QUEER WORD
GROWING SIDEWAYS

What it means:

Growing sideways is a term coined in the early 2000s by gender and queer studies scholar Kathryn Bond Stockton, who used it to describe the unique and non-linear experience of growing up queer.

The concept challenges the dominant cultural assumption that growth, especially during childhood and adolescence, should follow a straight, predictable path - toward adulthood, heteronormativity, and traditional milestones like marriage or parenthood.

For queer people, especially queer children, that path often doesn’t feel like an option. Instead of growing ‘up,’ as the world expects from us, we grow ‘sideways’ - finding unexpected routes, navigating secrecy or shame, piecing together our identities in our own time and on our own terms.

This sideways growth might involve delaying typical milestones (like dating or coming out), forging chosen family instead of following biological norms, or simply observing the world from the margins, where different truths and joys become visible.

Let's Use It In A Sentence:

While her classmates were obsessed with crushes and making out behind the bike shed, Zara was growing sideways - quietly figuring out how to love herself in a world that told her she shouldn’t.

A Little Bit of History:

Kathryn Bond Stockton introduced the phrase growing sideways in her 2009 book ‘The Queer Child: Or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century’. In it, she questions what it means to be a child—and how that meaning is different for queer children. The concept of growing sideways offers an alternative narrative to the typical ‘coming-of-age’ arc and makes space for the messy, interrupted, and nonlinear realities of queer youth.

It’s also a powerful way to describe the adaptive, often creative, ways LGBTQ+ people survive in environments that don’t always support them. Whether it’s hiding parts of ourselves, finding solace in fantasy worlds, or discovering queer community later in life, these sideways journeys are full of resilience, just like the flower that blooms in the cracks in the pavement.

And while the term was coined in academic circles, it has since found resonance in wider queer culture. Many people now use growing sideways to reflect on their own life paths - not just during childhood, but well into adulthood.

Why It Matters:

Sure, growing sideways is a beautifully poetic turn of phrase, but it’s not just that. It’s a way to honour the complexity of queer lives. It reminds us that detours, delays, and deviations from the norm are not failures, but forms of resistance and wisdom.

In fact, there can be a gift in this kind of growth. When you don’t follow the expected path, you often develop deeper empathy, sharper insights, and a more expansive sense of possibility. Growing sideways teaches us how to imagine new ways of being—and I think that’s something the world desperately needs.