Homophobia

12 June 2022

 Homophobia has got me down. Homophobia is a big complicated and often subtle thing. So it's difficult to fight. I can only fight so much, and I get angry, and I'm angry a lot. It's Pride month and today is the Pulse Nightclub shooting anniversary so I'm gonna share a few things about homophobia. I really don't think straight people understand it. 

There's outward bigotry, which is easy to identify. I've had slurs and garbage thrown at me from passing cars many times. I had a shaved ice in my hand once and 15 seconds after the car passed I wish I had thrown it at the guy. In the moment when slurs are being yelled at me I get so scared. And then I get all disappointed in myself because I didn't fight back. I have a fear of being a victim of a hate crime often. It's hard to say how much of that fear is justified, like I'm in some danger, and I'm sure I'll survive, but my anxiety about that can consume me.

Being in the closet is a deeply painful experience. You have to lie a lot to stay in the closet. You have to act homophobic around others so they won't suspect you're gay. Your family and friends don't even know who you are, you're isolated. You hear homophobic jokes and arguments and you get hurt, but have no support. 

Absorbing all that pain is just really really unhealthy. In my case, I heard politicians and faith leaders claim AIDS was justice from God, and that my attraction to men was a sin next to murder. It was worse for generations before me though, my heart goes out to them. Every LGBTQ person has some amount of this pain carried with them all the time. It's very sad because LGBTQ people love each other, but we also trigger each other's pain. 

Sometimes you absorb the homophobia so much it becomes a part of your worldview. There's still some part of me that thinks gay marriage is wrong. Like, I intellectually know it isn't wrong, but there's this visceral response I have that gets scared of gay marriage. I don't honor that visceral response, because I know it's not legitimate, but it is something I have to live with. Thankfully it is going away, there's patient gay men in my life that are teaching me gay marriage is beautiful. 

We had a discrimination training at work the other day. I wondered if we had it (nobody wanted to do it) because of me. It was also very fear based, and that was a problem with that particular training, but it's probably an problem that often happens. The message was basically "don't say anything around women and LGBTQ or else you'll get sued"

When a anti-gay politician has some gay scandal that gets exposed and people laugh at his hypocrisy. That hurts. It's very subtle. But it makes gay people a complete joke. And the claim becomes "homophobia comes from gay people, it's their own fault." And while it's true internalized homophobia makes us do some very messed up things, homophobia is a much bigger thing that comes from all of society (straight people make up 90% of that homophobic society).

I personally think homophobia is an extension of misogyny, but it hard to say where it originates. It DOESN'T originate from gay people, we're just happy little people trying to live our lives.

There's Eric Porterfield, a politician in West Virginia who joked about drowning his kids if they were gay. That's hurtful to know that there's parents out there who'd rather have a dead kid than a gay kid. You might just say "oh it's just one guy, most parents aren't like that" ...but like, are most parents like that? They grew up thinking AIDS was justice from God. They passively absorbed that message and repeated it without thinking too hard about it. And yeah parents wouldn't drown their kids, but they'd have this burden of a queer kid for the rest of their life. My heart goes out to queer kids in conservative towns. 

When people say "I love gay people, what do I care what people do in the bedroom!" It rubs me the wrong way. It's a microaggression. It's reducing homosexuality to a sexual game or source of entertainment. It's about who I love though, who I'm attracted to, and it's a culture. I just feel like I'm treated like a sex object when people characterize me by what I do in the bedroom. (I mostly just sleep and scroll my phone in the bedroom btw) Some LGBTQ people are good at being a sex symbol though and I love those people. I don't love getting mad at microaggressions, it's just something small and their heart might even be in a good place. I also don't want people to walk on eggshells around me. I think I might just have to live with the microaggressions.

All dating is "forbidden love" and much more high stakes. Can't I just have a innocent crush on a guy without it being a scandal. Lots of gay people have leaned into the scandal, they know how to be the center of attention and use it to their benefit and honestly I'm proud of them. 

Evidently all sex I have is kinky?? Like from a hetero perspective yes. But it's normal vanilla sex to me. If I kiss a guy it's way more porny/sexy than a hetero kiss. 

There's a very real terror of being perceived as the creepy guy. I think a lot of men, hetero or LGBTQ, feel this terror. Being a single man is lonely, you're deprived of physical touch, women and kids are taught not to trust you. I think a lot of older gentleman have just resigned to being the creepy guy. What little attention they can get, they get by being the creepy guy. I get quite upset about men's mental health often. I think it's worse to be the gay creepy dude, but there's no way to quantify that and I shouldn't be claiming more oppression.

Probably the most hurtful thing to me was homophobia in & around the family therapy program I worked for. When I told a friend I was going to work with kids she told me "be VERY VERY careful, if you do ANYTHING that could be misconstrued as creepy, your whole life will be ruined" and this woman wasn't homophobic herself, she just knows how cruel the world can be to gay men. I have people in my life that think I shouldn't work with kids or be around kids. It makes me feel so poisonous. I was scared of some of the kids I worked with because they had the power to ruin my life with false accusations. Thankfully a lot of the kids I worked with assured me they'd never do that, but I worked with other kids that were pretty dang manipulative.

I'm pretty disappointed in myself. By letting all this get to me, I'm buckling under pressure, like, I want to believe I'm strong. I wish I were better at protesting. Like I went to a Trump rally to protest but I wasn't loud at all and it probably seemed to most people there that I supported Trump :/ Fighting against homophobia is so hard because if you do it incorrectly you end up reinforcing it. If you piss a homophobic person off you give them a reason to hate & fear you. 

Homophobia becomes an impasse too often in my life and it's so frustrating. I know I have to live in this world, and I gotta work with this homophobic society, I do pretty well honestly. Just I wish I didn't have to deal with it. Straight people don't have to deal with it, and I'm envious. Even though I'm real sad about this now, I know I'm a deeply happy person and I have a good life. If I'm to be like Jesus Christ I would endure all this hate and only return love. I'm doing the best I can. Love you all.