20 Apr 2017
I recently had a discussion with someone who told me that he doesn’t like using the word ‘gay’ because sexuality is fluid and he doesn’t want people to be put in a box.
I agree with the concept. Often, I have fallen into the trap of trying to cling to a predefined identity that gives me a sense of security, rather than surfing the experience of my-Self as a constantly-changing-identity. I am ‘me’.
A few days ago, I got to know that in Chechnya, gay people – or those who are suspected of being so – are being rounded up, taken to secret detention centres, beaten up, and tortured. A number of them have been reported as killed.
Gay; captured; harmed – three synonyms.
So ‘gay’ is an identity that matters; an identity that endangers.
Upon hearing this news, the fear of being myself returns. It brings back the desire to alienate myself from the inherent risk of being who I am.
But it also calls forth the urge to affirm that I am a gay man.
I know that I don’t only belong to a specific identity box – experience has shown me that. But not calling myself ‘gay’ is also a way of wanting to hide who I am, to protect myself from danger – a danger that news like the one about Chechnya reminds me of.
Calling myself ‘gay’ means I am one of ‘them’. By hiding that, I protect myself – and I leave them to suffer alone.
This is what creates the ‘gay community’ and the ‘gay culture’: being a group of people who are oppressed because of their sexuality, who try to find a breathing space within a society structured by heterosexist norms. It’s a community of people who struggle on a psychological, social, and political level, just because of who they are.
Black sheep are sheep like all the rest. The colour is irrelevant. But when a black sheep hears that another black sheep somewhere else has been harmed because of its colour, it can’t help but face the truth. It is of the very same colour. And only the fact that it happened to be in another field protected it from being torn to bits by the wolves.
I am gay.