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Edited on Wed Apr-15-09 10:04 AM by Beam Me Up
Being ten years your senior I can talk a bit about that. First of all what screwed with my head was the hypocrisy and, for lack of a better way of putting it, "the denial dimension". Rural southern Indiana is barely the "south" but it is, culturally, more like Kentucky. My family by local standards were "well off" but by standards anywhere else were "working poor". The word "gay" didn't exist or at least I didn't hear it until I was a teenager in the mid sixties. All I knew was that I was attracted to other boys and I also knew that although there was a lot of "playing around," it wasn't something you ever talked about. It was something shameful, for many a "poor" substitute for sexual activity with a member of the opposite sex and potentially dangerous (which, in a way, made it all the more exciting, albeit not only confusing but life threatening). The shame was the real "killer" psychologically.
As I got a bit older I began to see that there was a whole "hidden" dimension of men who had to find ways of having furtive sex with one another. Most were married or dating with the intention to marry. The county prosecuting attorney was gay, so was his long-term fiance, the proverbial English teacher. Gossip being the social network and denial being what it was all the ladies could talk about was "when are they ever going to get married?" Behind the scenes these two respected individuals were keeping their eyes out for younger people who they suspected might be like themselves. This had both a "predatory" aspect and an aspect of genuine interest and concern. The contradictory nature of this born out of the oppressive and contradictory social conditions within which they, themselves had grown up and continued to live. The attitude was "you can do what you want so long as you are very, very discrete." And if you ever got caught by the law the attorney would do what he could, discretely, to minimize the consequences.
This secrecy was excruciatingly painful and caused people to do things they might otherwise not do. This is one of the things that homophobes have a difficult time comprehending. When homosexuality is completely repressed in a society this repression doesn't stop the sexual activity. What it does is "pervert" it by forcing it into the very kinds of stereotypical behaviors that many homophobes rail against. How can you develop emotional attachments and relationships with willing partners if there is no tolerance, much less acceptance, for these feelings and their expression? You can't. You have to lie and pretend you are something you're not and, worse, even when you engage in sexual activity, it must be completely hidden, invisible, and any emotional dimension has to be utterly suppressed. This, I believe, is the driving force behind "anonymous" sex and, to a certain extent, some forms of sexual predation. In short, it is fucked up and the consequences can leave scars that may never be outgrown.
In some respects I was lucky. Although I was the youngest in the family (my oldest sibling 20 years my senior) I was the first to go off to college in a big city (Chicago). When I got there in the mid-late sixties the "sexual revolution" was upon us and I was able to find at least the beginnings of real community. That didn't thoroughly "jell" though until the AIDS crisis in the 80s and by that time I was living in the SF Bay Area which is a far different social climate than the rural mid-west. I never did come out to my parents who became increasingly "fundamentalist" in their religious beliefs as they grew older. I did, however, come out to some of my siblings, the parents having already died, but even then not until my first long term partner had died at age 53 of a brain tumor. Their reaction was the typical, "we love you as a brother but can not accept your homosexuality." The message being, don't bring it home when you visit. I had never "brought it home" and will never. I haven't visited with them since and don't intend to ever visit them again.
If you can feel the rage and grief beneath that, then you 'get it'. They identify as fundamentalist Christians and so I don't expect to ever win "acceptance" from them. The struggle, as you rightly point out, is first in accepting one's self. That, for me, was a long road. Fortunately I received very good help along the way. The revelation, then, was to discover that the alienation I've experienced throughout my life wasn't only due to my sexual preference. Even if I'd been "straight" the way I look at the world, my values, my interests and so on, are very different from most people. It is difficult to separate all that out and certainly my sexual preference has an aspect in every aspect of my being but, still, there is something that is more fundamentally myself than even my sexuality. I "understand" that my family is a product of their conditioning but still, on a very deep level, I have rejected them every bit as much if not more than they have rejected me. In other words, it isn't only because I'm gay; its because I'm liberal, intellectual, perceptive, artistic, someone who questions, searches and looks at the world through eyes that see and appreciate complexity and color -- not just "black and white" "right and wrong". I find it intolerable to be around them for more than a brief visit and living thousands of miles away, thankfully, makes that impossible.
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