National Coming Out Day.
Oct. 11th, 2009 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matt_doyleI can't exactly 'come out' today, because I've been out for years, but it occurred to me that I'm not sure if I'd mentioned it on this particular journal, so that's something I should probably do.
Since I was eighteen, I've known that I was bisexual. My freshman roommate at college knew before I did, which was annoying (the moreso because he and I didn't get along well at all), but there was very little drama for me all around, because I've got it pretty easy. I'm much more attracted to women than I am to men, I've never had a boyfriend, and I'm monogamous, and now engaged to a wonderful woman who I'll be marrying next year, so my bisexuality is mostly internal, academic, only relevant in that I'm as likely to ogle a pretty man as a pretty woman. So it costs me nothing to be bisexual, really, especially if I'm quiet about it - which to me has always seemed like a good reason to be as open as possible. I'm not ashamed, and I don't want to hide - I don't want to benefit from straight privilege, when I can help it. I don't want homophobes to feel comfortable discussing their bigotry in front of me while I sit quiet. If you having something against gay people, you have something against me, and that will be true even when I have a wife, a picket fence, and 2.5 children.
I was ridiculed for being gay long before I suspected I was, though: I lived in a rural community and I wore my hair long, which as everyone knows is a sure sign of homosexuality in a man, right? And while, in middle school, I thought that being gay was a great thing for me to mock and laugh at, I was fortunate to get educated and grow out of that before I hit the ninth grade, and I've supported gay rights and opposed homophobia for far longer than I've known I was attracted to men. It seemed pretty basic and common-sensical to me: apart from any other considerations, extending equal rights, equal treatment, equal protection under the law to gay people and gay relationships didn't cost anyone anything, didn't hurt a single human being. I've never heard a justification to opposing gay rights that seemed logical to me, and every moral objection I've heard is rooted in either religion or squeamishness, neither of which should be legislated.
So: Happy National Coming Out Day! My thoughts and prayers are with everyone who's loud and proud already, with those who are just going through the tough, stressful, painful process of coming out, and with those who don't yet feel safe or comfortable enough to do so. Whatever choice they've made, I respect them for it, because there's no easy way to do it, not yet. Hopefully, though, there will be. Year after year, day after day, confession after confession, the ignorance and bigotry are slowly (far too slowly) but surely being stamped out, I hope and believe, and I will do what I can to be a part of making that more educated and tolerant world, one small step at a time.
I hope you will, too.
Since I was eighteen, I've known that I was bisexual. My freshman roommate at college knew before I did, which was annoying (the moreso because he and I didn't get along well at all), but there was very little drama for me all around, because I've got it pretty easy. I'm much more attracted to women than I am to men, I've never had a boyfriend, and I'm monogamous, and now engaged to a wonderful woman who I'll be marrying next year, so my bisexuality is mostly internal, academic, only relevant in that I'm as likely to ogle a pretty man as a pretty woman. So it costs me nothing to be bisexual, really, especially if I'm quiet about it - which to me has always seemed like a good reason to be as open as possible. I'm not ashamed, and I don't want to hide - I don't want to benefit from straight privilege, when I can help it. I don't want homophobes to feel comfortable discussing their bigotry in front of me while I sit quiet. If you having something against gay people, you have something against me, and that will be true even when I have a wife, a picket fence, and 2.5 children.
I was ridiculed for being gay long before I suspected I was, though: I lived in a rural community and I wore my hair long, which as everyone knows is a sure sign of homosexuality in a man, right? And while, in middle school, I thought that being gay was a great thing for me to mock and laugh at, I was fortunate to get educated and grow out of that before I hit the ninth grade, and I've supported gay rights and opposed homophobia for far longer than I've known I was attracted to men. It seemed pretty basic and common-sensical to me: apart from any other considerations, extending equal rights, equal treatment, equal protection under the law to gay people and gay relationships didn't cost anyone anything, didn't hurt a single human being. I've never heard a justification to opposing gay rights that seemed logical to me, and every moral objection I've heard is rooted in either religion or squeamishness, neither of which should be legislated.
So: Happy National Coming Out Day! My thoughts and prayers are with everyone who's loud and proud already, with those who are just going through the tough, stressful, painful process of coming out, and with those who don't yet feel safe or comfortable enough to do so. Whatever choice they've made, I respect them for it, because there's no easy way to do it, not yet. Hopefully, though, there will be. Year after year, day after day, confession after confession, the ignorance and bigotry are slowly (far too slowly) but surely being stamped out, I hope and believe, and I will do what I can to be a part of making that more educated and tolerant world, one small step at a time.
I hope you will, too.
