I grew up in a small neighborhood called Island Bay. My grandmother as I have previously mentioned was my only parent, so it was a quite quiet existence. I spent my time as a kid working diligently in school, among other extra-curricular activities. I picked up two years of Ryuku Kempo Karate, learned the Violin, participated in Gymnastics, and spent many weeks working on my confidence and acting skills with the Helen O'Grady drama academy.
My favorite past time ten years ago, before I had access to a computer let alone the internet; was creating things. I used to buy large pieces of white cardboard and map out my own board games. I would then decorate them with different colors, make rules about which characters had what powers, and buy thinner colored cardboard to use for the cards in said games. To my memory I had a Pokemon' board game, and a Dragon Ball Z board game. I used to force my grandmother to play it with me, because y'know when you're that young and you spend a whole weekend crafting a masterpiece who better do you want to share it with than the one you love the most?
In the late ninetees at an even younger age, my first obsession bloomed. In the form of the Spice Girls. I used to dance to their songs with three other girls in our class, and force the rest of our room to watch after lunch time once every fortnight (until we got a new teacher who didn't approve). I pretended to have met them when I went on holiday to Australia in 1998 because, y'know, how the fuck would anyone find out?
I adored them. On that, I don't know exactly when I realized I wasn't like the "other boys" in school but I certainly had feminine traits tracing back to my first memory in 1992. I was born in 1988. The first time I realized I "liked" boys as well as girls would have been at about age seven. I was watching television one day and I remember becoming aroused over a naked male shower gel ad. The next morning I asked my grandmother, why this had occurred to which I frankly remember her telling me "no it didn't", as if in somehow re-writing history I would not turn out abnormal. Whoops.
By eleven years old I knew. I kept these odd feelings to myself, thinking that perhaps it was "just a phase" or something. I guess back then I didn't acknowledge it, it wasn't until I was twelve and in my final year of primary (elementary school) that I really analyzed the world and my place in it and figured out that whether I liked it or not, I was always to be different.
It's strange to think that I spent seven years of my youth lying to every single person in my life. Not a peep from me about any of my homosexual feelings until I had finally left school at age eighteen. I think I revelled in it somewhat. The mystery, the intrigue, hiding out in plain sight. It was captivating while also incredibly frustrating and lonely. If you grow up in a world where every other person is heterosexual and where you feel like admitting you are any different from that will ruin and ostracize your chances of having friends and the life the people around you give you based on the assumption that everybody is straight unless they say they are not. This is why I can't understand religious people, whom think that being gay or bisexual is some kind of choice that just happens to people on a random basis.
For me, being not heterosexual was a painfully anticipated process, disrupted and deferred almost all of the time based on my own fear of being different and my longing to fit in to the status quo and maintain the image of my life as a teenager that I was used to. Sometimes in life, you really need to delve deep into yourself and forget everything other people expect out of you as a member of society, and develop yourself as a human being free of social constraints. Rich, white, straight men I guess never really have to think twice about inequality or difference because everything is a given to those types of people in life. You know, role models, expectations, rite-of-passage, the prom, getting married, children, work, old age, death. It's mapped out in a way that gives normal people like that a sense of comfort and permanence in their abilities to exact what will happen in the future.
I guess a part of the whole gay-rights movement does scare them in a sense that the world they know themselves doesn't as a matter of fact exist in reality. Most straight people would prefer to keep any type of "other" hidden, or at least to a lower form of status. It pains me that they can't see why homosexual people want the same kind of mapped out expectation as them? People don't want the government and society at large (as well as religious leaders) constantly demeaning their entire existence. You know, religious leaders assume gays and lesbians are sexual deviants but never actually stop to ask why that stereotype whether true or not exists. I would vouch for the plain idea that having grown up in a world that does not support stable gay relationships as something people should respect; sends a subtle message to gay and lesbian people that there is no real point in... monogamy... celibacy... and chastity.
Is that what religious people want? Homosexual people covered up throughout time, only able to slut it up in private, away from any kind of actual relationship, family or legal rights? If so I think that's quite sad. I feel pity for people whom can't see the obvious in the world and instead rely on the unreal and outlandish reasons for denying people the simple human favor of equal treatment.
