Walking into a room...When do I stop thinking about being gay?

Who's gay?

A fellow blogger on Equality 101 recently posted this article Roleplay in the Classroom about a lesbian who recently came out, and was asked to role play in her college class. She was uncomfortable and please read her article for her whole story and reflect.

But she posed a question that I'd like to discuss. When I ever not think about being gay? When I enter a room, I do think about if I'm the only gay one there. I wonder if someone here might throw out a slur aimed directly at me. Will some one be offended by my present they'll want to do physical harm to me? When I'm on a date, are we being judged by the wait staff? Are they treating us any differently because we're gay? Are the parents of my students going to pull them from my class because they think homosexuality is wrong?

And that's just the tip of the ice burg.

Grant it, 5 years ago, these were on my mind all the time, when I was in undergrad, like this blogger. But as time has gone on, I've really learned how to prioritize these "ramblings." First, I decide if I'm in a safe place, and if I am, then sucks to the rest of the questions. I am me, glitter and all, and if someone has a problem with it, they'll just have to deal. I'm not on this planet to make their lives comfortable. I'm here to challenge their version of normal.

So is it my sexuality and gender that I'm thinking about, yes, but it's not all I think about anymore. It has just become one of the lenses that I see out of - like a series of binoculars, while when I was younger I only had a monocle and could only see things in a gay way.

Share