(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

Tonight is the 12 year anniversary of the day I came out. Twelve years ago, when I was 16, I looked at myself in the mirror, and admitted I'm gay.

It's weird. I'm still very proud of this accomplishment, but in a city like Montreal, nowadays especially, everyone's so blasé about it. When I mention it to other people, it doesn't feel like an accomplishment here.

It's such a different world here that it's like talking in some half-forgotten language when I bring up growing up gay here. I know it's not perfect here -- there are still queer-bashings, as we were reminded last week, there are still problems in certain communities, with certain parents. But for the majority of people, most of the time, I talk about coming out, and it feels like one of the hardest things I ever had to do is nothing here. The mountain I had to climb looks like a molehill now. So I almost never do mention it now.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy this city is such a wonderfully accepting place. I'm glad I chose it. But it's still sad -- when I was living in worse places, I felt like I shared more with the people around me. Here, after fighting so hard for every step of ground as a gay man, I feel like a ghost here. Or I feel like I've come back from a war that a younger generation feels was pointless, and so doesn't care.

(Part of it, of course is being in university-level English, where everyone and their dog is a postmodernist. Postmodernists tend to loathe gay men and lesbians and heterosexuals for "choosing an identity." I avoid the subject of sexuality entirely in class, and don't go often to queer groups anymore. "The sexuality is always fluid and it's unevolved to care about bodies" crowd doesn't offend so much as it makes me feel devalued as a person.

Frankly, if my sexuality were fluid, I would have married a woman and just gone out for anonymous sex downtown like every even slightly queer man in Esquimalt does. Everything I had to go through -- loss of hometown, family, and friends, appearing in the city's first pride parade (500 people), starting my own queer youth group (the only one in the city), talking to reporters, and finally getting out one night, with $20 in my pocket to get to Vancouver -- all of it means nothing here. I lived on welfare in Vancouver, ate out of garbage cans, did demeaning jobs, just so I could say I'm free -- and half the people I meet just grew up in the Village, and came out easily.)

I prepared myself for a lifelong battle that doesn't seem to rage anymore -- there are still fires, but I can already see them going out one by one. And now I don't know what to do with myself. Now I'm just a boring, 28-year-old English major sitting at home on a Saturday night. I don't feel important or special anymore.

And I feel selfish just for whinign about all this. And selfish, too, for having left, because if we all run to the cities, the small towns are just going to get worse. The towns like the one I grew up in, the battle is still raging, and -- if anything -- we're losing.

Still, I'll be celebrating. I'm baking a rainbow-flavoured cake right now, and I'll be going to Club Mado after my class presentation on Tuesday. Even if it's no big deal to anyone else, it still is for me, and I think that's what's important.

Comments

[siencyn.livejournal.com]

Congrats, you. :) It's almost 9 years for me, and I still am so proud of it.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

That's great :)

[feygele.livejournal.com]

... I came here from queer_mtl

Ah, Esquimalt... So close to a city, yet so far removed.

I totally understand your frustrations here, albeit for different reasons. Living in Toronto as a kid, then Vancouver for high school, my "city" wasn't so much a factor in coming out (and I came out quite young, I think I was 9?). But I'm used to just walking down the street, just breathing!, and people knowing that I'm queer. Here... not at all. ("Gaydar" and such is totally worthless here, except when it comes to queers who weren't raised in Montreal.) And while it might sound like a mute point, it's so messed up and uncomfortable to have people assume me to be queer until I come out to them. And, while you find people here really blasé about it, I've been having a hard time coming out to my classmates.

Montreal's just... weird.

Enjoy your celebration at Mado on Tuesday night. (And if you have no one to go with, lemme know - I'll bring myself and my friend phoebus.)

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I'm going with a couple of friends, but the more the merrier, so you're welcome to come with. We won't be getting there until after 11 because I have a class that lets out at 10:45 that night.

[ubergreenkat.livejournal.com]

::hugs::

i've always held that view that the gay community is about the value of experience and even if easier or harder things happened to someone else, everyone's struggle is a valuable credit to the experience of the community.

yo, i'm not elloquent tonight.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

::hugs back::

I think I understand.

[em-fish.livejournal.com]

Dude, I know you're all about the book-learnin', but we must get together for dinner or coffee or something.

We can commiserate over growing up queer in small towns, and hating postmodernism.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'd like that.

[blumunk.livejournal.com]

Sort of like an attribute that's defined you, both for yourself and other people, for such a long time is now not as significant for other folks? Where do you find identity then?

I think I get you, or then again maybe not.

Anyway, it's interesting to hear you talk about the younger generation being detached from history to a degree. I've been observing lately (with a bunch of high-school aged friends) how wonderfully open they all are able to be with their sexuality with each other (not quite as much with their parents, but even so). As long as people don't forget all together, it seems a wonderful thing when people don't have to fight the same fight that's been fought so many times before. After all, that's sort of the point, isn't it?

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I do understand that point of view, and I'm glad that there is more mainstream acceptance, but there are four larger problems.

• The first is our unique culture. We have a wonderful culture that is disappearing as we speak. I could probably count on the fingers of one hand young gay guys who know about Christopher Isherwood, Oscar Wilde, and so on. Or, for that matter, the struggles of life before popular acceptance. That stuff is worth knowing -- moreover, it needs to be known. There's something destructive about not having a history.
  
• In the most accepting possible culture, we are still different. Just by virtue of being a minority. Even if homophobia didn't exist, we'd tend to gather in places together together to meet each other, because we're a much smaller part of the population. I think without an awareness of history, without solidarity, younger queers will still grow up with a feeling that there is something wrong with them, that they are not living up to an ideal, just because they are different. Queers of Harvey Fierstein's generation were able to be defiant in the face of bigotry because they had to put up with so much of it. Strength of will like that is formed in the crucible. I know very few younger queers with that kind of a sense of self -- most seem embarassed to admit they're gay or bi, and so they succumb more easily to the subtle prejudices that still pervade our culture.
  
• Our newfound freedom is, in part, delusional. We in the urban centres and university towns are yukking it up, while outside the metropolites, there's every reason to suspect things are getting worse. Especially in Canada, where American-style religious conservatism is growing in places like Alberta and BC. And if we declare victory in the cities, and sit back and enjoy a new culture, who'll speak for those left out? Generally speaking, there aren't enough of them and they are confident enough to speak for themselves. We've gotten too apathetic to do anything about the growing rural nightmare.
  
• And one reason is purely selfish. I liked gay culture -- when it was something other than just the bar scene. I liked the political and social meetings. And, let's say it, I liked being able to meet other people like me by other means than accidentally through straight acquaintances. I have a feeling that without this queer-politics infrastructure, there's going to be a lot more lonely queers out there than there were before. You can't meet someone in a bar. And when there is a serious problem -- growth in the spread of AIDS, crystal meth, the Conservative Party, gaybashing -- we don't have the activist infrastructure to handle it. We're sitting ducks to whatever right-wing infestation or self-inflicted disaster hits the queer nation.

I guess this is just to say that the issue is far more complicated than mere acceptance/non-acceptance binary. And I'm mourning a genuine loss here -- a gradual loss of something beautiful and valuable, which I think is going to hurt us in the long run.