I love being gay. It's taken me a while, but I've really grown into it. It's not just that I love men, that I love being different. It's that I feel like I'm part of a culture, a member of a group, and I really like that culture. I've discovered what it means to be gay, not just homosexual, and I really love it.
But there are some things I hate about this culture. Mostly, it's the way we treat each other. We've created a hierarchy based on assimilation. For as much as we are our own people, completely distinct in culture from straight people, we still ascribe the most value to those who represent heterosexuality to us.
In my ever-increasing number of interactions with gay people over the last few years, I've noticed a few trends. "Straight-acting" is a compliment; "gay-acting" is never said, mostly because too many of us would see it as an insult. "Masculine" is a compliment, "feminine" is an insult. When a straight person says "I didn't know you were gay when I first met you," we too often take it as the compliment they ignorantly meant it to be. But it's not a compliment! There's no reason to be flattered; it's just someone mistaking you for someone you're not.
We, as a community, demean bottoms as much as we can, at every opportunity we get. If someone is accused of being a bottom, he often denies it vociferously, or at least hangs his head in shame, but no one ever gets embarrassed about being a top. Tops love to rag on bottoms, but guess what, tops: without bottoms, you all would just be a bunch of sexually frustrated, pretentious pricks.
I'm tired of it. I'm tired of us rejecting our vibrant culture and identity by scorning those who represent it most. I'm tired of us seeking to assimilate into the dominant culture. And yet, I get it. Tonight I was walking home and someone screamed "FAGGOT" out his car window at me. What was it? I was all alone, walking down an ordinary downtown street. Was it my skinny jeans, my nice jacket, my scarf? Was it the way I walked? Why had I garnered this harassment? When things like that happen, for a split second I just really want to fit in. I get upset that they figured me out, because that means I might be victim to this sort of thing. But then I realize that people like that are the very people encouraging us toward this awful mentality. Homophobia in straight people is what drives this homophobia in gay people. And our homophobia divides us, and enables straight people to go after us.
Well I've had enough. I'm not going to demean members of my community anymore. I'm not going to hate my fellow queens for being queeny. I love this community and that means loving all of its members, even from their differences.
