[Vol. 8] We're Not Done With Homophobia in 2021
Even the most privileged among us (Hi!) have baggage to carry.
*I’ve linked LGBTQ+ support resources at the bottom of this article, should you need them.
I was curled up in a giant bean bag in my family’s living room (because, why not), the warmth from the glowing embers in the fireplace just radiating far enough so I could feel it with my fingertips.
In that idyllic space, I told my dad that I’d been assaulted for being gay.
It was a punch, thrown on a crowded train car just outside of Paris (I wrote about the whole thing over on Medium). Ironically, it was supposed to be a very magical day – my friend and I were on the way to see The Palace of Versailles.
My dad already knew the story, I’d told him about it once before, but I felt as though the moment we were having warranted a reminder.
It was springtime and we were in quarantine. Like the entirety of the internet and almost every other living room at the time, we had just spent hours talking about the Black Lives Matter movement and the many examples of systemic racism we were all being confronted with.
Eventually, I started going off about injustices faced by the queer community as well, egged on by that burning feeling in your chest you get when something is so personal to you that it hurts. Somehow finding a gap in my run-on sentences, my dad jumped in to say something to the effect that he was glad I didn’t have to worry so much about all this; that homophobia didn’t so much touch people like me and the big, liberal cities in which I choose to live.
That’s when I hit him with the reminder: I’ve been punched before, for being gay.
Someone chose to physically assault me just because, I don’t know, the way I dressed, or spoke, or moved my body.
Just before he threw the punch, the man who followed me out of the train car that day asked me, “Are you gay?” He never gave me the chance to answer him. I guess he decided to go with the benefit of the doubt. Ha.
My older brother, who happened to walk in on the conversation at that moment, said that if he’d been there he would’ve punched the guy. I laughed nervously and tried to move the conversation along despite my already faltering voice.
I was holding back tears that I hadn’t realized I still had left to cry.
The tears weren’t for the man who’d punched me – I’d wasted enough energy on him. They were for all the struggles that my family and friends could not see or possibly understand; the struggles all queer people, privileged or not, still have to endure today.
No, we’re not done with homophobia in 2021.
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Some of you may be wondering why I’ve chosen to bring Black Lives Matter and my privilege into the conversation so early on. Well, not only is it topical, but you can chalk it up to an article written by one of my favorite LGBTQ+ writers on Medium, James Finn.
His recent piece, ‘No It’s Not Ok to be a Gay White Man’, resonated deeply with me (I encourage you to give it a read yourself).
Just as Finn says in his article, let me just clarify here that I’m not about to write 2,000 words equating the struggles of more marginalized members of the LGBTQ+ community and, for example, gay white cisgender men. Their struggles are not equal.
It is a known and well-substantiated fact that certain demographics in the community have it harder.
*AKA they face more discrimination than others.
Transgender people and LGBTQ+ double minorities (queer people of color) for example, do have it harder than gay white men and women.
Queer people of color can be two times as likely to experience personal discrimination when applying for jobs or interacting with the police than their white counterparts – something that’s not hard to believe after everything we’ve seen and heard over this past year. LGBTQ+ racial minorities are also statistically more vulnerable to poverty than both their straight counterparts and their queer white brothers and sisters.
The numbers shoot even higher for transgender and gender-expansive people – especially black transgender women, who are often considered to be at the most vulnerable intersection of the LGBTQ+ community. The Human Right’s Campaign’s 2018 report, Dismantling a Culture of Violence: Understanding Anti-Transgender Violence and Ending the Crisis, is a great, research-backed resource to look into on these issues.
The truth is clear: Transgender people and all LGBTQ+ people of color are simply up against more than their cis, white counterparts.
That having been said, what I have no problem writing 2,000 words on is the idea that homophobia in itself is no longer an issue; that we’ve somehow achieved a level of equality by which systemic homophobia can no longer touch us if the only minority status we hold is “gay”.
That is some bullshit right there.
No matter your race or gender, if you’re part of the queer community, you’re up against systemic homophobia. I’m living proof that even the most privileged among us are.
When I came out of the closet as a little gay Junior in High School, it was a waterworks show. The night I came out, unbeknownst to her, my Mom had booked two front-row seats in the splash-zone.
For a long time, I didn’t know what it was that made me cry so much.
I grew up in a liberal, European family that had no issue with me liking boys. I even have an early memory etched into my mind of my Mom turning around in the front seat of the car to tell her three sons that it was totally ok if any of us were gay.
I never had a specific experience in school I can remember that would indoctrinate me with the idea that being gay was a bad thing. Other than the occasional run-in with pre-teen bullies – none of which had to do with being gay – I had a pretty great experience in school.
Although I grew up in neighborhoods where you could probably count the number of out gay people on one hand, their existence was never actively discouraged – at least, not that I could remember.
So why in the hell did I break down when I decided it was time to let the world know I was a flaming homosexual?
Well, maybe because of terms like “flaming homosexual”.
No, but seriously, think about it for a second – think about how many gay jokes you heard (and possibly told) growing up, how many characters you saw on TV or in movies that made gay people look like weird sideshow acts, and how many seriously homophobic things were said around you that were played off with a simple “that’s just [insert homophobic aunt/uncle’s name] for you!”.
The ugly truth is, I grew up in a world where you didn’t want to be gay.
If I was, it was acceptable, and for that I’m truly privileged … but how fucked up is it that I even have to say that?
How fucked up is it that my coming out wrap sheet includes –
Suppressing my sexuality for years.
Denying myself the ability to admit that I was gay, even after I’d started to watch gay porn (I mean, what kind of psychological game is that??)
Bursting into tears when I told my parents.
– and yet I still feel like I have to preface that I had a “very privileged experience”.
I guess the most fucked up part of all is that, in the context of our world, I did have a very privileged experience.
My parents accepted me, my friends were cool with it, and I got to keep living my life as I had been before. In fact, I got to live a better life.
Some kids don’t live long enough to come out, others don’t live very long after they do; Some are forced to move away from their homes and loved ones, others are never allowed to leave. Still more never get the chance to come out at all.
That’s the reality of our world.
Coming out is a milestone in many people’s lives in the LGBTQ+ community, it’s true, but there is a second coming out that’s equally as ubiquitous and yet only gets about an eighth as much of the attention.
That’s probably because this second coming out isn’t a single, dramatic act you can record and upload to YouTube, but more of a slow, indefinite burn.
You could even argue that this second coming out isn’t specific to the queer community; a process that everyone, gay or straight, must go through to get where they truly want to go.
The second coming out is about finding yourself after you’ve declared yourself.
No one tells you this when you come out, but after you’ve done the whole “this is who I am” thing and come out as whatever you identify as, you’ve got to actually figure out who that person is.
To give you an idea of the timeframe on that journey … well, it’s been 6 years and I’m still chugging along.
Part of the reason figuring yourself out takes so long – especially as a queer person – is that there are a ton of roadblocks in your way. You exist, and have always existed, as a queer person in a homophobic-leaning world.
Remember: Growing up, you didn’t want to be who you are now. It takes more time than you think to unpack that.
Plus, the world that told you being queer wasn’t ok, both through subconscious messaging and straight-up physical, verbal or emotional offense, is the same world you now exist in as an out queer person.
For me, that meant coming out on a leash. I was, and am still in some ways, only pseudo-free. As much as I’d like to rewrite my narrative to say that I burst open the closet door and jumped into the arms of the queer community, experimenting with my sexuality and gender expression however I saw fit, that’d be a big fat lie.
And I’m no liar.
In reality, it wasn’t as black and white for me as phrases like “in the closet” and “out of the closet” might make it seem.
For a long time (I’m talking years), I only really wandered so far as I could still turn my head and be comforted by the sight of my closet behind me.
Stripping away metaphor, what that means is I distanced myself from the gay community, I frequently felt like I had to prove that I wasn’t “that kind of gay”, and I struggled with even allowing myself to question things like the bounds of my sexuality, gender expression, and gender identity. I was terrified by my femininity and affronted by my sexuality – not in the same way I was before (it was pretty obvious I was into guys) but in a way that kept me from expressing these things freely.
Let’s put it this way: Once I was out, I was out. I could tell the world that I was gay, and I felt like the world could read me as such. But what then?
What balance could I find that I was comfortable with between my masculinity and femininity? How could I get over some of my sexual hangups? Could I ever talk about them openly? What felt natural to me and what felt like something that had been synthesized and spoon-fed to me by the homophobic-leaning society I grew up in and continue to exist in?
Yes, I was out, but what then? How do you navigate living as a gay person in a society that, in the best of cases, is fine with you showing up to the party, but didn’t exactly send you an RSVP? (Ooooh awkward … )
As the child of an eternal optimist (my Dad – who I eternally look up to), I can’t end this article on such a dreary note.
Besides, I said I’m not a liar. While what I wrote is all true to how I feel, it’s not the whole story.
No, we’re not done with homophobia in 2021.
No matter your privilege, if you’re part of the queer community, you have these obstacles in your way, it’s true.
If you ever needed any proof of that, well then look no further. I’m the poster child – white privilege, economic privilege, familial privilege, educational privilege, and yet I still got saddled with plenty of baggage when it comes to queerness.
And yet still, having written everything I just wrote, I wouldn’t take back being gay for the world.
Part of that is my privilege speaking, of course. I imagine it’s a lot easier for me to say that than for someone who’s been raised to believe that their sexuality will land them in hell (or worse still, a darker reality above ground).
But I think it’s more than that. It has to be more than that. I’ve seen too many queer people come to the same conclusion after they’ve been given a chance to love themselves and be loved for who they are in return.
We may have wanted to “fit in” more growing up, but now fitting in would mean no longer recognizing ourselves.
As much as I like to say that my being gay is only a small sliver of my personality, I also know that, quite paradoxically, it would leave a big, huge hole in its wake if it wasn’t there anymore. Being queer in the world we live in has made me stronger, smarter, more creative, more resourceful, braver, and, above all, a more empathetic person.
I don’t attribute that to something as simple as “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” – I know that the only reason my queerness didn’t kill me is that I am as highly privileged in almost every facet of my life as I can be.
To bring back words I’ve written from the past, about that punch thrown in the Parisian suburbs, “I think that what doesn’t kill you physically can kill you in other ways. Just like a cut, we have to heal before we can see a scar, watch it fade, and feel tougher skin grow back in its place. That’s not handed to you through shitty things happening.”
So rather than invoke that shitty phrase, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, I’ll say instead that I see the strength I’ve found in being gay as a testimony to all the good queerness can bring to someone’s life if only they’re given the chance to fully live in it and love it, as I have.
Someday, I trust, we’ll all be given that chance, no questions asked. In the meantime, I have a whole lot more questions to ask and a whole lot more newsletters to write.
Before I officially let you go, I just want to drop a resource here for anyone that’s questioning their sexual or gender identity, or would just like to know more about the LGBTQ+ world.
The Trevor Project’s Trevor Support Center is a gold mine.
If you ever feel hopeless and don’t know where else to turn, they also have a 24/7 hotline (both call and text available).
And that was That’s Gay, Volume 8. See you in Volume 9, folks!
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"Denying myself the ability to admit that I was gay, even after I’d started to watch gay porn",
relatable
For a time I even cried after each time