When you aren’t proud and nobody is proud of you.

As it is Pride month, and as I happen to be living in Greece at the moment, I have come across an incredibly embarrassing article shared on facebook by middle aged non-gayhating people. It was the article of a little known and fairly unimportant elderly gay “celebrity” who was in short apologizing for being gay, condemning pride events, advising all gays to be as quiet as possible in case god forbid they disturb anyone with their gayness and declared how he is not proud for being gay and people shouldn’t be proud for being gay, but only for being a good parent or a good person in short anything heteronormative that can be related to. After reading this I, myself not being a gay man, felt nothing but shame. Shame for a person who had voiced such shameless opinions instead of using his little fame to educate and speak out for those who can’t. And for any such person.

There is nothing wrong in the world with being Proud for being homosexual, transgender, queer, whatever anyone identifies as. There is everything wrong with not being Proud. Even if there are people who use Pride events to their own advantage, to get money, whatever, even if you hate the acts booked, whatever, and no matter how crap a specific Pride event might be, this kind of event makes sense and is important.

I will go ahead and list a few reasons why a LGBTQ person is proud and should be proud and why anyone with a little bit of brains regardless gender and orientation should also be proud of them.

First of all, being openly gay or lesbian or trans or anything related is political. Your orientation is not a choice, but living according to who you are and not staying in the closet is a choice and it is a choice someone made and can be proud of.  Being gay does not define a whole person, and not 2 gay people are alike, but being outed comes with certain problems attached that are common to most (such as bullying, discrimination, intolerance, feelings of frustration or isolation at times, less career opportunities) and a person prepared to deal with this should be proud of deciding to be themselves rather than to pretend to avoid “situations”.  People have been murdered simply for being gay, even recently, even in civilized countries, so excuse those who wanna feel proud for standing to who they are!

Pride month is also Pride month to obviously commemorate the Stonewall Uprising, which I sadly discovered so many people outside the LGBTQ community are not familiar with at all, even though it is a historical moment and a milestone for civil rights movements. I’m not gonna go into this, read, watch, learn, the internet is full of resources.

When so few years ago homosexuality was still considered a disease being “proud” also reflects on being proud for the struggles people went through, for their fights and efforts towards claiming what was rightfully theirs, namely the right to exist, the right to be accepted as a “normal” individual rather than a sick freak who had to be treated and cured with electroshocks and other interesting methods including lobotomy. Homosexuality was removed from the list of mental disorders only in 1987 and it didn’t just happen, there were people who made it happen.

Shut the fuck up and allow LGBTQ people to be proud of the rights they have fought for and still continue to fight for and after they finally have acquired all the same human and civil rights as everyone else - which is long from happening in most countries in the world, while there are still countries where homosexuality is punishable by law, sometimes even with death - allow them to still be celebrating this.

Finally, the LGBTQ community can just be proud for even being here. When HIV and AIDS nearly wiped out their population, with figures as high as 50% of the people affected in certain areas, this bordered genocide. And yet they can be proud for bringing it to awareness, for demanding action to be taken, for sticking together and actually taking care of each other when nobody else gave a shit. If a group has survived centuries of hate and witch hunts that include death penalty, banishment, castration, burning at the stake, demonization, more death penalty and executions, life imprisonment, the fucking holocaust, the AIDS epidemic, and are still standing and still here, you bet they have every right to be “proud” as much as they want to without having to ask for your permission.

I’m sure there are plenty of other reasons why anyone feels proud of where they are today and what they have dealt with as individuals, but one thing is for sure: nobody is proud of people who have the chance to educate and refuse to do so by trying to benefit nobody else but themselves. Nobody is proud of people who continue to further the “I don’t care what anyone is doing in their bedroom, as long as they do not provoke”, because i do not think that straight cis heteronormative couples are regarded as shocking-revolting-provoking by holding hands, by kissing in public, by hugging, by dressing any way that suits them, by existing. So what is the outrage when LGBTQ people do? How is that such a shock and a trauma to innocent children’s eyes? How is it that you are not ashamed of yourself for enhancing and promoting such views and the corresponding behaviours.

When you are asked to speak and are given the chance to educate, make people see, allow people to understand and do not simply opt out for whatever personal reasons. But instead take the chance to yes do speak in public but only to broadcast your own “modesty”, apologize and beg for the acceptance of those who would not mind you and others like you being stoned to death then I do understand why you are not proud. In their own comfort (that others have died for), who would feel any sense of Pride for harming others for personal gain? Who would feel proud for knowingly harming people and people’s rights? Nobody.

So, getting your weekly fame and hetero praise, it’s OK, don’t be proud. Nobody else is proud of you either.

It would be kinder though, if you don’t wanna help, to kindly shut the fuck up and mind your own business.

And people who share bullshit, please don’t share bullshit, try to educate yourselves and try to think for yourselves, which is nearly impossible, I know how fast that tempting cute share button is and that tomorrow you don’t remember what you shared yesterday. But just try. Don’t rely on assholes to educate you, that google search button is cute and tempting to. Instead of freaking out over a gay man’s ass on a Pride video from Toronto, like you haven’t got an ass of your own, look things up. Wonder why this is important to some people and use your keyboard for something else rather than reproducing trash.

(The article is not aimed at specific persons at all, it is aimed at specific groups of people that I believe to exist in most Western societies and that cause me some mild to severe discomfort in my stomach.)

How to not be a girlfriend.

A couple of days ago I was on the train back home. Non surprisingly this was not a pleasant experience for me, but well this goes for most experiences when I’m concerned. At first I suspected the horror would be limited to the train being packed with soldiers going home. However, this was not the case. The source of my 4 hour long torment could be tracked down to one single person. The 1 girl in front of me chatting to the guy who happened to have taken the seat next to her. In my head, for hours, I struggled for words to express my frustration. I did not want to believe the flow of bullshit coming from her mouth. I do not think it was because she was particularly attracted to the particular guy.

But she was cis girl and he was a cis guy and that’s all that mattered really. She had switched to “cool girl/perfect girlfriend” mode within seconds. I threw up a little inside of me. The conversation she initiated went like “oh you like pizza? I like pizza too!” (its fuckin pizza you have to be an alien to not like it!) , “food is good!” (like we don’t know that!) , “there is movies on tv and you like movies I like movies too!” (yeah even my neighbor watches movies ranging from shit to shit cos well people watch movies!) , “I love art!” (OK stunning you know Picasso is a painter!).  Long intervals to listen to his stories and gasp for air exclaiming “really?”, “omg”, “what did you do?” “wow” and so forth.

If you are reading this please do yourself a favour. Please fight this, don’t switch to “ideal match/cool girl/ perfect girlfriend”. If you have any tiny bit of self dignity, any crumbs of brain, any left overs of personality. Do not go there. Because, even though you have been trained to do just that, you don’t really have to do that. You do not have to talk to the under 40 guy next to you, there is no obligation. You don’t have to smile if you don’t feel like it. You can brood. You can talk about things that are actually interesting, if you want to talk, and if you have anything interesting to say (-if you don’t it’s best if you zip it especially in public places, there are people, you know...). You do not have to like everything he likes, support everything he does, and pretend he is god. Chances are he is not, you don’t like anything he likes and don’t give a shit what he does. And you know it. Faking it is horrible in sex and elsewhere. Don’t fake it. Breathe. If he doesn’t seem too keen on what you like, for heaven’s sake don’t pretend you don’t actually like it either! Just live with it! Don’t force people to touch you so you can be cute to them and giggle, just because they are cis male. You don’t have to! Maybe they will think you are lame, annoying, boring, a bitch, whatever they will think. If you are an actual you, it should not matter to you. Don’t promise to cook for them and tent to their every need. You only just met them, and besides you are not their mother, not a doormat, not a maid, not a gum on their shoe, hopefully you are a person! So you know next time you find yourself next to a human you like or don’t like or maybe don’t care about, try to remember you are not a preprogrammed “girlfriend” you are a “girl”. Plain. Just that. You don’t owe anyone shit and maybe hopefully you don’t give a shit. You are allowed to be intelligent, to be fat, to be non-cute, to have opinions on things, to be bored, to be tired, to be non amusing, to be amusing, to know things, to be ignorant, whatever you wanna be. Just to actually be.