Let’s Talk… Homophobia

I know I didn’t do the designated post yesterday as planned but as you may be aware of yesterday wasn’t a great day for me, young people, England or the EU and I was up all night on Thursday watching the results and then had a busy day yesterday anyway so didn’t have time to write two posts, however the post I did do fitted in nicely with what was going on I thought – even though it wasn’t about transphobia as previously promised but I will make a note to do a post about that in the future. But you probably know that life constantly changes and unexpected things happen and promises stop being possible, and that’s what happened yesterday so I hope you understand. However, you can check out the post I did yesterday here – R.I.P World

I know this post is incredibly late and probably can’t even really be classed as a post for today but this has been the only opportunity I’ve got, I really need to start taking more advantages of my scheduling option as that would make my life and this blog a lot more manageable.

Anyway, as promised this post is going to be on being homosexual, homophobia and things surrounding these topics. Before I start I would like to say that I am not gay so if you happen to be homophobic don’t say I’m writing all of this “just because I’m gay” because I’m not. I am heterosexual.

Today was PRIDE 2016, where lots of people marched and supported LGBT people in the streets. There is a very big one that happens in London and also in Brighton I believe. Anyway, because of this I decided today would be a good day to write this post.

As you may have realised with the other posts in this series (here, here, here and here) I do not understand prejudice or discrimination, I do not understand why we as a species cannot just be excepting of our species no matter how they come. Disagreements are fine, argument; debates; discussions are all fine. But when it comes to actually upsetting, assaulting, battering or offending an individual based on personal opinion it becomes not fine. As far as I am concerned love is love, that’s all there is to it. I don’t find gay or bisexual people gross or offensive, I don’t think they’re doing anything wrong by being in love with someone who is the same gender as them. I think the most visible thing with this is bisexual people, they are the people who truly love without any discrimination because they do not have a preference over gender, they literally love who they love whereas I, as a heterosexual would not go out or marry another woman merely because I loved them (even though I do love my friends who are guys deeply). I think any relationship should be admired and supported no matter what the gender differences are between the couple as long as the people in the relationship are happy and healthy then what difference does it make really? The most important thing in life is that people are happy, or it is for me, if people are prevented from being happy because of others people’s thoughts and discriminations then that’s the real sin not the fact that the people are gay or bisexual.

There are lots of people who say that being gay or bisexual is just a ‘stage’ and they’ll ‘get over it’, there are also people who say that if people are bisexual then why can’t they just pick one gender rather than the other and this really angers me because it doesn’t work like that and it shouldn’t work like that, everyone should be entitled to love whoever they want. Being gay or bisexual is not just a ‘stage’, it is not a ‘lifestyle’ it is not a ‘gender crisis (thank you very much AQA Psychology GCSE for putting it in those words)’ and gay and bisexual males are not struggling from a ‘crisis of masculinity’ for being gay or bisexual, they are just as masculine as a heterosexual male they just look for different things in a partner – there’s nothing wrong with that. All of this people are just people. I do not understand how people can completely forget that people are human sometimes, they can completely get past it so that they can discriminate against someone for who they are when they’re doing nothing wrong. Yes, you can discriminate against or hate on serial killers and rapists but not people who are living their normal lives but just loving people you don’t want them to love, that is inhumane.

There is not enough awareness of gay people in the media, I do not feel. Or anywhere. LGBT isn’t really discussed in schools, parents quite often try and avoid the subject for as long as possible – or at least they used to, there aren’t really any gay people in TV or film until you start watching 15s, there aren’t all that many gay people in books, so there’s no way for anyone to get any information or understanding about it. Obviously now there’s the internet basically nothing is a secret and young people are finding out about things instantly and there’s not really a way for anyone to stop it. I read a really great book recently called Radio Silence by Alice Oseman and it was so eye-opening and there are quite a few characters in the book that aren’t seen as ‘normal’, there are asexual people, bisexual people, gay people and the issue of not understanding any of this is raised in the book. The person who is asexual doesn’t realise that they are asexual and eventually learns about it through the internet but throughout their whole lives they’ve known something hasn’t been quite right and that their not the same as everyone else and they can’t explain it but then they find out about being asexual and they finally understand themselves are know who they are and that there are other people out there just like them. I think it’s less true of being gay or bisexual now as you probably would have learnt about it through the internet but I’m thinking of all the young children out there who feel alone, confused, scared and angry because they can identify that there is something about them that is not quite right but they don’t properly know what it is and how hard their lives must be not even knowing properly who they are.

I watched a video recently on YouTube where they turned things around so that people were heterophobic rather than homophobic and how terrible it is if you see things from an unusual and new perspective/side of things and it was really insightful and really helped you properly see what was wrong with the world and how terrible the way we treated others was, I say we but I don’t actually include me in that ‘we’ because I don’t discriminate against LGBT people. If you want to watch the video I was talking about above you can here, but I must warn you before you click the link that it is very deep and emotional and has a very strong bullying/suicide element so if that is going to upset, traumatise of offend you then please do not click this link and watch the video, I found it to be unexpectedly upsetting and traumatic – Imagine A World Where Being Straight Was A Minority

There are lots of people who try and hard that their gay or bisexual because of what others will think of them, because of their reputation or because the wish they weren’t gay or bisexual – presumably brought on by the views of others – and I think this is really sad because they are hiding who they are or trying to convince themselves that they’re not who they are and that’s really heart-breaking.

I think it’s really terrible that people who are gay or bisexual kind of have to announce it and make it official and known by people, they can’t just go about life, they had to make sure people are notified of their gender preference and it makes it harder finding a boyfriend/girlfriend because you won’t know whether the person you want to be your boyfriend/girlfriend is gay/bisexual too and therefore that causes complications. It’s also very stressful on people when they have to come out to their parents and inform them of the fact, I just think it sad that there’s a whole thing gay/bisexual people have to go through just because of being gay/bisexual that people who are heterosexual don’t have to do. If you are struggling with coming out then there are a number of good videos and articles about it throughout the web but unfortunately because of not being gay/bisexual myself I haven’t actually watched/read much coming out stories but one I have watched is by a YouTuber called Connor Franta who you may be aware of and you can check out his video on the subject here – Coming Out | Connor Franta

I probably have more to say on this subject but I am so tired I absolutely MUST go to sleep, I’m also not going to edit this post tonight but I will do it as soon as I am awake enough in the morning. So if you’re reading this before then and there are some errors then please let me know in the comments!

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That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂