Passionately Promoting A More Perfect World

isaacsapphire:

fierceawakening:

isaacsapphire:

fierceawakening:

http://sleepyflannel.tumblr.com/post/161470740592/something-about-being-lgbt-that-isnt-talked-about

Does anyone else … not really relate to this?

Like I don’t doubt that this is her experience. And I am not at all saying she is exaggerating or needs to toughen up or something.

But most of the time I don’t feel alienated among my coworkers, despite that all of them generally date or even have married people of the opposite gender and I usually date members of the same gender.

I can sometimes feel that way if they are explicitly talking about heterosexual relationships in ways I can’t relate to, but most of the time I just feel like there are ways we are similar and ways we are different and that’s all.

I have felt that way, so hard. Reading a little further into the OP’s blog, it looks like they are in a similar environment to what I was in, in my youth.

God bless you if you don’t feel like a rainbow stud belt burns, like existing is political, like holding hands in public is a risky act of defiance. But please, don’t shame those who do.

It took me years to feel safe after I left that place, and the fear is still underneath it all, the reflexes to hide, to change clothes after leaving the house and before coming back, to be hyperaware of people seeing you being weird, to “does this make me look gay?” being a question of safety.

The world is huge and the United States isn’t much smaller. It contains a lot of things, good and bad.

I didn’t intend it as shaming. I just think there is a corner of tumblr that talks like feelings like this are essential to being Real LGBTs, and that makes me very uncomfortable.

Specifically, I feel like there is a specific kind of Tumblr lesbian that bonds over experiences like this but rarely says much at all about what loving women is actually like.

I get that sharing your trauma experiences is important. It is for me. But that makes me kind of uneasy.

Yeah, I want something that is *more* than pain, that is the beauty and joy as well. And some people are fortunate and have never had that pain and fuck anybody who is mad about some people not being in pain. But that pain is so much part of the identity for so many people.

The goal was happy, unscarred next generation of LGBTQ folks. But, where that exists, you get a huge culture/generation gap, that ends up with enormous competing access needs issues.

So, firstly, I am very much not in favour of that pain existing. I hope that soon no one will have to live with it.

But, like, I find it very unsurprising that there are people bonding over that pain instead of over the experience of loving [gender]. Because, well, how much bonding does come out of that? I feel like it’s exactly as @fierceawakening says - you feel like you have some things in common with your straight acquaintances and some things that are different, and that’s it. There’s not much reason to closely identify with the set of people whose relationships have just a little more in common with yours.

Which I think is why I feel largely indifferent to the Bay Area LGBT community while feeling deeply bonded to the [Redacted]ian LGBT community. Because San Francisco Pride was huge and peaceful and publicly supported, while when I went to gay parties in [Redacted] they had folks watching the door to lock us in in case we came under literal violent attack.

We all either had stories of bullying and assault, or of working so hard to pass as straight that we could barely see ourselves in the mirror. We always tried to meet in secret, so that people wouldn’t be able to connect the dots and realise we were all one group. I don’t think many people identified being queer as being political, but we were damn sure it was dangerous.

And that definitely sticks to me even in the US. When I get harassed on public transit, part of me is 100% sure that this is going to end with me in the hospital, like what happened to friends of mine. My heart rate doubles when I walk out the door looking even slightly queer. I freak the fuck out when people reach for my hand in public if I expect us to be read as gay, because my self-preservation instinct is yelling “HOLY FUCKING SHIT ARE YOU TRYING TO GET US KILLED!?!?!?”

Being queer in [Redacted] has some similarity to living in a war zone, and being queer in the Bay after leaving that means still having the PTSD. However, being queer in [Redacted] means being bonded with everyone else trying to survive in the war zone, while being queer in the Bay is like walking around among healthy people while being covered in all those scars. I’m really happy they aren’t covered in shrapnel; I just also can’t relate much to their experience.

(And, of course, I feel sympathy and solidarity with the people who did suffer this despite living in the Bay; I just doubt I’ll find them in the sea of people who manage to be both queer and normal.)