Minority Stress Quotes

When you are in the public eye as a person of color, you are given very little room to mess up.

For me, as a kid, I always felt like being gay was something that was going make people turn on me.

I've heard other gay people say when they were growing up they felt 'foreign.' Growing up, I was able to label these feelings as: 'I'm a Protestant.' It wasn't until I left, I thought: 'Oh, those weren't Protestant feelings.'

I was a gay kid who didn't know I was a gay kid, which was really challenging because you think there is something wrong with you until you understand what it is.

Should I talk about [having breast cancer]? Because how many things could I have? You know black, lesbian - I'm like, I can't be the poster child for everything. At least with the LGBT issues we get a parade and a float and it's a party.

Sadly, black people disassociate ourselves from the things which make us who we are, identifying them as lesser, or inferior. It's a form of self hate. So, with reckless abandon, we strive to be like the majority.

Is there something about the gay experience, being gay and the gay experience, that pushes us even more than other people toward competition?

I was so beat down as a young person - being black, being gay, being unable to assimilate because I could never, ever pull off being butch.

Self-doubt is a constant companion for a chubby, gay, black boy born in the South.

Life experiences with oppression and homophobia often become internalized and can have detrimental effects on the development of positive sexual identity for Southern black gay men.

I think it can be difficult for young lesbian or young gay, bisexual, transgender to come out and be open with who they are because there's such a huge stigma attached to that preference of their sexuality.

White people don't have that problem, they get to go through life never having to fit into a box, and it's really more so true for white men because even just being a woman, you sort of have to walk around other people's assumptions of you and it's so exhausting and there's a sense, especially among young people of wanting to just live your life, not having to wear the weight of that pressure - pressure that people of color feel, that gay people of color feel, that women of color feel.

I was a black kid in an all-white school, so I had to deal with some of that stress and pressure.

I think a lot of gay kids in the midwest or in places not in New York have to overachieve in order to sort of get through the fear of what they're going through.

I know growing up as a young gay person how much you hate yourself, how much you already think you're different.

The homosexual community has more acceptance in America than it ever has, and the suicide rate is as high as it's always been.

Suddenly you're at church and you hear someone pray, "For gays and lesbians, that they might realize their [sins]...." That's happening less and less now, but all it takes is one of those when you're nine, ten, eleven, twelve - and it's hard to describe to people who aren't, because of course if you're not gay, an eleven- or twelve-year-old wouldn't even remember that that happened.

When I was young, people were so disgusted by me. Before I even knew that I was gay... everybody else had it figured out and, you know, they were letting you know.

I'm the only gay person my parents know.

Sometimes, when you are one of only a couple of girls in an engineering class, you feel like you are representing women in general. That is a large burden to bear.

When you're a young kid and you're gay, you're out there on your own. And you're trying to figure this thing out. And your parents typically aren't gay.

The perpetuation of family and cultural pressures to conform to prescribed masculine behaviors is what creates social isolation and distress in many young gay and trans people of color.

The successes of the LGBT civil rights movement and the more prominent role openly gay people are playing in the public eye has actually turned up the temperature in middle schools and high schools for queer kids.

Sometimes, when I was the only person of color in a room, you had to defend all the people of color everywhere.

Southern black gay and bi men are suffering from a self-esteem issue.