Things You Say To Spite The Gay

You can do a lot with a blog. You can share tips, you can spread your creativity, you can just post random things or get social and political if you want to make more of an impact. And I... Will do something in between. On one hand, the posts I am about to write will be inspired by personal experience but also I do hope to use them to spread awareness and hopefully add a bit of compassion and understanding to these really wild and confusing times. Or at least try. Anyway, this is a series of posts about annoying, frustrating, confusing and sometimes outright insensitive things we, members of the LGBT+ community hear every day. Posts about why exactly we react to those things the way we do and why you should probably give it another think through before saying them. I do hope that you, fellow gays out there will find this relatable and you, wonderful allies will gain some useful insights from it. And now without any further ado, let us proceed with the phrase of the week.

This is the most basic and yet very often the most infuriating one. The subcategories of it include: “Maybe you haven’t met the right [person of the opposite sex] yet”, “You might grow out of it” and, of course, “But how do you know?”. And somehow people asking that question get frustrated when you respond by striking down upon them with great vengeance and furious anger. Even though they’d probably be just as angry if the roles were reversed but that’s not the only reason why you should think reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally hard before saying that.

First of all, that’s just a... Well, there’s no other way of putting it: pretty stupid question. Because just stop for a second and do it. Imagine that question being aimed at yourself. What answer will you be able to give? Probably “yes”. So your opponent would ask “Why?”. And what would you be say other than: “Well, because”. Probably not much. So why put anyone else in such a dead-end position, assuming of course that you want to have a constructive discussion and not just prove your ultimate superiority over your opponent without any rhyme or reason. Because if you do, you need an article on how to be a Karen, which is probably out there somewhere but that’s not it and we are moving on.

When you usually ask “Are you sure?”, it is sorta kinda a teensy bit implied that the person answering will be able to provide a tangible proof in response. If you ask: “Are you sure it’s sunny?”, someone can look outside. If you ask: “Are you sure that the Byzantine Empire fell in 1453?”, someone can look it up in a history book. Hell, even if you ask: “Are you sure you’re not feeling well?”, the person you’re asking will be able to measure their temperature or go to a doctor if you’re really overzealous and this give you prove. But what can they do to prove to you that they’re sure they like or don’t like a certain gender? Because attraction isn’t something you can see or touch. Sure, the person can recollect some of the past events but you might end up trying to disprove that, even though it’s as ridiculous as trying to disprove a history book that will tell you the year when the Byzantine Empire fell or the judgement of the person who just told you it was sunny outside.

Except it’s even more ridiculous because it isn’t a history essay or a weather report. It’s a real living person we’re talking about here. Real living people are complex, not always logical but most importantly they do not owe anyone an explanation of why they are the way they are as your question implies they do. They don’t have to prove their existence or the reality of their feelings to you. They don’t need your confirmation of their validity. But most importantly, that’s really not what they want to hear.

I know you might’ve heard this one hundred times but one more won’t hurt: coming out is hard to do (don’t take your looooooove away from meee...). It’s preceded by a lot of self-doubt as is and what you really want to hear are the words of support and validation, not questions that will further the self-doubt, so please please pretty please consider going with that. If you do want to be supportive, of course. If you don’t, I hope you have low WiFi for the rest of your life and what are you doing reading this anyway?

But anyway... I know this post isn’t the perfection of coherence and structure. Next posts will be better though, I promise. But for now, thank you for reading this and don’t leave my heart I misery, if you go, I’ll be blue... I’ll just stop now.