I am a straight male. I have learned to be comfortable with it.
I use that phrase a lot, especially around the LGBTQA community. It’s a way to ease the tension. What I’ve learned over the years is that people of that community (I learned this from gay men first) tend to be wary of us straights until they get to know us. The one thing they worry about is “is this one of the ones I can trust, or is he one of THEM.” Something most of us straights never think about.
But over the past few years I have come to wonder if I’m actually joking.
I’ve had members of my own family – people I love unconditionally – come out as part of the community in recent years. I’d like to think I handled it pretty well but I know there are times I screwed up. One of these people is trans and I screw up the pronouns constantly. The fact that she’s not out to everyone (just family and her friends – but not all of the people she games with online or some of MY friends) sometimes feels like a minefield. I didn’t grow up around anyone I consciously knew was a member of the community so I’ve had to learn and adjust.
That said, I have NEVER understood why people bring hate down on the community. Why people want to treat them differently than everyone else. I just plain don’t get it. Why can’t they marry? Serve in the Military? Adopt children? Why do some people think that LGBTQA is a gateway to horrible things? I’ve never understood it. Even in these horrid and strange times I can’t reconcile to it.
This is Pride month. Where I live the Pride Parade is this weekend. I was reflecting on my little joke up there and I had a flash of insight – maybe these people haven’t come to terms with their straight-ness.
I’m not joking.
Something I have come to realize far too recently is that we’re assigned our gender and sexuality at birth. When I was born they took one look at my genitalia and said “okay, he’s male and he’s straight”. It wasn’t spoken of that way other than “he’s a boy” but the assumption was certainly there. When my oldest was born I did nearly the same thing, “okay, he’s male and probably straight”. We make the assumption and it sticks and that’s how it goes as we raise our children – that’s how it went as we were being raised. Being a member of the community become a realization and it happens over time. The majority of overwhelming proportion of us make the assumption that who a person is will be based upon their genitals and their parent’s own gender identity. My parents were straight and they never even thought about the fact that I must be to. I just was.
Thing is, it’s not a realization – it’s not something we learn. It’s simply stamped on us when we’re born and we don’t learn it organically. It’s stamped into us again and again by religion, society, and others who had it stamped into them as well. I think a lot of us straights figure it out without realizing it but I think there’s some potential for damage there and I think we are seeing that in those people so strongly opposed to the “agenda” of the community. By the way, calling equality an agenda is so fucked up that I can’t even… I just can’t.
When I was 20 years old I was working as a customer service rep for a cable company. This is in the mid-80’s and oh boy the abuse we took some days. Just sayin’. The office was in Los Angeles and one of my co-workers/friends there was a flamboyantly gay man. He was out, proud, and good-goddam he could strut it. He was funny and smart and I enjoyed his company. One day we had a customer walk into the office and good lord he just OOZED sexuality. It was the first and only time I ever entertained the option of switch-hitting. Seriously. It was like one of those old cartoons where the heart leaps out of one’s chest and you go “hummina hummina hummina”. After this customer left my coworker turned to me and said, “Oh honey can I follow him home?” Without even thinking I replied, “Right behind you sister.” I had a steady girlfriend at the time – everyone in the office had met her – and I wasn’t joking. I’d have done it given the chance. Maybe I’m 99.999% straight with a small dash of “I hear you sister” mixed in.
I’m pretty sure that a few days after that I started using that joke I started this with. But it was serious – I meant it. But I suppose I didn’t realize that until recently.
I think it is enviable that members of the community come to understand their identities and sexuality organically, while the rest of us don’t. Not that I’m asking for any form of sympathy – good lord no. The advantages given to us are staggering sometimes. But watching members of my own family grow into the people they have become has made me realize that I didn’t do that with my own straightness. It was simply what I always had. What I was given at birth.
I can pretty much guarantee you that every single person who dishes out hate on the community, even in the most subtle and simple ways, was assigned their gender and sexuality at birth same as I was. I think this causes a strange mental disconnect for some people. I think that they, like me, experience urges that goes against their assignment and never figure out how to deal with it. Instead of confronting it and learning from it they bury it, deny it. Grow angry with it for being there. Want it to simply be gone. Instead of dealing with it they fear it because it goes against the grain of what they were assigned.
And fear becomes hate so damned easily. Say what you want but Yoda had that one right.
When I was younger a lot of us would joke that the people most vocal and hateful against the community were people who were secretly deep in the closet. At one point so many of them were coming out of the closet that it certainly seemed true. But truth tends to be either obvious or subtle and I think subtle might be prevalent here. It’s not that they’re secretly wanting to be part of the community, it’s that they were assigned what they are at birth and never grew to be 100% comfortable with it. That they know they’re maybe 90% or 50% comfortable with it and the only way to suppress that percent that they haven’t learned to live with is to make certain that it’s suppressed for EVERYONE – just so that it doesn’t leak out of themselves. Hey, if it’s illegal I can NEVER LET IT OUT, right? They can’t let it out of themselves so they reinforce that by shouting so loudly against it no one would ever consider that it’s a part of them as well – and it makes them feel safer.
I’m not saying pity any of these people. I’m not saying to change anything you do when you deal with them. But I do think that our seeming instinct to assign gender and sexuality at birth may be a problem. I think that should be looked into. I’m a layman when it comes to issues of mental health and I’m no expert of any kind, but I think it’s worth having a conversation about. I think it’s worth studying.
I think that because I have grown into myself and that I have come to realize that I actually AM what I was assigned, that my own mental health is stronger and I don’t feel the overwhelming need to defend it. I think our society would be mentally more healthy if the screaming haters didn’t feel the overwhelming urge to defend it either. Maybe they wouldn’t feel the need to scream.
I was assigned the identity of a straight male when I was born. I have learned to be comfortable with it. If this is what you are, perhaps you should too.
Update: Community Spotlight? Thank you one and all!
Update X2: THREE (3) days and counting on Community Spotlight? I am honestly humbled and surprised. Thank you, and thanks to everyone for the conversation!