Oppression

I am currently reading The Gay Revolution by Lillian Faderman.  It's a harrowing read for me, as it mirrors so much of what happened to me as a young kid, and so much I got to avoid because this revolution happened for me, and in many ways, without me.

I often wondered if I would be a activist when I grew up.   Growing up in a rural place (and trust me, Saskatoon in the 90s was a rural place), being gay meant being oppressed.  You grew up with two choices:  be an accidental activist or be in the closet for life. 

Many times, when having fights with my mom about my sexuality, I wondered if I should leave home.  If push came to shove, I would have left without a second thought.  Because I knew if people weren't going to accept me for me, then I needed to accept me, and that was more important than anything else.  Nothing else mattered to me at that age.

The idea of freedom didn't seem that important to me as a young man; I was free because I thought I was free.  But you can only be free if you can imagine a world that accepts you.  In 1950-70, being a homosexual meant poverty, loss of job, friends, everything.  You couldn't count on the police, they were the ones beating you in the street.  Religious people (and religions) said you were going to hell.  Parents were expected to abandon and forsake you.  I can only imagine where many of those people are now.


In this day and age, you wonder: how can we be so far from unity, and yet we profess progress? How can people believe that some people are inferior to others, just because they are different.  I think it's very understandable that sometimes, you'll feel uncomfortable around people that are different than you.  But that doesn't mean you're bad; it just means it's hard to be around things that are different. 

Somewhere along the way people began to show courage.  There began a new idea; an exciting idea that people could be proud of who they are.  Pride is a term you don't understand until you realize what you have to lose, walking in broad daylight.

Gay people, and many minority communities, don't want special rights. They want to feel like they have a place in the world.  It doesn't have to be a special place, a better place.  It just needs to be a place where they don't feel hurt, just to exist.