Tegan and sara both gay

As their profile has grown, the Quin sisters have also established themselves as significant queer voices in the music industry. Now, 20 years after they released debut album Under Feet Like OursTegan and Sara are allowing themselves to reflect on their personal evolution.

With both the book and album about to drop, I spoke to Sara Quin about the complicated and sometimes painful emotions she experienced while working on these projects. Nick Levine: What did you learn about your teenage self from writing this memoir? Sara Quin: I think by the time we were finishing the memoir, I had such admiration for myself as a teenager.

I was brave. I went out every day looking how I wanted to look even though people laughed at us — they said we dressed like garbage and that we were ugly. And I have such admiration for that person who did that and found other people who dressed like that and other communities who supported those ideas.

Do I want to dress like that now? But to look back and have love and affection for that version of myself is a very empowering thing. NL: In the book you and Tegan write so movingly about getting to grips with your sexuality — with being queer. SQ: You know, we talk about this a lot.

5 facts about Tegan and Sara you may not know

Even when I had a girlfriend and I was having sex with tegan and sara both gay, I still imagined myself as being not gay. I could talk about gay people and not associate myself with it. When girls were supposed to be obsessed with their boyfriends, we had best friends who were we obsessed with.

NL: Did it make it any easier on some level, knowing that your sister was experiencing the same thing? SQ: Oh no, it made it worse for me. Because the thing I was trying to keep secret inside of myself, she was like an externalised version of. How do I say this?

When I felt like it was only me having these feelings, it made me feel isolated, but it was still my thing — something that was happening to me, and not to both of us. NL: When you were writing the book, were you shocked at how scared of your own queerness you were during this time?

But I spent a year writing about this and I felt grief and anger and I felt like, God, no wonder I had so much internalised homophobia — the only time I ever heard about gay people was on talk shows and it was always stories about them being exploited or murdered or assaulted.

So I sort of grieved for this younger version of myself that could have known something different. SQ: Exactly. And later, as a young person in my twenties, I learned about queer history and Aids and Act Up and all these inspiring fucking amazing people — people who had always existed and trailblazed and made things easier.

Because we knew how important that community was and how it can help you get through the bullshit. NL: I think the resilience you and sister show in the book will be so incredible to a lot of people reading. SQ: Yeah, I hope so. Through writing the book I realised, you know what, I want to let go of some of this.

And I did become someone who built a community that now gives me so much strength and pride. Dazed media sites.