Confessions of a Straight Man
Why do straight people like me feel nervous around gay people?
I wonder if gay people feel the same way about straights. I assume so, but I’ve never posed the question.
I know many gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people and we all generally get along. A few are genuine friends and I love them, but yet, it’s like we live in different worlds with enormous walls between us that nobody speaks about and I remain threatened, my own sexuality in question. I look at my gay friends differently, as if I must keep my distance or find myself lost in confusion over what I’ve been taught is right and wrong.
Why? It is likely a combination of factors including ignorance, fearing something or someone different than myself, some perverse yet ingrained feeling of heterosexual superiority and years of bigotry driven into me by society’s jackhammer that has historically viewed gays as a minority that is somehow less worthy, less than human and therefore, easily ostracized and much worse.
I do not say these things from a hateful or even, judgmental perspective but from a place of confusion with the hope of gaining some awareness. Acceptance is not the route because gay people do not need or want to be accepted; they need to be able to live their lives in peace and equality. To think that someone’s well being depends on my acceptance of them is a monumental homophobic insult.
Do I as a straight man, yearn to be accepted by the gay world? It is a preposterous idea. I am accepted because I am straight, at least that is the myth I have come to believe.
Homophobia is so imbedded that no amount of liberal understanding can stop me from thinking that there is something terribly wrong, even immoral, about being attracted to a person of the same sex or to someone who has changed sexual identity. The idea of kissing another man on the side of the face is understandable as a sign of affection or patting a teammate on the butt in gratitude after a big hit. But kissing on the mouth with tongues entwined, as a show of romance or sexual attraction, or dare I say it, having sex with a man, is about the most foreign and distasteful thing I can imagine, as politically incorrect as that is to say.
And I must admit to feeling more than a bit uneasy around gay men, wondering if they have designs on me, whether I turn them on, whether they want more than friendship. I am utterly at a loss. Sometime it feels like trying to explain a color to a blind man. I am much less intimidated by lesbian or transgendered people, evidently because I know they are no threat to me.
I can intellectually understand it but I cannot begin to feel in my heart what it must be like for gay men or lesbians or bi-sexuals to have sex. Intellectually, I assume it is no different than the way that I, a heterosexual, experiences sex. But no, being gay and all it entails is an area that is so totally out of my reality.
Like most straight people, my bias against gays has been cooking for years. There was no mention of it in my home almost as if talking about it was just wrong and absurd. Gay people might as well have been from Mars, I was that ignorant. As a kid, I didn’t know nor did I care what it meant to be a homosexual. I was dealing with my own heterosexuality and as far as I knew, that was the way of the world.
As I got older, in junior high and high school, I threw around the regular epithets, like faggot, fairy and queer. I really didn’t know and didn’t care about the power and damage such words could wreak. There certainly was no gay-straight alliance. It would have been too dangerous and outrageous.
Most certainly, a classmate, a teacher, a teammate, a colleague or a relative was and still is gay and I can see now how devastating it must be to live in shadows of fear about being uncovered and subsequently shunned. How said it must be to have to seek out places where like-minded people go, to feel that these places are the only safe places for a gay man or woman. And how dangerous it can be to seek out romance, love or just sex in the wrong place.
I cannot even imagine how it must be to be for a young person who has to live a lie when all he wants is to love and be loved. It’s not a reach to compare it to the hate that many people feel toward other minorities who also have to dodge the assaults and find ways to fit in, just to live.
What if the tables were turned and I was in a group and was secretly aware that I was the only straight one, the one who was different, the one who had to hide, the one who felt I was being dishonest with myself every moment of my life, all in the name of surviving in a homophobic world. And how safe and human it would feel to be gay and in the majority where nobody questions or insults.
Many years ago, when I was in high school, I remember a group of us were hanging out at one friend’s home when Harry (not his real name) sat in the corner of the room while the rest of us were goofing around. Harry began leafing through Playboys and masturbating. Nobody said a word. Nobody thought it was strange, at least nobody said as much. I assume Harry was gay and was getting turned on by us and used the Playboys as cover. How sad but I recall thinking he was not only different but something of a freak. How lonely his world must have been. I hope that Harry found peace.
About 30 years ago, not really that long ago, before the time of gay marriage and greater openness and acceptance, I wrote a news story about a prominent official with whom I was friends and who admitted to me that he was (whisper) gay. Surprisingly to me, there were no repercussions to the story, probably because the official was about to retire from public life.
That was not the case with another important and powerful person who I knew was gay. I didn’t write about him because he was not out of the closet. At the time, I thought it would have been a sensational story. At the time, I was not concerned with the possible ramifications of the story and publicly identifying him as gay. He could have lost his job or worse.
When I wrote about the gay official I felt so very self-important that I had once again reached out to empower the weak. What a load of bull. I wrote the story because I wanted people to point at me as some kind of brave journalist who gave voice to the voiceless. Inside I was every bit the bigot as were my colleagues.
I know that things have changed but bigotry persists. It persists in the workplace where a gay worker loses out on a plum promotion. It is when a young man or woman tells his parents about his sexuality and is told that he should be ashamed and is disowned. It is when a student is outed and bullied mercilessly to the point of self-destruction.
Laws protecting the rights of gay people have increased in recent years but they can change again and reverse course. That is a worrisome sword of Damocles, always ready to fall and eliminate protections, if the political winds shift, as they are now. Until there is no concern about reversing laws and shifting attitudes, gay people will not be able to simply live their lives.