The subtle homophobia that gets under my skin

Photo by Stavrialena Gontzou on Unsplash

By Jordi Waks

I realised I wasn’t straight at 11.

What followed was 5 years of questioning, labelling, changing, and general confusion. 

In the eyes of my peers, it was: ‘You’re attracted to men, you’re gay.’

Or, ‘You’re attracted to both, you’re bisexual.’

No one seems to understand it’s more complex than that. 

And so when I was 16, I decided that I didn’t need a label. What was the point? Frankly, I came to the conclusion I didn't really need to define myself or who I’m attracted to. 

After all those years of headaches, I decided to call myself ‘queer’, an umbrella term meaning ‘not straight’. Of course, to my teenage friends, this raised confusion.

‘What the f**k does that mean?’ I hear on a regular basis.

The brief explanation that I’ve mastered giving is usually met with someone understanding, but often instead will lead to someone saying, ‘Isn’t that just bi?’

At which point I usually sigh and give up. Not everyone quite understands my desire to avoid quite such specific labels - sexuality is more fluid than that.

But this sort of ‘ignorance’, I suppose you could call it, doesn’t get to me. It’s not the thing I find hardest to tolerate as an openly queer person.

How many times have you heard the phrase, ‘I don’t care who you’re attracted to, just don’t shove it down my throat’?

When you read this, try imagining who you think could be saying that. Paint a picture in your head.

Do they have tattoos? 

Are they a middle-aged man?

Are they a little overweight?

Maybe a member of the EDL?

The sort of typical look for someone who you’d expect this sort of bigotry from.

Now try imagining it from a teenage boy, someone you may consider a friend, someone you talk to every day. 

Or maybe someone you have mutual friends with, someone dating your close friend, someone who as he meets you for the first time feels the need to outline this opinion, when 5 minutes prior he saw you kissing someone of the same gender. 

These exact words have come from the mouth of a fellow teenage boy, someone everyone seems to like. This same sentence has been aimed at me by another person I feel perfectly civil towards.

These people are not bad people, but they still feel the need to share this opinion. 

It’s this sort of strange homophobia that doesn’t necessarily come from a bad place that gets to me.

Why?

Well, I guess it’s because it makes me wonder if they’re right.

Am I forcing my opinions onto people?

Am I ‘shoving’ my queerness ‘down their throat’?

Is that really such a bad thing?

These sorts of comments bother me. It’s difficult enough to be openly queer, so when others around me put into words the fears I already have around coming out and being myself, it just makes those worries even harder to quieten in my own mind.

And so, in the face of such comments, I never back down.

Whenever this difficult conversation approaches, I try my hardest to make my thoughts clear and convincing. I highlight how homophobia still exists, and how every single LGBT+ person has experienced it in one way or another, and the only true way to combat this is through education. 

So yes, it does need to be ‘shoved down your throat’ - if that’s how you define having an education about it.