People are sharing the fictional characters that made them queer and we can relate

We know that gays are born, not made: but how long does it take us to realize just how gay we are?

Even if some of us shot out of the womb singing “Rose’s Turn,” chances are it still took us a while to understand the true extent of our gayness. For some, it might have been a first love that showed us the truth of who we were. Others might have found themselves secretly crushing on a best friend or teacher. But for many of us, the realization of our queerness first dawned on us randomly while we were watching some random B movie from 2004, and we’ve never gone back since.

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On Twitter, one user opened a can of gay worms by asking: “who was it that made y’all realize you were gay?” They kicked things off by sharing their own “root,” actress Arielle Kebelle, who served absolute BOB as Carrie in 2006’s John Tucker Must Die.

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And from there, the responses started rolling in. There was Chel from Road to El Dorado...

Naya Rivera’s sapphic turn in Glee created many a powerful gay in her time…

And who among us can forget Shakira’s “She Wolf in a Closet” video?

Serving c*nt? She trademarked it.

And we’d be remiss if we left Eliza Dushku off this list.

While they were busy both reaching for the gun, Catherine Zeta-Jones was busy serving prohibition-era c*nt.

There was some much-deserved love for Jessica Rabbit on the thread…

And so many of us were forged in the sapphic fires of Practical Magic.

RiRi will always do it for us…

And no list of this kind would be complete without a nod to Megan Fox in Jennifer’s Body, possibly the root to end all roots.

This Christina Milian moment created many a gay!

And Josie and the Pussycats remains a sapphic classic.

Remember when these two collabed?

And Janet Jackson left us with absolutely no ability to breathe with so many of her iconic looks…

We can’t forget Salma Hayek and the total chokehold she still has on us…

And Aaliyah remains one of our most powerful early crushes.

The list goes on and on and on and on…and for good reason. This is the true magic of pop culture: they can ban all the books they want, but they’ll never ban a gay teen’s ability to have a crush. Take that Ron DeSantis!