A Painful Pride: Ryan Confronts Bigotry at “Gay” Fest

I am so glad that you wrote this. I feel just a tiny little bit less fear in the LGBT community knowing that someone else has this fear as well.

I am ready to write a manifesto entitled; Its easier for me to say ‘Gay’

I love the LGBT community so much. I sit and read their stories for hours, watch their ‘it get’s better videos” and sob silently to myself at ridiculous hours of the morning. I feel that my struggle with the community, and family is so similar even if our situations, feelings orientations are not exactly the same.
But I feel afraid to attend pride parades. I feel like I can’t reach out to them, because inevitably they address… almost like… what ‘side’ your on. Gay men even talk down and talk trash to lesbian women. Its no surprise to me that they then do the same to trans people. They are scathing towards blurred or as they call them ‘indecisive’ perspectives such as ‘BI’ I can only imagine what would they do with someone like me..

I often find, over and over again, that it’s easier for me to say gay than anything else.
Straight people understand what Gay is.
Its safer to say gay around gay people too. They also understand Gay.

It’s still very polar for them. men with men women with women. They are just paired up on the polar opposites together.

As soon as Bi people who go from one side to the other on a regular basis introduced themselves they were shunned because that breaks this “law” of polarity in their minds.

When trans people introduced themselves they were shunned even more so and treated like a smear on a good name. ‘blending’ the ‘pure’ polarization of the opposites couldn’t possibly be tolerated…

It continues to be this way, even with more education, with more resources, and more brave people sharing who they really are with the world…
The LGBT community is still incredibly biased
Gay newspapers still advertise ‘men only’ events. & I can’t help but wonder to myself what exactly it is that they are defining as men or how they would react if a trans FTM came to one of those events. I envision a ‘where the wild things are’ reception where they ‘roll their terrible eyes and gnash their terrible teeth’

I’ve met people all over the world FTM who are interested in men. and beyond. Why should they be excluded from events of men seeking men? etc.
But they are, and vehemently so.

So for someone like me, born sex -F gender neutral asexual who is interested more prominently in women for physical but not sexual companion ship – but doesn’t mind male companionship and enjoys every shade of FTM MTF neutral and beyond in between… it is almost impossible to be heard, given genuine consideration, respected and acknowledged.
People of every aspect of the LGBT community can not even comprehend someone of my orientation let alone accept us or appreciate us. They want us to constantly prove who we ‘say’ we are to them and they never fully accept it. They make fun of me all the time.

” Oh you want to have kids? Well… you know you have to have SEX to do that right? ” -cissgendered atypical male……me-  No actually I don’t, not at all.

” Well…. if you don’t like sex then how come you like kissing and cuddling and stuff ” – Gay male ….. me- Because sex is sex and kissing is kissing. -big difference-

” Kissing is definitely a sexual thing so you can’t be asexual ” -  Transgendered MTF …. me – I can see how kissing can be sexual and I understand that kissing is purely sexual to you but that is not how i feel about it.

” Your face is too feminine and soft to ever look like a guy, you’ll never be taken seriously as anything other than female” …. Lesbian Female

it goes on and on…

In fact… as soon as I openly talk about what I am in any kind of community and my true orientation openly, it immediately sparks a hot debate with everyone around the table about my ‘proposal’

As if they were going to decide amongst themselves then and there whether I was valid, like what I had just said, was that I was an Alien from outer space.

They continue to talk amongst themselves occasionally listening to what I have to say, only to use what I have told them to somehow prove or disprove their opinion on me.

This goes on for hours until finally they see fit to collectively dismiss me with a – no- your not- you don’t even know what you are talking about because we all cant understand you and don’t have anyone amongst us who has your experiences that you claim to have so you must be wrong, or lying.

Yet if I introduce myself as “Gay”

Their is a collective… OH… ok…. and the conversation continues normally without hardly so much as a ripple.

So it is just easier for me to say “Gay” and it is so pathetic that I am MORE accepted universally if I say that for the most part, than I am if I share who I really am and where I really stand.  

I walked into a college campus recently with a gay resource center…. they had a pamphlet wall with every kind of information you could think of…

My heart skipped a beat when my eyes came across the word ‘asexuality’ in bold letters on one of them.

It may be two leaflets on a wall in a sea of others… but its a start. More of this is needed for everyone, All the letters in the alphabet after LGBT couldn’t define the range of people that exist at this point – but every single person who identifies in their own way is valid, and we all deserve to be acknowledged for who we really are.