, as gay, as bi, as trans (I've done
all four of those!). Quite often people simply assume
that if you have queer parents there won't be any stress
over coming out to them, but often this isn't the case.
Coming out as straight can mean an ejection from a
community that someone has grown up in. Coming out as
anything else can mean providing evidence for the
homophobic claim that gay parents recruit their children.
And LGBTQ parents might not understand the letters in that
acronym that they don't belong to.