The Point Foundation provides scholarships to queer students who otherwise would not be able to attend college. The Foundation’s educational and outreach campaign focuses on the scholars’ stories, in particular, the barriers they have faced because of the sexual orientation or gender identity. For many of these students, their homo-hostile parents were part, or sometimes, most of the problem.
Not so in the case of Sol Kelley-Jones (pictured above), a Junior at Hampshire College who self-identifies as “queer and person-specific rather than bisexual.” Sol’s experiences with hostility and discrimination happened at a younger age than many of her queer peers, but not because her parents were unsupportive. On the contrary: “I also identify as a second generation or queerspawn as I was born into a lesbian parented family.”
Receiving an LGBT-specific scholarship has a different context when the recipient is culturally queer (through family) before self-identifying as queer. Sol’s thoughts about identity and context were included in a recent article in Edge Boston, with the headline “The iPod Generation.”
Kelley-Jones on Support Networks:
“As a queer person, I had the rare experience of coming out already being connected to, and having a strong identity in, a larger LGBTQ community where I still garner much support. Growing up in a lesbian family that faced marginalization and discrimination at every turn, I learned from a young age to carve out and create my own spaces of support and connection … Although my sexual orientation clearly has marked me further outside, I find strength in this difference; not deficiency. I have learned to harness my heartbreak from the injustices of ’otherness,’ invisibility, and oppression.”
Kelley-Jones on the pros and cons of LGBT identity:
“Being born into a lesbian parented family, I had to fight for the right to even exist. My family and I constantly confronted the social, legal, and economic manifestations of heterosexism and homophobia at every turn. And the burden for change was always on me and my family, something I believe that no child or family in any community should have to carry. Facing violent homophobic harassment, targeting and intimidation by the religious right, and the daily struggles over whether it was safe to hold my girlfriend’s hand, were just a few of the challenges of being openly queer in Middle and High School. However, there were also immense gifts that came with growing up queer and being apart of the LGBTQ community … I also believe that being queer has made me more compassionate. Being constructed as ’other’ throughout my life has helped me struggle with my own judgments and fears, examining the many ways people, identities, and communities are deemed ’other’ and seeking to challenge this by fostering understanding.”
Related Post: Sol to speak at GLSEN Boston
