Shortly after National Coming Out Day, I read an article encouraging strait people not to ignore the day as not relevant to them and use the opportunity to stand up for LGBTQ rights. Unfortunately, the day had already passed. Furthermore, I was too cowardly to have taken the advice anyway. With my family, I felt it wasn’t worth the risk. Today I decided to change that, and I’m not waiting until next year to do it.
My entire childhood I was lied to. I was told that homosexuals (which was not the term used) were terrible people. I believed this lie until high school. One day in middle school, I told a friend of mine (what I thought at the time was) a funny story about a gay bashing. He didn’t think it was funny, but he didn’t say much about it and I was puzzled at why he didn’t laugh. Now I know why; I’m still ashamed.
Once I was in high school, I actually found out some of my friends were gay. As I already knew they were good people, the lie fell apart. I’ve got friends, associates, and relations across the entire LGBTQ spectrum. So when my father said he was “in favor of a little gay bashing,” but thought the Orlando nightclub shooting was “a little much.” it made me sick. Who’s really the terrible person here?
I haven’t worked up the nerve to ask him if he really believes that it’d be acceptable for his grand-niece to be brutally beaten just because she happens to like girls, so long as she’s not actually killed. I hope not, but at this point, none of his bigotry surprises me anymore.
I’m a gynecophilic cis-male with atypical gender expression. Anyone who knows me knows that I grow my hair and fingernails longer than is usually considered masculine. I’m effeminate enough that when I was younger I got mistaken for a female fairly often. (Today, I’d probably have to shave.) At first this annoyed me; but as I grew to accept myself, I eventually stopped correcting people.
I’m not trans: I’ve never experienced any gender dysphoria or seriously considered transitioning. But it is something I’ve thought about. It’s because of this contemplation that I identify as (mostly) gynecophilic rather than heterosexual. My attraction remains towards females even when I imagine myself as one. I say mostly because I’d be lying if I said there hadn’t been a few guys that caught my eye.
But I’m not sure anybody really knows me. A few people have seen me in a dress or pig-tails, but for the most part, I say firmly in the closet. When I find a dress or skirt I like, I sigh wistfully and put it out of my mind. “You’d get disowned,” I tell myself. Maybe I show a female friend who I think’ll appreciate it, but mostly they don’t (perhaps my taste is terrible).
So, if you’ve ever wondered about the Q in LGBTQ; wondered who that might be. That’s me; I am queer.
I don’t think I’m entirely accurate when I say I stopped correcting people who read me as female. I don’t think I ever started.
Memory is a tricky thing, so I can’t say for sure, but I cannot remember having ever done so. Usually my friends would “leap to my defense” (argg). One time, nobody said anything and I was rather happy about that, but it only lasted till I said something; then I got a rather unwanted apology.