confirmed dead on Monday. It’s a strange feeling to mourn the loss of someone you never knew personally, but as I scrolled through my Twitter feed yesterday, it became even clearer to me how much Naya Rivera impacted the LGBTQ+ community.
Like many other queer women, Rivera’s portrayal of Santana Lopez on Glee fostered my coming out experience and for that, I will forever be indebted to her.When Glee first premiered in May 2009, I had a semblance of an idea that I was queer, but I was not ready to admit it to myself.
A few years earlier, the thought had crossed my mind when I realized that not every sixth grade girl told her mom what her female English teacher was wearing to school each day.