LiveJournal’s reputation confirmed that there’s simply one thing so human — so elemental — about the necessity to discover and join with like-minded individuals.
This text is a part of a multi-article sequence celebrating Pleasure month and the function the web has performed within the historical past of the LGBTQIA+ neighborhood.
I grew to become a blue-haired, combat-boot carrying teenager with the Millennium, turning 13 three months after the world didn’t finish on Y2K. I knew how one can kind — quick, as a result of all of these on the spot messages needed to be attended to concurrently — and I used to be actually into journaling. And that’s what introduced me to OpenDiary.
OpenDiary was one of many main on-line journaling websites of the early 2000s, second most likely solely to LiveJournal. And whereas there have been customers of many various backgrounds on there, it was significantly interesting to younger queer* teen ladies who had been exploring what it meant to not be straight. Like me. And like Lauren.**
Like me, Lauren got here of age in “the AOL-era” of the web. Additionally like me, she was bisexual and blue-haired. However whereas I used to be studying about myself within the city the place Bernie Sanders began his political profession, she was rising up in Connecticut.
Extraordinarily totally different vibes.
“I used to be very conscious that I used to be drawn to women and men in my teen years and coming into my sexuality and I used to be fairly open about that,” Lauren tells Avast. “However I lived in Connecticut. And it’s an attention-grabbing place as a result of, politically, it’s very blue. It’s liberal on paper. But it surely’s additionally a spot the place individuals are very preppy and really conventional.”
When Lauren would inform individuals in IRL (“in actual life,” for these of you too younger or too previous to know AOL lingo) that she was bi, her sexuality was nearly all the time dismissed as a section or as attention-seeking.
“Rising up in that second in time within the aughts, individuals had been very accepting of homosexual males however there was quite a lot of stigma in opposition to queer girls,” Lauren says. “Everybody was okay with the Intercourse and the Metropolis model of homosexual, like a greatest good friend who likes my sneakers and goes buying with me. However there was this narrative of bisexual ladies simply doing it for consideration.”
Whereas everybody from her mother and father to her pals didn’t imagine Lauren when she mentioned she was bisexual, there was one place that she was capable of finding not solely acceptance of her sexuality, but additionally an escape from her stifling neighborhood and abusive dwelling setting: LiveJournal.
“On LiveJournal, I felt actually free to discover that aspect of myself,” Lauren says. “Being on-line gave me this wonderful instrument to really feel socially related with individuals. I might discover my individuals and discover out about the entire issues I cared about and discover my neighborhood — together with that queer neighborhood. And that was thrilling. And liberating. And protected.”
Again in Vermont, I used to be additionally pouring my coronary heart out over on OpenDiary. And whereas my mother and father and neighborhood had been rather more accepting of my identification than Lauren’s had been (my dad was 0% stunned after I got here out to him at age 12), I used to be nonetheless a younger teenager attempting to work issues out. For me, that felt like my pores and skin had been flayed from my physique and my inside, most personal components uncovered had been to the air. It’s like each nerve was infected, on a regular basis, and each feeling was so actual. It was exhilarating and terrifying and so, a lot.
Along with my bodily journals, which I carried with me all over the place, OpenDiary supplied an area to course of these emotions and get them out of my physique. It additionally gave me a viewpoint into what different ladies like me — ladies like Lauren — had been pondering and feeling and doing about their very own sexuality. Certain, I had multiple girlfriend (and multiple boyfriend) in my teenage years. However OpenDiary was an area the place I might discover all of this stuff with a uncooked honesty that didn’t all the time really feel attainable IRL.
Lauren felt that freedom instrument, partly as a result of — not like social media now — LiveJournal was actually nameless. You can touch upon different individuals’s public entries, however you didn’t essentially know who they really had been. Actually the one strategy to know for certain that you just knew somebody on the location IRL was in the event that they gave you their display identify.
“This wasn’t a time when individuals had been monitoring IP addresses,” Lauren says. “It felt very nameless. You didn’t have a enterprise card on the web. You didn’t actually have a actual face on the web. You had been just a few goofy reference and a string of numbers.”
However why had been queer ladies and different sapphically-inclined teenagers drawn to this medium specifically? It’s not prefer it was the solely web site for connecting with like-minded teenagers: AOL was nonetheless fairly huge, though its reputation was already beginning to dip, and MySpace launched in 2003. Plus there have been area of interest websites began popping up, like Neopets, which was additionally well-liked with queer youngsters.
We might lean into stereotypes to reply that query: “Ladies normally (and lesbians specifically) have quite a lot of emotions,” and journaling is an effective way to course of these emotions. Possibly it’s the archetype of the dreamy romantic, studying on a window seat, sighing longingly. Or possibly there’s simply one thing so human, so elemental about the necessity to discover and join with individuals like us and LiveJournal made that attainable for hundreds of blue haired ladies who had been realizing they wished to kiss different blue haired ladies.
That. Regardless of why else, it was positively that.
**A fast word about language: phrases referring to totally different components of the LGBTQIA+ neighborhood are very fluid, typically altering drastically over time and perceived in a different way elsewhere. Please know that the intent of this text is to rejoice and share a component of LGBTQIA+ historical past that’s typically ignored and that each one phrase decisions are made with care and consideration.
**Title has been modified to guard the person’s privateness.
Additional studying:
The key homosexual historical past of the fashionable web
Transgender girls discovered and created neighborhood within the Nineteen Eighties web
