| Monday, December 05, 2005 |
| integration, application, moving forward |
Those of you who are keeping score will remember that there was one openly gay boy in my four years of high school. His name was John. And I watched him suffer alone. I dwell on it more often than I'd like. It's easy to say that I just wasn't ready to be openly gay in high school, but I can't hide the truth that if I had been, I could have at least shared his burden. But what I said to Jason, a close friend, earlier tonight about dwelling not helping anyone, and applying lessons learned from past experiences to present identity, is also true.
There's often a question about whether or not "outing" of public figures is ethical, about whether we're willing to sacrifice the private lives of politicians and celebrities in the name of visibility and advocacy. I tend to say no, though I'm certainly tempted to make exceptions in cases where said person's false straightness is doing harm, such as the vice president's daughter.
Now, I feel that Matthew Shepard is a horse that has been beaten to death, forcibly revived, and beaten again far too many times. But his mother has something useful to say. In her lectures she pleads with gay people to be authentic about who they are, that we cannot have a voice with which to obtain power and a place in the world without authenticity. The complication is that in this world, straight is a default. If I tell a story about some boy or girl without any mention of sexuality, it's assumed that he or she is straight. Innocent until proven queer, and all that. So unless with every breath we are declaring our queerness, how can we truly be authentic?
It's very hard to carve out that middle ground, where we are both authentic and yet have enough spare breath to live our lives. I haven't found it. But in the interest of exploring for such a place, here's a fourth attempt at An Essay About A Boy, which is less about a boy and more about me, in an effort to stop hiding. |
posted by La Malinche @ 4:18 AM   |
|
|
|
