What Can We Hope For?

Imagining our “possible selves” is what queer liberation is about. If the World denies us hope, we’ll write our own future.

For most LGBTQ+ people, coming of age includes a moment of asking: What am I even allowed to hope for?

In my early twenties, I looked at the life of my mother’s gay cousin, whose story was marked by the HIV epidemic, addiction, and who eventually met a premature death, and tried to piece together what might be possible for someone like me. Between the - often tragic - lives of elders in our community, the caricatures in 1990s films like Pédale Douce or Philadelphia, and things I heard growing up, I concluded: enjoy your youth, because there isn't much to hope for.

By 33, I was in rehab. At 35, I had children in a relationship that would be over a year later. At 37, I quit a successful career I had never believed would lead me anywhere.

Some things I thought were off-limits became available through geographic moves, legal reforms, therapy, luck, and circumstance. I made a living, raised my children, and found some community and eventually some meaning. But, as I have written before, not everything broken can be repaired. I am still terrified of what midlife will bring.

Lack of imagination isn’t unique to impulsive gay Frenchmen. But I always suspected that my inability to envision life led to missed opportunities and some self-sabotage.

Projecting oneself into the future fuels the decisions that build a life: saving for later, taking risks, and making sacrifices. You only invest in later years when you believe it’s worth investing in.

Research confirms this theory: the ability to imagine a successful future self, what psychologists Markus and Nurius (1986) termed “possible selves,” is a critical driver of motivation and achievement. For LGBTQ+ youth, the absence of affirming role models narrows their imagined futures, which can diminish resilience and ambition (Craig et al., 2015, Journal of Homosexuality). But this effect isn’t limited to LGBTQ+ individuals: Oyserman et al. (2006, Child Development) found that low-income and minority students who engaged in “possible selves” exercises showed improved academic motivation and performance. Similarly, interventions helping incarcerated individuals visualize post-release success have been linked to reduced recidivism (Maruna, 2001, Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives).

For many human beings, “possible selves” are also rooted in faith. The idea that the universe has a plan for you. That’s why the systematic exclusion of young LGBTQ+ people from spiritual spaces is especially cruel: it entrenches our inability to imagine our future.

I write all of this reluctantly. This newsletter never wants to sound whiny because queer people thrive not to be seen as victims. We’ve been conditioned—almost militantly—to insist this is all fine. We wear our resilience like armor, celebrate our joy, and pride ourselves on rising above.

Grit and hard work can open doors. In New York, I am surrounded by LGBTQ+ overachievers who’ve built impressive lives despite the odds. But these individual successes shouldn’t become our movement’s measure. Resilience is admirable, but it must not diminish our responsibility to the next generation.

When some in our community insist the playing field is now level—that if they made it, anyone can—they mistake their personal outcome for a universal reality. They’re building narratives on statistically insignificant exceptions, then using them to dismiss the ongoing struggles of the many. In doing so, they frame queer struggle as outdated, and further demands—for safety, representation, or even the right to hope—as unnecessary noise.

I have seen so many of my peers call it quits. My Facebook page is a graveyard—a dozen friends gone before midlife, lost to liver disease, suicides, addiction, or accident. Deaths that were often not tracked as part of this crisis of hope. And they’re not outliers: in 2024, 39% of LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered suicide, and 12% attempted it—double the national average. For trans and nonbinary youth, the numbers are even starker. That’s what happens when people run out of “possible selves”—they stop seeing a way forward.

At its core, the LGBTQ+ movement has always been a struggle to make hope possible—to carve out the space where queer people can imagine lives of dignity, connection, and joy. That was the whole point when we were making these terrible quality “it gets better” videos. And in many ways, we’ve succeeded: queer stories are more visible, more varied, and more hopeful than ever. That remains one of our most significant victories.

Hope, of course, cannot be boundless—or it becomes delusion. It does not have the same meaning for the Jamaica’s Gulley Queens as for the middle-class American gay. So much of our destiny is shaped by circumstances: where we’re born, our passports, our parents’ jobs, the randomness of the cruel DNA lottery.

And yet, all youth should be able to dream irresponsibly. Without that impulse, no extraordinary life would ever be lived. It is the prerogative of the young to push the boundary of what is possible.

But for many LGBTQ+ people, the fundamentals—health, economic opportunity, dignity, family, community—are elusive.

Some of these limitations feel immovable. Even when society shifts and offers support, we remain burdened. Shame—particularly the insidious brand that festers in childhood—doesn’t simply evaporate with the legalization of same-sex marriage, the right to serve in the military, or any accomplishment. Nor does the internalized belief that we are less worthy of belonging, representation, safety, or joy.

Now, we are witnessing a harrowing regression, particularly for trans people. Their basic rights—identification, healthcare, safety—are being stripped away. It’s not just dignity and opportunity being denied—it’s the ability to envision a future. And once trans people are told they are not permitted to dream of a whole life, we know it won’t stop there. The rest of us in the LGB community are next in line.

There’s a dark shift in the global mood—a growing sense that the dominant class relinquishes all responsibility towards others. Queer suffering isn’t seen as a failure to address, but as something functional—a necessary cost for preserving the comfort and imagined futures of those already at the center.

So, where does that leave us?

For centuries, the pursuit of happiness was never meant for people like us. Many of us grew up hoping only to survive: to avoid HIV, to make a living, to keep a low profile and find somewhere to hide, maybe find a fleeting connection. I fiercely believed that it could be different for the next generations. That one day, we would raise a damage-free generation of queer youth. One who would grow up believing they deserve companionship, safety, self-respect, and meaningful work. That they could hope for these things without apology.

And that, building on that hope, they would create extraordinary lives—lives that were out of reach for us. Lives that ultimately would benefit all of humankind.

I used to think all it would take was our inclusion in textbooks—real representation. But apparently, that’s one hill our opponents are prepared to die on, sometimes with support from within our community.

It leaves us here at this crossroads.

It’s time we took our destiny into our own hands. We now have the tools: our capital, our creativity, our numbers, our shared history, and our stubborn joy. Technological advancements are giving us something that never existed: the possibility of secure global connectivity. Let’s start building something of our own. Let’s design systems that guarantee us—and each other—what we deserve: community, dignity, and economic opportunity.

So, we no longer inherit stories of survival but can imagine queer “possible selves” in full color.