blogging, xposting, and Pride
Jun. 17th, 2012 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
salixbabylonI wanted to strt blogging more, but it seems that I only have one "real content" post per week in me. And I've been forcing myself to blog for my "professional writer persona", just to throw some content out there.
So, because I'm a little lazy, and because it's xpost or nopost, I'm going to be posting those blog entries here too. I won't direct you at them over there because I might include some more personal commentary/content than ends up out for public consumption... I miss interacting with you folks and heck, you guys have more to say to my random babble than a bunch of invisible people who don't know me as anything but an author.
To that end, I'm going to post a couple of those (4) in quickish succession, and then plan to xpost every week. Because honestly, I don't have *that* much to say to come up with 500-1000 words of babble per week, TWICE.
It's still pride month, so I'm going to start with pride...
When I was growing up I didn’t really understand homophobia as something other than a distant cause, a crusade against injustice, something other people who lived in far less conservative towns were fighting for but which I would never be part of myself. Why fight for something, why take a stand, when you don’t know any gay people?
As an adult, better informed and more at ease in the world, of course the answer is clear – because you do know gay people. I knew them back then, even. Ten percent of any given high school student body may be gay. In my tiny Catholic school, that meant twenty students, five in my class of fifty. Did I know any? Hell yes! Did I know that I knew them? Hell no! They were all firmly in the closet, and probably didn’t even know, themselves.
Just like me. There were a lot of things I wasn’t talking about in high school, in my hometown. I didn’t talk about how maybe I liked my same-sex best friends more than I was supposed to. About how turned on I got by the naked girls in the cheesy 80s movies. About how I felt like something inside me was ripped apart by emotions that were too big for me to contain every time I read gay-themed books like “Maurice” or “The Front Runner” or watched movies like “Torch Song Trilogy” and “Longtime Companion.” Or how guilty I felt guilt over that boy in my class that everyone teased and called a fag until he was so miserable that he left our school.
You know where this is going. I went to college, I fell in love with a girl, I got a cosmic slap to the face that just because I liked boys didn’t mean there wasn’t a whole lot of queer in here. I finally had a name for those confusing feeling: bisexual. I wasn’t a fence-sitter, I wasn’t confused, and I could still be as feminine as I wanted to be; I was lucky. And I thought my little liberal college town was perfectly safe. My girlfriend and I held hands in public. We kissed at the park. We did naughty things under our coats on the bus. We were excited about gay pride week and tied little purple ribbons all over our backpacks.
And then one day that week, while I was waiting for the bus by myself, these two huge jocks joined me and started perusing the Pride fliers stapled to the bus stop, making gross comments about dykes who like to eat pussy and how they could show those stupid cunts what a real man had to offer. And I was terrified. Like a little fuzzy bunny rabbit, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think, I didn’t know what to do. My heart was pounding in my throat. They got on the bus. I didn’t move. It pulled away and I carefully walked to the nearest trash can, threw up, and started to cry. And in the midst of my panic, all I could think about was how minor that scene was, how it wasn’t even about me, how those two guys acted like I wasn’t even there. I wasn’t their target; I was lucky. Their homophobia wasn’t directed at me, and was probably all talk. But I could imagine it being much, much worse, and I suddenly didn’t want to live in a world where I had to share it with people like that. With people full of hate and aggression.
So, no – I don’t know what real homophobia looks like, not really. I’ve only had a little taste. I’ve been scared. I’ve had my mother tell me to “keep it to myself, don’t tell any of our relatives, and let’s never ever talk of this again.” But I’ve always counted myself lucky that I was scared, not beaten or raped. Misunderstood and insulted, but not banished from the family. And being bisexual (married to a man, although generally far more likely to be attracted to women), my queerness is still a hidden sort of thing. I don’t deal with discrimination or live in fear the way so many others do.
But I’ve seen it, hints of it at least. And it makes my soul want to scream at the injustice of it all. How can anyone hate someone just because of who they love? How can love cause a response of hate? What is the fear that is causing all of this? Where is the logic? Where is the threat the homophobes feel that causes them to lash out so vehemently?
It may have taken me a while to catch up. I may not have been as brave as I wanted to be, I may have prioritized anonymity and safety over standing up for others. But now I’m writing books. I’m going to the parades. I’m volunteering at the local LGBT center. I’m as out as I can be. And I’ll punch my homophobic cousin right in the fucking face if he ever says a word of that drivel around me at Thanksgiving. Sit down, shut up, and LOVE – just like your God told you to do, you ignorant homophobic jackass!
I’m a white, middle class, feminine-looking woman. I’m bisexual. My soulmate happened to be male. I’m a writer, which is just about the safest form of activism there is. I can hide everything queer about me. I’m lucky.
But it shouldn’t be a matter of hiding, of needing to be safe, or of luck. There are a lot of people out there who deserve to be safe, to be respected, to be equals in their workplaces, in their homes in their families – 10% of the population! They deserve to be lucky too. Our communities deserve to be enriched by every color of the rainbow.
So, because I'm a little lazy, and because it's xpost or nopost, I'm going to be posting those blog entries here too. I won't direct you at them over there because I might include some more personal commentary/content than ends up out for public consumption... I miss interacting with you folks and heck, you guys have more to say to my random babble than a bunch of invisible people who don't know me as anything but an author.
To that end, I'm going to post a couple of those (4) in quickish succession, and then plan to xpost every week. Because honestly, I don't have *that* much to say to come up with 500-1000 words of babble per week, TWICE.
It's still pride month, so I'm going to start with pride...
When I was growing up I didn’t really understand homophobia as something other than a distant cause, a crusade against injustice, something other people who lived in far less conservative towns were fighting for but which I would never be part of myself. Why fight for something, why take a stand, when you don’t know any gay people?
As an adult, better informed and more at ease in the world, of course the answer is clear – because you do know gay people. I knew them back then, even. Ten percent of any given high school student body may be gay. In my tiny Catholic school, that meant twenty students, five in my class of fifty. Did I know any? Hell yes! Did I know that I knew them? Hell no! They were all firmly in the closet, and probably didn’t even know, themselves.
Just like me. There were a lot of things I wasn’t talking about in high school, in my hometown. I didn’t talk about how maybe I liked my same-sex best friends more than I was supposed to. About how turned on I got by the naked girls in the cheesy 80s movies. About how I felt like something inside me was ripped apart by emotions that were too big for me to contain every time I read gay-themed books like “Maurice” or “The Front Runner” or watched movies like “Torch Song Trilogy” and “Longtime Companion.” Or how guilty I felt guilt over that boy in my class that everyone teased and called a fag until he was so miserable that he left our school.
You know where this is going. I went to college, I fell in love with a girl, I got a cosmic slap to the face that just because I liked boys didn’t mean there wasn’t a whole lot of queer in here. I finally had a name for those confusing feeling: bisexual. I wasn’t a fence-sitter, I wasn’t confused, and I could still be as feminine as I wanted to be; I was lucky. And I thought my little liberal college town was perfectly safe. My girlfriend and I held hands in public. We kissed at the park. We did naughty things under our coats on the bus. We were excited about gay pride week and tied little purple ribbons all over our backpacks.
And then one day that week, while I was waiting for the bus by myself, these two huge jocks joined me and started perusing the Pride fliers stapled to the bus stop, making gross comments about dykes who like to eat pussy and how they could show those stupid cunts what a real man had to offer. And I was terrified. Like a little fuzzy bunny rabbit, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think, I didn’t know what to do. My heart was pounding in my throat. They got on the bus. I didn’t move. It pulled away and I carefully walked to the nearest trash can, threw up, and started to cry. And in the midst of my panic, all I could think about was how minor that scene was, how it wasn’t even about me, how those two guys acted like I wasn’t even there. I wasn’t their target; I was lucky. Their homophobia wasn’t directed at me, and was probably all talk. But I could imagine it being much, much worse, and I suddenly didn’t want to live in a world where I had to share it with people like that. With people full of hate and aggression.
So, no – I don’t know what real homophobia looks like, not really. I’ve only had a little taste. I’ve been scared. I’ve had my mother tell me to “keep it to myself, don’t tell any of our relatives, and let’s never ever talk of this again.” But I’ve always counted myself lucky that I was scared, not beaten or raped. Misunderstood and insulted, but not banished from the family. And being bisexual (married to a man, although generally far more likely to be attracted to women), my queerness is still a hidden sort of thing. I don’t deal with discrimination or live in fear the way so many others do.
But I’ve seen it, hints of it at least. And it makes my soul want to scream at the injustice of it all. How can anyone hate someone just because of who they love? How can love cause a response of hate? What is the fear that is causing all of this? Where is the logic? Where is the threat the homophobes feel that causes them to lash out so vehemently?
It may have taken me a while to catch up. I may not have been as brave as I wanted to be, I may have prioritized anonymity and safety over standing up for others. But now I’m writing books. I’m going to the parades. I’m volunteering at the local LGBT center. I’m as out as I can be. And I’ll punch my homophobic cousin right in the fucking face if he ever says a word of that drivel around me at Thanksgiving. Sit down, shut up, and LOVE – just like your God told you to do, you ignorant homophobic jackass!
I’m a white, middle class, feminine-looking woman. I’m bisexual. My soulmate happened to be male. I’m a writer, which is just about the safest form of activism there is. I can hide everything queer about me. I’m lucky.
But it shouldn’t be a matter of hiding, of needing to be safe, or of luck. There are a lot of people out there who deserve to be safe, to be respected, to be equals in their workplaces, in their homes in their families – 10% of the population! They deserve to be lucky too. Our communities deserve to be enriched by every color of the rainbow.
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no subject
Date: 2012-06-18 03:17 am (UTC)Crap. Now you got me all riled up and inspired and thinking about leaving my shell and going back to Pride. Haven't been in over a decade and a half. Might be worth venturing out.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-18 04:24 am (UTC)And thanks! That was my essay for the "Hop Against Homophobia" promo event, and I'm glad it wasn't overly preachy. As a once dude once illustrated, parables and stories are the best way to reach people and connect. ;)
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Date: 2012-06-18 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-06-19 03:41 am (UTC)Now I almost regret not going to Pride last weekend, but I just wasn't up to it.
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Date: 2012-06-19 05:45 am (UTC)Pride can be overwhelming, and bring up a lot of emotions. Maybe next year it will seem like fun for you. *hug*
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Date: 2012-06-20 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-06-20 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-22 04:46 pm (UTC)