Pride Month Edition: Which incident made you realize that you were part of the LBGTQ+ community?

BLIZZARD, Shamrock Bulletin Headquarters – In celebration of Pride Month, some of the members of Army of Club Penguin as well as their allies and more have come forward to share their first incident that led them into the world of colors!

Table of Contents

  1. ACP
  2. HF
  3. PIC
  4. RPF
  5. IW

Army of Club Penguin

breadpan, ACP Moderator

watching my little pony. not even kidding i had like 7 identity changes BECAUSE OF MY LITTLE PONY. at first i thought i was gay because of flash sentry ( 😩 ), then straight because of rainbow dash (i still simp for her) but then i realised i was bisexual BECAUSE I LIKED BOTH OF THEM. literally right after i realised that i started flirting with the boys in 4th grade and the girls in 5th 😭 😭 i became aroace in between because i didnt like anyone but turns out it was js because i was emo; and i realised i was asexual because i HATED that shit bro, like if a girl asked me about it my face would immediately drop and im like “..mhm”

Nefe, ACP Moderator

There was no incident that made me realize I was queer, infact my journey with gender and sexuality started in 2015 and stretches all the way to present day.

In 2015, the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in the United States. I remember being 13 years old and hearing my Nana rant about how disgusting and what an abomination it was for gay people to exist. So, 13 year old me noted this in my brain. Don’t be gay or you are a disgusting blasphemous abomination, and life went on for a few years.

A lot of people thought I was gay in school but I would just say I was straight and comfortable in my sexuality. My opinion on gay people was, “It’s against my beliefs, but what other people decide its their life.” I was raised thinking gay was a choice and the correct choice was straight so when I had gay thoughts I wrote them off as intrusive, until one day when I was around 15 years old; I mentioned thinking I was bisexual to my boyfriend at the time. Immediately after I shoved that idea away for years after that and refused to even slightly entertain it for fear I would burn in hell.

Jump to 2020, At the age of 18 Covid left me home a lot like it did to most people which led to a lot of internal thinking, depression, and change. I got out of my toxic and abusive high-school relationship and with that I was able to explore more about myself. I felt free to live my life the way I wanted without judgement but my family and religion held me back quite a bit still mentally until late June or early July when I met my high-school friend’s girlfriend.

On the first day we met they asked me “So are you gay, pan, bi, lesbian, or what?” And I just laughed and said “oh I’m straight” which shocked them a lot and they looked at my high-school friend like “Do they not know they are gay???” But the day went on. I bonded with them a lot and we quickly became best friends, even after their relationship with my friend ended. Meeting them is the closest thing I had to an incident, less than a month after we met I admitted to them and myself I might be bi when I was 19 years old, on June 20th 2021.

One day in a call they joked that next was my gender crisis and I responded, “I won’t have a gender crisis, I don’t care about my gender” cue the crickets for a full 5 seconds before I say “oh that’s nonbinary” and so I identified with nonbinary for a few months and started really experimenting with gender for the first time in my life. Through experimenting with pronouns, dramatic haircuts done with rusty scissors, and outfits, really..bad..outfits. I realized I prefered being masculine so I started to lean into the identity of trans masculine. I was still stressed about Christianity and how I would be punished for eternity for who I am. On October 16th 2021 I had a breakdown/breakthrough where I renounced my Christianity and decided that even if God does exist I refused to worship someone who wouldn’t allow me to be my happiest self. Since that day I haven’t looked back and I’ve felt so much better for it.

As soon as I settled on transmasc, I realized bisexual didn’t feel right so I did some research and decided pansexual fit me better and it did for a bit, but I couldn’t help feel like pan didn’t label me right, I wasn’t sure if there was a word that did, but eventually I discovered Abrosexual. Abrosexual is a person whos sexuality is fluid and changes.

So today I identify with the labels transmasc and abrosexual, but I don’t hold myself to those labels at all and they may change at any point because for me they are simply a way to connect to my communities and communicate to others.

Daniel/Belen, ACP Coordinator

The short version? Danganronpa roleplay in Amino… The long version is boring though. 11 year old me wanted to join a roleplay, so I needed an OC, and when I was trying to write all of the information about her I saw that it was asking for a sexuality, so I decided to look up what I could put in there LOL so I ended up finding definitions for some sexualities and the ‘asexual’ one felt way too relatable, even if I was a kid. So that’s when I realized there was a word for that… crazy. And no, it wasn’t just because I was young >:( I am still very ace and kind of aro!!
And I did all of that and I still made my OC a cishet girl smh but thanks Amino for making me discover that gay people exist I guess…
And as for my gender identity… There was this one Disney movie back in 2021, and I was obsessed with this one character… So like every normal person would, I started reading self insert fics!! And there was this one author who had many fics about that one character… And when I ran out of gender neutral ones, I decided to take a look at the male reader ones and uh… Something felt right about them I guess!! So yeah I decided to ignore that feeling for a while but here I am two and a half years later… I don’t know which one is worse but hey I’m happy now :3 so thanks character from a very specific Disney movie for transing my gender….

Beanz, Sergeant

Alr alr, so I was talking to some friends in a BIG group and we were talking about being super super straight. Then, some random dude said “I’ll make you gay” ,and I was talking to them for weeks. I was thinking “oh this dude isn’t so bad, we could be good friends.” Well let’s just say we didn’t end up friends

Rarity, Co-ordinator

Short answer I knew I was always LGBTQ+. More detailed, I learned about the community in 2012 in middle school. For most of the time I thought I was Bi but it took me 4 years in junior high to finally realize that I’m lesbian and 2 more years to figure out I was ace as well. I’m still learning new titles that are for gender and sexuality like me being Demi girl (being she/they) and I’m glad to have a community who understands the struggle of learning who you are and being accepted for it.

Zoomey, Veteran

I was about 10 years old and my best friend at the time and I were sitting in our little corner we always sat in during lunch time in school. Back in them days we used that spot to pretend to be in singing competitions, having friend ghosts called Alex we used to pretend to do challenges with, playing skipping rope games and a lot of other shit. One day we were sitting there and talking about who we liked. She said that she had a crush on a boy she liked and then asked me. I also had a crush on him so told her then she then said “so you’re gay?” And I didn’t know what that was. She explained to be that I was severely gay and from that day I knew I was a flaming homosexual set out to be a future and current queen (apart from my wannabe straight boy phase when i tried to act like a straight boy).


Help Force

Ender, HF Moderator

Well so basically i was like 12/13 ig, and i alr knew about the lgbtq community a bit, considered myself an ally and stuff. And then everyone around me started talking about sexual things, which just icked tf out of me like stay away🤺🤺 and then i was like wait thats not normal and i found asexuality, which i fully identified with for a long long time.
Then i realized i wasnt in fact fully asexual, but demisexual which was really difficult to accept for me cuz i clinged to my asexual identity a lot. And i also realized im demiromantic.(i aint explaining allat just copy and paste into google :P)
And as of rn im still struggling with my gender identity, which i have for a long time, but i was just in crazy denial, so ive decided to just not label it, idc what people see me as, as long as they see me as me yk?

Evan, HF Moderator

Okay so when I was younger I’ll be honest I never really liked to dress up too feminine and I always went with the label of a tomboy then I met this trans person when I was like 14 and we talked and they told me ‘hey I think you might be trans like me’ and at that time I didn’t know what that was so they explained and it was like oh damm you might be right actually… And as time passed I did fully realize that I was trans and that person even held me choose the name Evan

Traffic, Veteran

So.. I was about like 12ish, and I remember thinking about my girl best friend a lot and it ended up being.. yknow.. planning our family together, wanting to have a future with her as more than just a friend, seeing more of her body, the typical “straight” crush feelings.. and I hated that I fell for a girl, I felt like I was so wrong for that, I ended up having a heart to heart and cry with my sister where I confessed I liked both boys and girls and she reassured me it was okay besides the sappy stuff have you seen boobs lately? that’s my whole Bi/pan journey.

So my journey discovering I am non binary.. starts when idk.. ever since I can remember I’ve never liked the typical girl sorta stuff, hated pink, only liked a few dresses and would only wear them when I truly wanted to same with skirts, anytime someone called me a girl I’d yell at them. And then when i was 11, the gender envy hit, I never knew that label so everyone thought I was trans for wanting to be the different gender from time to time, i hated skirts and dresses still and only wore jeans, I don’t wanna get too into the gender envy but to me it was basically just wanting something other than the parts I had, I hated everything about me, I had days where I was feeling more feminine then more masculine, I’d try to pack or bind, I even got a more masculine haircut.. and it felt horrible being in my body it felt like it wasn’t mine, i had days where i felt like a boy trapped with the parts a women has, and days where i just accepted what I had. And then someone introduced me to gender labels, as growing up I’d only seen the sexuality labels and trans labels, I’d never heard of things like non binary or gender fluid or Demigirl/demifemme which is what I identify as right now, so discovering them was like an epiphany, I finally had something to identify myself as.. I had a label that described when I felt masculine and feminine and it wasn’t just me being crazy, I had a label for when I just didn’t want to be any gender.. just me.. and ever since I’ve felt so much more confident like I know who I am, I feel like I am accepting more of my feelings and my body.


People’s Imperial Confederation

Shallissa, PIC Leader

I guess I always kind of knew? I thought I was bisexual for the longest time because I had dated guys before. It took me a long time to realize that the thought of men repulsed me. I always thought feeling a certain level of disgust was normal? LOLL. The incident that truly made me realize and accept I was gay though was a few years ago during a mental breakdown. I realized that living my whole life without having a relationship with another girl felt extremely wrong and I was so sad. I’m super lucky to have a supportive family who were willing to talk to me about everything I was feeling. It made me realize that I’m not alone and that there was nothing wrong with my feelings.

Saber, PIC Leader

honestly i feel like my personal experience is completely different than most?! like i genuinely cannot pinpoint when or how i developed into the person that i am now. not to whack my degree out or anything, but i’ve grown up in spaces that i’ve intentionally been able to seek my own representation in. growing up online, the anonymity of identity (which is still what i still have now), ultimately helped me to self-acceptance, but i’ve never really faced any struggle with my identity. i’m completely fine not labelling myself either. anytime somebody asks me about my identity, i just give them the answer straight up, which is the fact that i don’t care. why should anybody care? if they care, that just means that they TOTALLY want me. but who doesn’t?!?!?

Kobi, PIC LiT

It was a sudden occurrence when I unexpectedly felt attracted to the same gender as mine (boys). I didn’t feel happy for some time because I was scared until I found some people like me, with whom I felt very welcomed.

Lulu, PIC HCom

The incident that made me realize I was LGBTQ+ and liked girls was when I had a crush on my best friend at the time in 2019. I was unsure of it and thought it was just platonic until I learned what homosexuality was. At first, I thought it was wrong but when I found out there was a lot of gay people including my best friend I was more relaxed and happy that I could be apart of a accepting community.


Rebel Penguin Federation

Link, RPF Leader

Being in rpf

I can’t pinpoint one specific incident tbh. I grew up in a very Conservative and religious place, and homosexuality/anything LGBTQ is heavily frowned upon. Due to that I held a lot of internalised homophobia ans didn’t start realising things until I was an adult, despite some very obvious signs and actions in the past. Being aroace as well made it very difficult for me to differentiate between the types of attractions.
I guess if I had to narrow it down to one thing, it would be, after I started realising things and questioning things, I went on a walk and as I was walking this beautiful girl passed by me and I was completely in trance, if I could have stares at her the whole day I would. I find more than 2 genders attractive but that was the first time I really realised that it was not in a “heterosexual way”. Everything else came after that.

Tulip, RPF Moderator

personally, i used to not know much about these things because i was really young. but, i remember in around likeeee a couple years ago when i was in my mario phase, i had a crush on like a female character 😭😭(don’t ask why, it happened) and that was my first little incident of being lesbian yk yk and then i forgot all abt it until like 7th grade year when i had a crush on a lesbian and it made me feel like i liked females, but i was around 13 and in a weird little phase i thought would just leave yk?? but, after a couple months i still felt that way so i decided to confess and that person said maybe and it like really crushed me and i was like “sigh i’m hopeless” so i just decided to hide all feelings like that and i was asexual for a long time until december 2023 (abt a couple months after that) and i had a crush on a male and hehe i still kind of like him… anyways back to the subject, i remembered thinking i was asexual and i was like “i can’t do this, not possible”, but i have confessed through a note and ngl this part made me feel like wanting to find a significant someone but i didn’t feel exactly readyy.. but, as a teenager i’m still growing and changing and i equally like males and females and ppl like that, like tbh gender doesn’t matter, for me it’s personality and likes. we shouldn’t hate on like same gender dating and stuff because it’s literally our lives and it’s how we wanna live and yeah. and being in an army community that supports lgbtq+ made me feel more comfortable abt showing who i really am and that i shouldn’t hide it from the world. (if the wording sounds weird i’m a silly teenager that doesn’t know how to write sometimes LMAO, i think i got a little personal here but this is how i got here so yeah)


Ice Warriors

Sebzy, IW Leader

When I was younger, I heard “gay” used negatively, so I avoided thinking I could be part of the LGBTQ+ community. I liked girls and had a girlfriend, so I dismissed any attraction to others, thinking I didn’t like them like “THAT.” Everything changed when a close friend came out as bisexual and explained what that meant to me. I realized my feelings weren’t limited to one gender. After looking into more sexualities, I found out that I was actually pansexual. This helped me understand and accept my true identity, and I’m thankful to my friend for coming out to me 🙂

Lumi, IW Staff in Training

tbh i had a crush on a girl and had attraction over a lot of women often over the years when i was a minor or so and i get nervous around pretty women.. gfhgfgh


We are so proud of all the LGBTQ+ members who came forward to share their first experiences with us! If you’re ever struggling, don’t forget you have an amazing community to always support you! Thank you to everyone listed in this post for being brave and stepping up to be a part of our post <3

What do YOU think? Let us know in the comment section below!

Roxy

ACP Field Marshal & Shamrock Bulletin Reporter

Noa

ACP General & Shamrock Bulletin Reporter

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