About us/bio:

Hi! We are Amory (they/she/he) and Luca (they/them/theirs), 19 and 16. We’re both a part of the LGBTQ+ community which is what inspired us to create our first book. We live in Colorado with our mom, dad, little brother and two dogs. We’ve been homeschooled for our whole lives and we lived in Mexico for a couple of years when we were younger. We enjoy reading, doing art, listening to music, writing, cooking, spending time in nature, and hanging out with our friends.

Why we wrote the book:

Amory:

Growing up as a queer kid in the US has been quite a time. When I was about 13, it came to my attention that other people were getting mysterious things called “crushes” on people, and for some reason, I WAS NOT. It was upsetting to me when I realized that I didn’t like anyone and that I didn’t even know what genders I liked. It never really occurred to me to even think about it before then. In the coming years, I switched between different labels, until I finally realized that labels just don’t fit me all that well.

To some people, labels aren’t important, but to others, they are. I really used to care about finding the right labels for myself because my feelings seemed so unlike most of the labels I learned about, which frustrated me (if you’ve ever questioned your sexuality you know what I’m talking about). It took years of reading and researching human sexuality (or lack thereof) for me to gain a deeper understanding of human connection. The funny thing is, after all that searching, labels don’t matter to me anymore. Most people just aren’t going to take the time to fully understand me, and that’s okay.

Gender is also tricky. I couldn’t even give you a definition if I tried. Since gender is socially constructed and other people perceive me as a cisgender woman, I generally say that that’s how I identify. Gender plays such a big role in our culture, but I’ve decided that’s okay. We can make the best of it. Gender can be really fun if you want it to be. To me, gender is just another accessory that I put on when I leave the house. It’s for others to see and appreciate, not for me to identify with when I’m by myself or with my closest friends. It’s honestly one of the least interesting things about me.

Growing up I read a lot of books and watched a lot of movies. I cannot think of a single one, not a SINGLE ONE that represented how I felt. Lack of information about the LGBTQ+ community hurts kids. It makes queer kids feel isolated and alone, and it doesn’t give cisgender-heterosexual kids any scope for understanding the queer people that are bound to be a part of their lives. If I had had a guide like this when I was younger, it would have given me the information that I searched for, for so long. I really hope that young queer kids can learn something about themselves in this book and, I hope that cishet kids, and really anyone else who reads it, can gain a little more understanding and empathy towards others.

Luca:

I have re-written this more than 5 times already, trying to put into words my experiences with gender. What I learned in this process is that it can’t be described in a simple way and that no one will ever truly understand my relationship with my gender as each individual person experiences it differently.

I think that it is not gender itself, but the culturally established ideas of gender roles and how genders function (okay, I guess that sounds a lot like gender itself...) that have harmed me and all of us.

Over the past few years, I have continued to learn about new and unfamiliar labels, some that seemed to fit my experiences with attraction or gender and others that didn’t. I have identified with many different labels over the years, and if I were to list them all, this book would be twice as long. The labels that I used, stopped using, reused, and stopped using again at different points are not what is important. What’s important is that I found words that fit me and my experiences with gender and attraction when I needed them- they’re just words, but they held a lifetime of missing validation.

What’s funny is that once I found that sense of comfort, normalcy, and even community with my feelings and in myself, my desire to use labels almost disappeared. I still love having conversations about my experiences as a queer person, and I still love using labels and language that help me describe myself more effortlessly to people, but I truly don’t need labels anymore.

For years labels have helped me feel validated in myself and given me a sense of security in my gender, as well as my sexual and romantic attraction (or lack thereof). What is sad to me is that I had to put so much time and energy into feeling unnatural compared to others and both uncomfortable and unhappy with who I was. I really, really, wish I had been able to learn more about the queer community sooner to save myself so much internal and external struggle. I know that this book does not list every sexual orientation and gender identity on earth because that’s literally not possible, but I do hope that we can help someone find their label. I also want to contribute to normalizing all these rad labels that so many people don’t yet understand, let alone have even heard of!