Photograph courtesy of iStock/Cesare Ferrari. Here’s the thing about being a millennial queer: It’s a bit like going to a family reunion and not knowing which table to sit at. While Gen X and boomers are swapping their war stories at one end, Gen Z and Alphas are making TikToks at the other. And you stand in the middle, holding your plate, wondering where you belong.
As I shimmy out of ‘mid’ and step into the ‘late’ realm of my 20s, I find myself straddling the generational border between young millennial and elder Gen Z. But for the sake of this piece – and my queerness – I’ll anchor myself firmly in the millennial camp. That’s where my identity feels most at home: shaped by whispered crushes, coded conversations and a world that required queerness to be carefully navigated rather than boldly announced. We practised coming-out speeches, scoured internet forums and took Buzzfeed quizzes for scraps of validation, while Tumblr was a lifeline and a battleground.
Then came young Gen Zs and Gen Alphas, who are not just out; they’re out loud. Their queerness is worn with a kind of ease I once – from my humble closet – thought impossible. To them, queerness is elastic, expansive, an existence that defies the rigid categories we once fought so hard to define. They don’t ‘come out’ so much as they simply exist; naming their pronouns and changing them and kissing whoever their little gay hearts desire.
Data supports this: Gen Z is much more likely to challenge traditional ideas about gender and sexuality, Deloitte’s Global 2020 Millennial Survey found, while millennials were still navigating the concept of inclusion and equality. And a 2024 survey found that nearly 30% of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+, a significant increase compared to 16% of millennials and even lower percentages in older generations.
It’s exhilarating to witness. But also, if I am being honest, as part of a generation fluent in both the heartbreak of history and the audacity of a future we never thought we’d see, it’s sometimes alienating. Just as we marvel at their freedom, we feel the pull of the elders. We’ve read their memoirs, seen their films and heard their tales of riots, revolutions and unimaginable loss and joy. Since coming out, I’ve listened intently to stories from my lesbian aunts – my only example of queerness (other than Ellen) when I was growing up. For them, queerness was forged in a crucible of resistance. The queer spaces the generations before us built, and we came to enjoy, weren’t just for dancing or drinking – they were sanctuaries, built brick by brick with the currency of risk.
As millennials, we occupy this strange liminal space. Close enough to Gen X and boomers to feel the weight of their legacy and far enough from Generation Z and Generation Alpha to wonder if somehow we’ve fallen behind. Their queer world feels unencumbered, limitless in ways both inspiring and disorienting. This is sometimes even punctuated with a quiet bitterness: Do they know what it took to get here?
It’s a delicate tension between admiration and a faint sense of something almost akin to loss. Loss for the secret codes and sacred spaces that once defined queer culture. Loss for the feeling that queerness was ours in a way that others might not fully understand. And loss, too, for the wounds we were taught to wear as badges of authenticity.
Sometimes, for me, at the tail-end of a more conservative western world, one before marriage equality and really any media representation, it feels like the long nights spent questioning, the difficult conversations and the years of invisibility were the cost of admission. And now, in a world where queerness is celebrated in a way we could only dream of, it can be hard to reconcile what that cost means. Because here’s the question we’re too afraid to ask: If you haven’t suffered, do you belong?
It’s not that there’s any kind of longing for this generation to struggle – far from it. In fact, their ease of identity is a joyful proof of the battles fought before them, battles that we also reap the rewards of. But if queerness no longer requires suffering, then what does that make those of us who still bear its wounds? Are our wounds just relics of a different time –important but irrelevant? And if they don’t share the struggle, will they ever truly understand us? In some ways watching a younger generation embrace queerness without that weight, can feel like we’re speaking a language they don’t need to learn.
Meanwhile, my lesbian aunts – who were dealt far more challenging cards than me – seem to quietly watch this, perhaps amused by our angst, having seen the generational shifts time and time again. They know that queerness is an evolution; each wave builds from the one prior, every generation redefining what it means to live outside of the margins.
The truth is, the middle isn’t just a place of loss and gain. It’s a vantage point. We carry the weight of history while witnessing the bold audacity of the future. Our scars aren’t diminished by a new generation’s freedom – they are proof of what made it possible.
Perhaps that’s our role: to hold both the fight and the joy, to act as the bridge between what was and what will be. Maybe the middle isn’t where we’re stuck – it’s where everything meets. It’s where history brushes against progress, where scars mingle with celebration, and where the weight of what’s been fought for intersects with the limitless potential of what’s to come. In the middle, we’re not just witnesses – we’re the connective tissue, bridging generations, carrying the echoes of the past battles punctuated with pride, while making space for a future that feels freer than we ever imagined.
