Andrew Gelwicks > Quotes

“I’m constantly learning more about myself and experiencing the world as a queer person: your body, sexuality, femininity, style, the way you present yourself to the world. All of these things can be a really loaded part of a queer person’s life without them even necessarily realizing it. The ultimate goal for me is complete freedom to express myself—however I please and however I feel is natural. It’s a work in progress to get to that point and I hope to stay on that journey.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“When you get past living in the closet, you’re really committed to that self-expression, which becomes your passport to freedom on a lot of levels.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“but I do think there is a part of me that has always wanted or needed to be the best, so that I would be unimpeachable or inarguable.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“Being queer pushed me to be my best because I didn’t want to be anything other than that for the people who have come before me”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“There are two distinct views. One is keeping you safe and making sure you’re not living in a fantasyland, thinking that rainbows and #LoveIsLove mean everything is okay. You have to be an alert person. In the other view, you have to protect your queerness, nurture it, invest in it, rely on it, and make sure nothing seeps into it that will poison the way you feel about yourself and your beauty as a queer person. Because that is where your divinity is. That’s where your answers are.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“How has being queer advantaged you in your career? For one thing, it’s given me a sense of fierceness. When you get beaten up for who you are, when you get told that who you are and what you are is an impossibility, when you are teased and bullied and hated just for the sheer fact of who you are, it lights a fire in you. A fire to set things right. A fire to get your revenge and, at least in my case, to get your revenge by succeeding. No matter how low they brought you, you know that by the sheer fire of your imagination and creativity and your refusal to die, that you will have the last laugh in the end.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“It just never occurred to me that there would be a part of me that was wrong.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“When we receive invaluable information, we each have the responsibility to integrate it into our daily lives and begin to dispel the noxious influences that have created stifling, straightjacketed limitations.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“So, in a way, it sort of relieved pressure I was putting on myself, because I could channel it into doing this for other people. It’s sometimes easier to do things for other people than it is for ourselves.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“But I will reiterate that I think queer people are magic, and I do want to have it both ways. I’m very like, Love is love, let’s have all the rights. Let’s have all of the options and opportunities and flexibility that are afforded straight people. Let’s be protected and let’s be like everyone else. And there’s this kind of radical and contrarian part of me that’s like, No. Fuck that, we’re not like them. We are different, and arguably better. I don’t want what makes us different and special to be eroded in our continued quest for equality. Fiercely protecting and celebrating what is special and distinct and unique about queer people as a whole is super-important. And they’re not mutually exclusive. I think we can have both.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“Everyone should be able to bring all of themselves to the workplace and feel like they don’t have to hide or cover. You can only be your best when you embrace your authentic self.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“I do think our gender, our sexuality, all of our identity, is active. It is a thing you have to invest in, process for yourself, create for yourself. And I don’t mean “create” to imply an artificiality or fraudulence. I mean quite the reverse. It’s an excavation and a formulation. For me, that active work wasn’t formed enough then to even have had a conversation other than to just feel wrong.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“Being queer gives you X-ray vision. Superman has the ability to see through walls and bricks. Being queer gives you the ability to see into people’s hearts, just like you have radioactive blood. You can see into other people’s hearts and know how much turmoil there is, and to respond to them with kindness, sympathy, and love.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“I’m really good with people as a function of compensating for the fact that my presence makes them uncomfortable.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“Understand that bringing your entire self to your work is what will make you extraordinary at the work.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“If you want to see positivity in front of you, you have to radiate it yourself. If you’re a nasty person at all times of every day, then that’s what you’re gonna attract to yourself.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“We now get to benefit from the hard work of the people who came before us, and the people who have fought to make this possible for us.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“I didn’t know the definition of “gay.” I thought I was the only one who felt that way. It was very lonely. But that was when I started learning to act what I didn’t feel.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“I really believe I have grown into myself. We will sit down three years from now and I will have grown into myself even further. And so I don’t reject or resent what I was doing then. I don’t take it to be not who I was. I don’t think I could be doing what I’m doing now if I hadn’t done that. But I can’t do that again. It served me until it didn’t.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“I found a lot of comfort in hanging out with people who were older than me. People who were gay, who were tattooed, who were getting pierced. They were riding motorcycles to work and I was getting on the back and feeling free amongst people who were very, very different. I felt safe there.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“We need to change the way we talk about LGBTQ+ people. There are 4.5 percent of us. That’s not a defect. That’s not worthless. It’s chosen. And if we start to talk about it like that—like the blessing and gift that it is—and we raise our LGBTQ+ youth to understand they have been chosen to have this incredible opportunity that is a blessing, we can help them along earlier.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“There’s sexuality and then there’s gender. It felt to me that there was nothing worse you could possibly be than a “girly boy” or a “boyish girl.” Any variation from what we come as children to understand as “that’s a boy” and “that’s a girl” was punished, reviled, and profoundly misunderstood. “What are you?” was the worst thing you could possibly be asked. And I was asked a lot.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“I knew I was different, and I struggled to articulate and identify the difference. I was different in a lot of ways. I wasn’t very good at being a kid. All the kids seemed to know how to bound into rooms with groups of other kids and be okay, and how to run and play at recess and be carefree. I never had that sense of carefreeness. I don’t know if that was specific to being a pre-gay child or just who I am, but that was my sense of where I was. I’m very aware that I have grown into myself.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“Optimism is what gets progress. Pessimism gets nowhere. We all are pulling at the same wagon. We’re doing it collectively. No one person does it. And it’s important to recognize that. We all have to work together in concert.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“Without optimism, you can’t make progress. If you’re a pessimist, you’re already defeated.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“For me, it’s very important to try to be successful to create opportunities for other queer people, for other Black people, for other women, for other people who identify as all of the above. Because it’s not a good thing for me to be one of one.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“We sometimes protect ourselves by building walls around ourselves. But there are those who show us a better way. We can learn to build windows in those walls, to take in new vistas, and even climb out to seek the sunlit world awaiting us.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“Shine brightly. Shine the fuck on. Feel your strength. Move through the world undeterred.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“being queer isn’t an inherent advantage. It is something that gives you potential: the possibility of a precious, powerful edge. You have to make it work for you. This is achieved not so much by changing the perceptions of doubters, abusers, and tormenters. Rather, it springs from a shift in perspective that we make within ourselves. A shift that grants each of us the permission to bring the future—and all of our newly aware potential—into focus.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity

“I’m very thankful and proud to be a part of a community, and I consider myself really lucky to be queer. It’s a special human experience that can bring people together.”
― Andrew Gelwicks, The Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity