I’m so sorry, Thylacine … 
I hope someday this time of the year will not be so traumatic for you.
Poli
I kind of spewed forth and scurried off yesterday, sorry for any distress, I tend not to tell the story at this time of year but the thread proved too alluring being right here and all. The events occurred a long time ago and I really am over it. Due to family circumstances Christmas had little meaning before it, a different meaning after it and no real meaning at all now other than me snarling Bah Humbug and not joining in festivities because frankly, they hurt.
I was born in the 60s in a white bread world and I turned out strange. It was obvious to all from my very young age that I was not quite right so I got used to being othered with all that entails. Unfortunately it tends to entail violence and abuse. Much came from within my family, some from without. It was considered par for the course for butch freaks like myself who could not pass as straight women yet who could not quite pull off the bloke thing beyond a passing glance.
I feel safer now than I used to EchoKitty but I do not know if that is a reflection of society or if it is just the invisibility that comes to women in fat middle age. These days I am more likely to be called a fat pig than a dyke. Nobody tries to cure me of being a fat pig with their mighty penis.
Well, kinda. When I was 17 I went to a coffee house and this asshole asks me if I want to go out and bash some gays with him. WTF?!?!?!?!? I made an issue out of it and his troupe of four closeted “bisexual friends” (I doubt if they were really bisexual) taught him a lesson wrought from his bigotry later. I found out about that one through the grapevine so to speak. I wouldn’t have wished harm on him but hopefully he saw that his ideology was stupid rather than resent non-hets even more.
It is better in the bigger gay-friendly cities. It is not better in the suburbs or more rural areas. I went to visit a friend a few months ago who lives in Winchester, VA on the West Virginia border. He showed me where the local KKK meet. It wasn’t a very nice place at all.
Good God. This thread is unbelievable.
(thylacine)
(ladies)
(gentlemen)
i’m so sorry.
i don’t know what else to say.
i would offer you sympathy, but i feel that righteous indignation and holy anger are more appropriate.
Like thylacine, my story too happens around a holiday. It was the weekend after Halloween, give or take a day or two. I do not remember the date because there aren’t many details I remember about that week at all. It is not entirely because of length of time ago, though that of course counts for something, I remember the days after not remembering. I remember once wearing a maroon sweater (egads, no one makes nice purple ones anymore), I remember taking a math test, a sucky Halloween, and a few details about the event. What I do remember about the event I take with a grain of salt because my memory may have been altered due to unconciously filling in details, and having dreams based on memories and those dreams acted out like a memory (those kinds of things can be convincing, BTW). But I’ve recovered mentally, in the outward parts anyways, even if the scar is faded but still there, so I sometimes hide my arm when around some people. My knee’s better; I haven’t had a limp in 2 weeks, which is good. The Saturday (or second Saturday, but whatever Saturday it was it was the next weekend) after I made myself a picture of it. Scary picture.
Funny, that is the exact reaction I had to your post.
Forgive me, for that was one of my earlier posts. I hope I’ve improved as I’ve gotten used to the message board.
It could also be the medication I’m on. I just didn’t understand a single thing I read when I got to the end. boggle
No offense, I hope.
Oh. Well the short but coherent story is I was walking to a class and a umm ah, person was being punched repeatedly while the attacker called him “shit” and “gay”, in plain sight of several students and a couple teachers, who had to grab him away. And some other parts of the post were about my hatred of the person being attacked, because he set the stereotype for others.
Adding A not too pleasant stereotype, too.
I am a 17 year-old High School senior, in a very rural area of northern Oklahoma. My hometown has approximately 1000 people, and the town in which I go to school has about 20,000. I am also openly gay, and have been very lucky in my treatment thus far. I began to ‘come out’ my Sophomore year, and word had spread to pretty much everyone by the next term.
By lucky, I don’t mean that I haven’t been subject to harassment. Middle school and early HS were the worst - lots of verbal threatening, and I had my locker trashed a couple of times. I’m not especially flamey, but I am somewhat effeminate, and my non-involvement in sports of any kind set me apart from my graduating class of 40 people. I guess they just assumed.
After my Junior year, it tapered off for awhile. People seemed to lose interest in calling me ‘faggot’ when I stopped denying it. That year I also transferred schools (unrelated - the former HS didn’t offer any Advanced Placement classes) and found a slightly more diverse environment. The worst thing that’s happened (which is incredibly mild, compared to some of the other posts) was some namecalling and threats of physical violence during my third-period class. Two of the boys apparently decided that I was offending them by sitting and quietly talking with some friends, and started calling me “faggot,” “girl,” etc. I just ignored them; they weren’t going to have an effect on my life. For a few days after, though, it escalated until I was afraid for my safety. The ‘teacher,’ who was really a coach, had to drive over from the Middle School (across town) every day, and was always about ten minutes late for class. When they saw I wasn’t going to give them a reaction, they just tried to scare me more with things like “Fucking faggot, I’m going to kick your goddamn face in,” “If that fag even looks at me I’m going to kill him,” etc.
But, on to the good part. I made a complaint to the administration, had a meeting with the Principal and Assistant Principal, and it was completely taken care of within forty-eight hours. Naturally, my parents and I assumed that we’d have to be asses about it- hell, we had a lawyer ready to call the school. Fortunately, it was unnecessary. The Assistant caught me in the library and said something along the lines of “I talked to those boys myself, and made sure they understand that if they bother you again in any way, there will be serious consequences, and that you will win while they lose.” I was shocked, but in a very good way. They haven’t talked to me again, except for a couple of civil conversations I’ve had in class with one of them.
While things here are a long way from perfect, all in all I’m having a pretty great year. I have a circle of good friends who seem to have taken it upon themselves to become the gay rights advocates for northeastern Oklahoma. The girls are the most vocal about it, but a few straight guys have gotten into the act as well, which kinda surprises me. It goes from stopping using “gay” or “fag” as insults, to speaking up in class discussions, to arguments with their parents, to defending the dignity of gay people among their other acquaintances. Sometimes, when I have time to stop and think, I’m floored by how progressive people have been. By all accounts I should be terrified and miserable here, but I’m not. When I’m not doing schoolwork, my girlfriends and I compare notes on guys (in one notable instance, deciding what a particular friend of ours who we’d both kissed should do to improve), or I help my straight male friends out with girl advice while we wander about trying to find guys or girls.
I read threads like this to remind myself that homophobia and extreme gaybashing are still alive and well, and it makes me thankful for my amazing streak of good luck. Absolutely all of you are heroes, and I only hope that I possess the courage that so many have shown.
And, to all of my friends who have been supportive and open minded - I love you guys!
-Kody
Wll this thread has made me very sad - I’m not alone there - but it has taught me at least one thing. From now on I’m not going to be surprised when someone I am pretty sure is gay stays in the closet even though I’m quite certain they’d be accepted by their immediate circle of friends and coworkers. I have often silently questioned people’s decision to be in the closet, or else extremely private about their sexual orientation, when I regarded their situation as totally accepting of homosexuality. It never bothered me or made me like them any less, I’d just sort of think, Hey, dude, you can tell me if you like men, it’s not going to stop me being your friend.
I realize now that was totally presumptious. How I feel is irrelevant when there are real live gay-bashers eager to show off what demented monsters they are. How tolerant I feel “the situation” is is a subjective guess and probably a lot worse than somebody else’s. It is easy to forget how courageous it is for someone to come out of the closet in a world as barbaric as ours. I’ll not raise any more eyebrows when someone chooses to stay in.
Stories like these shake my faith in humanity more every day. I just don’t understand prejudice, whether it be sexism, racism, or discrimination based on sexuality. I can never understand how someone could hate another person without even knowing them. It makes me incredibly angry.
I can only hope that someday people will realise that everyone is more or less the same. Sadly, tho, I think that day is far, far off.
I’m so happy you posted your story Kody. It was a much needed glimmer of hope.
Yes, Kody. Thank you. I wish none of these terrible things had to happen to anyone. Obviously, some good has come from it just by posting and opening people’s eyes to the pain that is caused by this bigotry.
Back when I was in high school(during the cro-magnum era), we had our suspicions about gay people, but no one would dare come out. I often wonder how lives would have been changed had we grown up today where there is more tolerance and more support. Kody’s story projects a brighter future for us all.
I know that it’s not easy to feel anything other than hate and loathing for people who commit violence, but fostering that hate just continues the cycle. I pity these people that have such awful lives and are so insecure in themselves that the only way they can get some relief is to hurt other people. How horrible it muct be to be them.
That is not to say that I don’t feel for the victoms of gay bashing. I had a friend once. She was great and kind and one of the most giving people I’ve ever met in my life. I was extremely poor at the particular point in my life which I met, I’ll call her Jane. We worked together at a natural foods store and hung out a lot. She’d offered me a place to stay if I ever needed it. She gave me a 13 inch black and white TV with rabbit ears when she found out that I had nothing, not even a bed. One day she asked me what I had in my wallet and of course, I had nothing. Jane gave me $20 because she’d been there and wanted me just to have something in my wallet. She told me to pay it back when I could, but before I was able to pay her back she left my life. One day she told me that there was something that I needed to know. We went out to the parking lot for a smoke break and she was really hesitant. Jane looked relieved when I told her that I thought I knew what she’d wanted to say. She was gay. Unfortunately, after she told me she started to push me away. She was so scarred from telling her secret to people, especially the family that had estranged her, that she couldn’t even imagine that I’d want her in my life any more. I think it only took two months before Jane stopped calling me completely.
I still think about her a lot.
I’ve never had issues about my own sexual preferences but then again I am married with five children and most people just assume that means that I should be straight as an arrow and not bi.
People do give me weird looks when I tell them that I was raised by a pack of wild lesbians.
My mother and her wife have been together for 15 years now.
I was 16 when they met and I have three younger siblings and we all got our fair share of shit about things.
I let most of it roll off my back and was fairly open and not caring (read: didn’t bother me) about my mom and her relationship.
She was happy and that is all that mattered to me and the ones at school who thought they were being cool by commenting on my “dad” could go to hell.
From what one of my brothers has said he got a lot of shit about my mom. I think in a way both my brothers harbor a bit of resentment for mom and Vette.
It wasn’t easy growing up with different parents. Mom being with a woman and dad being a sexual freak. I think it was Esprix who once called me Jerry Falwells’ nightmare. Thank you for that love. (seriously)
Well, now my children are at the age where their friends are starting to notice and ask questions about their grandparents.
My children and my nieces and nephews have never had issues with this because this is the way it has always been for them.
But I have noticed them hesitate over answering friends over who “those people” are. And if Vette is a man or woman. They have always called her poppy or pappa.
I’m not too worried about my children reacting to getting a hard time about this because they are pretty easy going about it like I have been. They will likely tell people to stuff it.
I did have a gay friend of mine very interesting in hearing every detail of my life since I was the first person he had ever met with gay parents. At that time he was a cross dresser now he is for the most part a she. (one more operation to go!!!)
At that point in her life she was having a hard time because her father hated her and went through her trunk and destroyed all her evening gowns.
Pretty shitty when the gay bashing is comming from your own family.
I have another friend who is just out for about three years now to his friends and about two years to his family. His mom and his sister deal with it but his brother and his father haven’t talked to him since he told them.
Sad.
We don’t have too much trouble in our area, and we have had a few more clubs pop up around here.
I love my children no matter what their life choices are. I may not be happy with everything they decided to do as we are getting ready for the teen years (fun:rolleyes: ) but I will be there for them through thick and thin and all other kinds of crap that comes our way.
Do we have any other dopers out there with gay parents?
My father in law is gay. My mother is a mystery–we don’t go there.
My father in law’s husband is a sad story… only one of his children (a daughter in her 30s who turned out to be a lesbian) still speaks to him. All of his family except for that one daughter completely wrote him out of their lives. He hasn’t heard from them in ages.
ALong the lines of your FIL’s husband, Opal, a friend of mine from the GOLP board at TMF (registered here a while ago, has like two posts. Name’s Ravyn) was married for a good long while and has ten kids. When he and his wife got divorced (for rather obvious reasons, as he’s gay and she hated him once he told her that), part of the “custody” arrangement was that he didn’t get to see his kids again. Hasn’t talked to them, hasn’t seen them since I think '95. He communicates with his wife via email because, as I remember, she doesn’t like even having to hear his voice.
His money’s still green, though.
Fun will be when I tell B’s parents, if I ever do. My grandmother, despite her rather strict conservative upbringing, doesn’t seem to have a problem with the fact that I’m bi. She’ll probably be really confused when I tell her I’m engaged.