Monday, February 6, 2012

The Tyranny of Hate

So, I read this article by The Rolling Stone today.  It's very long, but it is very worth a read.  It's pretty fucked up.  That's about the extent to which I can describe it.  I can't spend enough time urging people to read it.  Didn't know the Rolling Stone still did shit like this.  I'm pretty impressed.

It isn't any real secret that I'm into the ladies.  Like, really into the ladies.  There are points I feel like a testosterone-infused 16-year-old, vagina obsessed high school boy again.  Those episodes don't last long enough for concern, however, and I'm fairly certain they're a byproduct of my self-imposed abstinence.  Or society-imposed abstinence.  This section here is definitely derailed from the article I told you to read, but you know how I go.  Humor to break tension.

I consider myself heterosexual.  That wasn't always necessarily the case, however.  There was a point where I was fairly certain I was just as into men as I was into women.  Bicurious looking back on it, but I considered myself bisexual then.  I'm not ashamed of it, necessarily, but I tend not to mention it; it's not who I am.  It may have been who I thought I was, but that faded.  During high school, I engaged in a sexual relationship with a male friend who was going through a similar phase.  Now, I'm not saying that every teenage boy who decides he's homosexual or bisexual is simply going through a phase: only that I was.  I feel like I should distinguish that.

So, We were engaged in a sexual relationship.  And somehow word got around, due to a friend revealing 'sensitive' information to people who cannot shut the fuck up.  And suddenly, because I live in a small town where everyone is all up in everyone else's business, it got around school.  I found myself being called faggot in the hallways, and in the lunch room.  It fucking sucked.  Because I as already in a pretty dark place as an teenager, that place got darker.  Cutting, suicidal thoughts, depression, it got pretty bad.  But I persevered.  And survived high school.  Luckily for me, the bullying didn't last through the rest of high school.  But for many kids who are finding their sexual identities, it lasts.  And it can have disastrous results.

I'm not going to go into the details.  They're plain to see in the Rolling Stone article.  It's a worst case scenario, absolute worst case scenario.  Tragedy in the highest order.

I've got me another Story up.  Ironically, it kind of touches on this whole thing, even though it wasn't on my mind when I wrote it.  But hey, relevant.

10 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing this with us. What issue of Rolling Stone is it? I'm not sure if I have this one, I get one in the mail regularly so am curious to read. I understand this phase you are going through, I think it happens to many more guys than most would like to admit. Really makes you evaluate yourself and contemplate things or even do things like you describe. Glad you persevered too.

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  2. Curiosity. It does stuff to you, you know. Like, real good/bad stuff.

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  3. For a second there I thought you were going to come out. I have to ask though, are you sure that's not who you are, and the very bad reaction of everyone else made you convince yourself you aren't? I just had to be an amateur psychiatrist and throw that out there. With Jessie being a MTF trans (essentially a man right now and when we were at college, though she'd kill me if I said that) everyone thought we were a gay couple too, but it never bothered me, it was far from the worst thing they said about me. Plus they said it about her too, so we were able to laugh it off together.

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    1. Like 99% sure. I identified as bisexual upon my entrance to college and a few years into it, and was accepted by my friends. I had opportunities to act on it, being college and all, but I never had the urge to. And when I lost my V-card, and the subsequent sexual conquests that have come since, involving women, I have not thought of dudes in a sexual way. There are moments that are so few and far between but, I mean, every straight guy has sexy dreams about Rob Lowe, right?

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  4. sad. There's plenty of closed minded fucks in big cities...it must be worse when it's in small town and you've got nowhere else to go. I don't really read RollingStone (because their music choices SUUUUUUUUUUUCK) but do check out some of their rad political coverage online.

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  5. Wow reading that artical has made me glad I didn't grow up in a small town!

    Glad to hear you experiences didn't lead you to do what those 9 kids did in the artical!

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  6. Small towns are evil to everyone that doesn't fit. I'm glad America seems to be coming around when it comes to equal rights lately though. We're struggling as fuck with that in Sweden, where a small religious party that only like 4% of the population voted for is responsible for holding back everyone else.

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