Hi, I am Aster I am one of the youth leaders of QYouT (Queer Youth Together). As it is currently Youth Week I wished to talk about my part and views of youth in this generation as well as what QYouT means to me.
I know that people my age and younger are a lot more diverse and open with their diversity than society has ever allowed in ages past. Us youths are also generally more aware and active in participating in activism as this age is so full of information and learning due to ease of access to the internet. This information and learning overload can be both amazing and terrifying as we can find others with the same experiences as us all around the world and join together and find or make words to describe those experiences. The terrifying part of all this learning and information is we can learn about or be dragged into even more harsh experiences than generations before us could have ever imagined. The immense amount of harsh experiences we interact with either through the internet or in our own life has sadly caused depression, anxiety and many other mental health issues to become a normal part of a young adult’s life. As an autistic, bisexual, genderfluid, trans-enby I know I need a lot of support. I have some already which is only because I have a privileged life, but I do know that there are so many in those similar communities that need that support but don’t have it.
Because of the amazing and harsh aspects of the world we currently live in, my fellow young peeps don’t often feel the world is catering to our best interests. I don’t mean to be so glum and gloomy but the reality is that the world that we live in is dying because of the willful ignorance of a handful of millionaires, the world that belongs to the youths. To quote Tom Mann:
“The future of the world belongs to the youth of the world, and it is from the youth and not from the old that the fire of life will warm and enlighten the world. It is your privilege to breathe the breath of life into the dry bones of many around you.”
QYouT is all about us the queer youths having a space to relax and be ourselves we can bring along our ally friends and hang out and just chill and have snacks for a few hours. A lot of my friends at QYouT may not be fully out to their families or to all of their friends so being able to have a place to be yourself is amazing without any fear of ridicule. When I was first trying to figure out my gender I asked my fellow girls, gays and theys at QYouT to help me test out pronouns and names and so have many of the previous or current QYouT group peeps. We get to learn there too, which I love to do as we often have guest speakers come in or even on drop-in days when we are just chilling we share any cool queer entertainment that we have been interested in recently such as webcomics, TV shows, movies, video-games, etc.
We as the youth of this world have a lot on our shoulders. We are still learning and finding ourselves in this world that is not tailored for us, not yet. We together are strong and while we learn and have fun we the youth of this age are there to bring this world to a better tomorrow.