As most of you probably know, Oct 11 is National Coming Out Day and I just want to give a friendly reminder that even with tomorrow being the day it is, you are under no obligation to come out.
It’s perfectly okay if you want to, planned or not, and if you do I wish you the best of luck and hope you have a large support network!
If you don’t want to come out, whether it’s because of an unsafe environment, you don’t feel ready, or what have you– it’s okay to not come out! Your comfort and safety are important things to consider.
So, no matter what you decide– to come out or stay in the closet for just a while longer– I support you and wish you comfort and safety either way ❤
Man, I think part of the reason it took me so long to realize I’m a
lesbian is because romance stories SO OFTEN look EXACTLY like my
past relationships with men. Like, literally indistinguishable, to the point
where I can watch those straight romcoms now and very easily interpret
the main characters as lesbians dealing with the overwhelming pressures of compulsory heterosexuality.
Like, first she is
annoyed by the guy, okay? She has zero interest, she finds him tedious
and sees no reason she should be interested in him, or she sees him
purely as a friend and does not expect any kind of romance. Holy hell could I relate to that!
And
then they’re forced together by some circumstance – his persistent interest or
their jobs or being literally stranded or whatever – and it’s
incredibly awkward but they eventually find a way to coexist together
and she even discovers positive aspects of his personality. He’s not
such a bad guy, he’s alright. And that happened in a lot of my relationships with men, too. I learnt to tolerate them and even appreciate their good qualities.
And then often without any kind of active choice on her part suddenly they’re in a context where he wants more
from her.
And here’s where my interpretations of those scenes differed
from what the writers intend. See, I thought the hesitations of those
in-love heterosexual women were the same as my own total lack of interest and how I had to work myself up to perform romantic love – or sexual interest – for someone I wasn’t actually, it turns out, attracted to.
Because
it looks, from the outside, exactly like the chain of events in my own relationships with men. When it seemed like I’d
gone too far to gracefully extricate myself the right thing was to just… try my very hardest to be in love,
to try to love the guy as wholeheartedly as all people need to be loved, or do my best to at least play the part.
And I
thought that was what real romance was, I thought those were the usual internal
workings of a woman deeply in love, to decide to try to love someone purely
because she’d reached a point where he wanted more and she’d gone this
far and how could she not? Especially if he’d made some big romantic gesture, or needed saving, or was less annoying than initially presumed.
“Love as a choice” made sense to me then in a way it was never intended to mean. I thought I was choosing to be in love with these guys. When straight women chose to stay, I saw them choosing to be in love. In the back of my mind I always knew I could flip my “feelings” off like a switch, but I chose to stay and perform love, and really I think I thought that was normal.
It looks so similar from the outside.
It took falling in love with women and realizing how different my feelings are for women to notice that, wait a second, was that love? Or did I just feel like I’d reached some kind of point of no return and had to see the relationship through because that’s what you’re supposed to do?
Okay, head’s up. This little critter is called a slow loris. NEVER TAKE ONE AS A PET. They’ve experienced a boom in popularity as pets in parts of Asia and then the rest of the world, and this is not okay.
Why?
A) They’re endangered
B) They’re venomous. The only known venomous primate, to be exact. They store it in their inner arms.They’ll get in defensive posture, suck the venom from their glands, and them bite. And the bite can kill a human. (Seriously, one nipped Lady Gaga in Feb 2014 when she thought it would be a good idea to use one in a music video. They dropped that idea, thankfully.)
C) They’re endangered directly BECAUSE OF THE EXOTIC PET TRADE
D) When the poachers trap them, THEY CLIP THEIR FUCKING TEETH TO MAKE THEM “MANAGEABLE.” Many slow loris’ will die before ever being sold because of complications with HAVING THEIR FUCKING TEETH CLIPPED. (There’s a reason the loris’ in the videos are only eating soft foods…)
E) The exotic pet trade on slow loris’ BOOMed because of youtube videos like the one above.
And please make it very clear to everyone who thinks these videos are cute, that the animal in question has been stolen from it’s natural habitat and horrifically abused just so it could be a “cute” pet.
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