JOCE OSTLER
THEY/THEM/THEIRS
Joce is a 20-year-old from St. George, Utah.
Joce identified as bisexual for a long time but only felt comfortable sharing their sexuality once in high school. They experienced a lot of imposter syndrome during this time.
Eventually, Joce settled on identifying as queer because it felt safe, open, and fluid to them, even though they acknowledge that some people may not like using that term due to its history and connotation.
My name's Jocelyn Osler. I use they, them pronouns. I'm 20 years old. I was born here in St. George, Utah, and the first time I realized I wasn't straight was sixth grade, 11 or 12 years old. And I had access to Instagram very early on and I discovered these very queer friendly places. I just kept ending up in this online queer community and lgbtq plus run accounts. And for the first time I was learning what these words and terms meant like bisexual, transgender, lesbian, asexual, everything else. And learning what those terms meant, put the tools in my hand to discover my own sexuality.
I used bisexual for a long time. It didn't, it wasn't until high school sophomore year that I felt comfortable telling people my sexuality from sixth grade. Up until then, it was a long road of trying to make sure that's what I was. 'cause I didn't wanna tell people and be wrong.
And imposter syndrome, it's tough.
It really gets you. So throughout high school I used bisexual. It wasn't until a few years ago I settled on queer to describe my sexuality. And I know people, there are some people who don't like using it to describe themselves because of its connotation, because of its history. And I absolutely understand that. But for me, calling myself queer feels very safe. It feels very fluid, very open. And I don't feel like it's too, you know, restricting. Not that any other sexuality is, but just for me, that's kind of where I ended up on.