What is the word for what/who we are?

[idgiehkt]

If we don't have a "lifestyle" (and I hate that term as much as anyone), then how do people explain to people when you are telling them something that you can see from a gay perspective, that maybe they can't see because they are straight? How do you explain it to them, convince them it is legitimate? Has anyone ever had a problem with this? And then what do you do when after you've tried to describe the thing that you see that they don't, in the best way you can think of that they can understand, and they turn around and accuse you of playing the 'queer card', and making this about your 'homophobia issue'...I am at a loss here, and fighting back tears, frankly. Has anyone ever experienced this before? I mean how do you convince people there is a whole world out there that we live in, where we notice things they might not (like the mannequins in the store window)and that what we see is real and legitimate despite the fact that they are blind to it...I guess I probably just need new friends.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

[peacebird]

1. as a straight woman perhaps my input here isn't "valid" but aren't people

just people regardless of whom they love? I believe that my concerns and your concerns are equally valid because everyone sees the world through the prism of their experiences. If your "friends" try to invalidate your concerns - basing their reaction on your sexual identitiy (?!? :wtf: ) then I would say these people are at best passive aggressive jerks and really not worthy of being called "friend" at all.

:hug:

[Kali]

2. Culture?

I'm not sure what you mean, exactly. Be more specific about the conversation that brought this up.

[dsc]

3. It is hard

if for no other reason than acknowledging a different worldview can come dangerously close to acknowledging being different and thus saying it is OK to treat us differently. I have no doubt that I am a much different person due to being gay than I would be had I been straight. I learned from an early age to keep my own counsel due to the legitimate fear that I would be hated for being different. I am far more independent due to that. I also think that white gays, on average, are far more likely to understand minority issues than other whites due to actually being a minority (even though we can hide). But even with that increased understanding we still don't know what it is like to be black or Hispanic. They can no more tell us that then we can tell straights what it is like to be gay. No matter how sympathetic a straight is, he or she is still straight and thus won't know what it is like to be gay. Probably didn't help here. sorry.

[idgiehkt]

6. yes, but that would be progress.

"No matter how sympathetic a straight is, he or she is still straight and thus won't know what it is like to be gay."

I mean, for someone to admit that...to say, "I don't understand"...that would be honest; instead of 'you are 'pathetic' and you are playing the gay card and you have 'issues'.

I mean, "I don't understand" would be music to my ears, you know, because at least they are willing to consider there is something they are not seeing and have it explained to them.

[dsc]

9. from the post below

it sounds like they are still getting used to you being gay instead of the straight they thought you were. It does take time. Think of it from their perspective for a moment. You were one thing to them. Now all of the sudden you are another. It is hard to get used to that. That said, you do need some gay friends too. Ones who can understand what you are going through. I wish you luck, trust me I have been there as have many others.

[idgiehkt]

11. No, I've been out for 15 years.

I think it's that I am trying to be friends with a group of straight women, which is a recipe for disaster for me, and was even before I came out, and I just need to suck it up, cut the ties and get on with my life.

Thanks for the feedback and sorry I am dumping here. God is just holding my face in it right now for the past few months...these issues keep coming up and I know when that happens the powers that be want me to see something or do something or grow somehow. It has been YEARS since I have really had to look at this stuff in this way...I mean, yes, on a political level,...but on a personal level I haven't struggled with these kinds of issues in years and years.

And I think that's why I sound so uncertain because I am so rusty at dealing with this really nuanced, oblique, interpersonal homophobia.

[Psephos]

4. The best word I can think of is "alive"

Each person has the experience of being unable to convince others of the value and intensity of their own perspective.

Have you considered that there are aspects of the straight life that you are unable to see easily? I guarantee you this frustration you feel is not a gay/straight thing. It's a human thing.

Language is not able to convey the full richness of personal experience or the details of perspective. We must trust that others feel the same strange combination of connection and isolation, and realize that elements of both have been felt by all people through the ages.

Among all primates, including humans, there is an inborn urge to divide others into an in-group and an out-group. "Otherness" has its own processing center in the emotional part of the brain, and the natural response to those identified as "others" is a combination of fear and dislike. It takes sustained effort and an enlightened view to overcome this response.

We can make things better but until we change human genetics this instinctual urge shall remain.

Meanwhile, take heart: I feel your anguish, and although I'm not gay, I believe I do know a lot of what you're feeling. You have friends in this world you don't even realize. :-) The situation is not impossible, it's only difficult.

Peace.

[idgiehkt]

7. yes, because I used to be straight.

and that makes it even worse, actually, because I know how I used to think. Most gay people at one time or another were straight, if even at very young, and even if not, we are totally immersed in it most of the time. So we are a lot more familiar with "straighthood" then straight people are with gayhood."

I am so freaking stupid lately. I don't know why I keep running into this stuff with people over and over and over again. It has been a constant theme in my life since February. And it just keeps cycling around over and over again. I mean, it wears a different face in each situation, but still it keeps coming back around. I am at the point where I feel like giving up speaking for the rest of my life. I feel like I am in a different country and I don't speak the language and I keep trying to learn the words and I keep failing, so...arrghhh, enough of the metaphors.

[Sinti]

8. I agree with MuseRider - Human

Who you love has absolutely no impact on that. If people mistreat you because of something in your heart that's pure and not harmful to them, they are simply not worth your time. Get away, and understand that they are quite simply Ignorant. People used to have these types of problems with mixed race relationships - it was considered 'unnatural.' F*@k that. They're ignorant, and carrying around some darkness inside that doesn't belong there. Understanding what it's like to be gay is exactly the same as understanding what it's like to be straight... it's a sexual/emotional attraction, and really no different from the whole man/woman thing. If folks can't deal with it in those terms... oh well, find better friends. Don't let them hurt you!

Ignorance is often like a sharp knife in the hand of a small child, someone has to take that knife away... but you can't let them stab you in the process. Truth is, they should be ashamed. You should be free to scold them for their willful ignorance.

[idgiehkt]

10. some people you just can't 'scold'.

I appreciate your input but some people it is just impossible to get that across to because they are full of bottomless bile.

At this point it's not about a relationship, it's just pointing out something about gay culture and for that I got accused of playing the 'gay card' and bringing up my 'issues'. In other words, it isn't real...'it' is just a pathology in my head. I can see at this point there probably isn't anyway to explain it. Just another life lesson I guess.

[MuseRider]

5. Human

no more no less. Everyone has a different perspective and for some reason that is always understood except when you are GLBT. Human, no more no less.

[Technowitch]

13. Exactly!

What I am is human.

I am not "a redhead" -- I *have* auburn-red hair.

I am not what job I do now or have done in the past. I am not "a writer" or "a poet" -- I happen to spend some of my time writing. Just like I also spend time gardening, reading, walking, shopping, watching movies, and sleeping. Actually, the thing I do most consistently is that 8 hours/night of sleep -- but that does not make me "a sleeper", as if there's some alternative (wakers?).

I am not my sexual preference. I happen to like both men and women, meaning my orientation is bisexual. But I refuse to be defined as being that, as if it is the single most important detail about me.

Categories are what separate we humans from one another. What create "us" versus "them".

We'd all be better off if we dropped the "I am (fill in the blank)" and replaced it with simply being who we are.

[idgiehkt]

14. um, yes, but

gays didn't make the categories. That comes from dominant culture, unless you believe in new age philosophy that we created them with our minds or something. I used to be into that, but not anymore.

I appreciate your input, but I feel like I am at gut level angst with something and people are answering in a very intellectualizing way about this. I'm starting to think I may be the only one here ever accused of 'playing the gay card' because I tried to speak from my experience of being gay in this culture, and seeing things from the perspective that I do. I'm curious about how people who are gay impart their experience AS GAY to people who are not, without getting accused of the things that I was accused of. I believe in the categories. I believe naming brings power, and just because I walk around with 'human' stapled on my forehead doesn't mean people aren't going to point and go 'look, a big 'ol queer'. One day there may be a day when we don't need to come out and say 'this is what I am, and this is what I do, or who I love or whatever' but that day isn't here yet, and in fact all the gains gays have made in the last 30-40 years have come from doing exactly that.

Honestly I think I just phrased the original post really badly. I was very upset when I wrote it and my brain wasn't working at full cognition. It's very rare that I get upset to the point that I can't articulate well...I've had that happen to me more in the last few months than I have in my whole life.

[sui generis]

12. people live in bubbles, including us

we have "lives" not lifestyles, just like everyone else. Some people just think anyone not in their bubble is abnormal.

You don't have to justify your life to anyone, not one bit. Anyone who thinks you do should be willing to jusify theirs to you. Does being born with a predilection for the opposite sex make you more "moral" or more worthy? Not one bit.

Why should anyone care about something as abstract as what YOU do with your gonads? Can you imagine their outrage if we had an opinion about theirs? Why aren't they outraged about people who never use their gonads? For all that matter, why aren't they morally outraged about people with two dicks, multiple hooters, or an ass crack that goes east to west instead of north to south? It's all the same abstract - it's nothing anyone else except you and your consenting partner will ever know, so why on earth do they think they even have a right to an opinion about it? I believe they really think that being gay is ONLY about sex, and so they focus on sex. Most people get it, regardless, but the few who don't are RIGHTEOUS, for no good reason at all. Let them blow and bluster - most of the righteous self-described "normal" ones have never had to deal with the shit we've seen and lived through.

For them their highest personal value is to be some mythical form of "normal", and if queer was normal then that's what they'd be. That's why they hate the idea that we demand acceptance, not tolerance, because that would make more than June and Ward Cleaver in missionary position normal (yee haw!), and vastly complicate their simple little worlds.

Again, most people on the other side of the fence are at least polite enough and curious enough to "accept" people. Finally, I would also add that you don't ever need to accept ugliness from someone. My favorite quote from the desiderata:

"You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."

Believe it.

[NMMNG]

15. Humans have an inborn psychological need to place people in groups

Unfortunately from that need stems the practice of valuing certain groups over other and even hating particular groups, sometimes without valid reasons, e.g. bigotry. All to often people are willing to make judgments of other groups but unwilling to learn anything about them, even when given the opportunity. Sometimes the "information" they get from propaganda sources is the only thing they wish to hear, so they purposely avoid anything that contradicts these "facts".

I run into this sort of problem not only because I'm a lesbian but because I'm an atheist. People have a variety of assumptions about me for both reasons. Sometimes they are open to learning facts and sometimes they aren't. The best I can do is try to teach the truth, and let those who wish to remain ignorant do so.

[mitchtv]

16. I am an American Citizen, and a taxpayer

I want my equality