And then I said...

This post actually started out as a comment on this post over at D.U.P. It took on a life of its own so I thought I'd bring it out into the open with the rest of the hackneyed advice. Oh, and it gives me a lame excuse to post some pretty pics.

The theme is how blogging helps those who wish to exit the closet. I am riffing on the notion that we can live our lives for a substantial period of time without acting on our Uranist instincts.

You know, I had the same experience, pre-blogging.

I think we are experts in not dealing with our homosexualityness. We use the most refined coping strategies avoid confronting the little homosexualist inside of us.

I was with a wonderful girl for six years. I knew I was gay but thought it was too small a part of my life; I was still going to get married and have kids and all that that entailed. When I actually told someone, said the words, confronted it, it became a much larger part of my life, all-encompassing at one stage.

It is true, when you confront your inner queerity, even in the relative isolation of cyberspace it blows up in your face (homogays do that often). The beauty of blogging is that, while the isolation is reassuring, it is also illusory. There is a world outside waiting to make contact. With blogging it is a quite specific and focussed contact so your relationship to those around you most often sits somewhere between nurturing and enticing.

One of the biggest shames of our world is that young guys and gals coming out are still pressured by the feeling that they are alone, that nobody else feels like them. How often do you hear the words, "I'm gay but I'm not like the rest of those gay men/women/menwomen". Blogging is a wonderful forum for newly-come-outers, young and old, to meet all the other people who are "not like anybody else".

I'll close with my favourite piece of advice. I know I have already said it to some but I'll say it again. Nothing has changed. You are still the same person you always have been, it is just now you acknowledge you like dick/vag (*delete as appropriate). What's more, to be gay liking others with the same bits you've got is pretty much the only pre-requisite; you don't have to wear anything different, listen to anything different, talk any different.

Keep on being you. Keep on being unlike anyone else. Everyone else knows you. They just know you a little better. They will deal with it. Just as you will.

Tags: coming out, gay, queer