blue glitter

I had a teacher apologise to me once, for the way my classmates were treating me, and how she couldn't stop it. I was 14 at the time of the incidents, and 15 when she apologised, the summer after I had her class. I haven't thought about that in over ten years. Until Spirit Day and a discussion over whether telling someone they're wrong is bullying or free speech.

There's a difference between opinion/respectfully disagreeing with an opinion, and a fact/shame and judgement of that fact.

Telling someone that they are wrong for being gay implies in there that someone has made the choice to be gay - it's as asinine as telling someone that they're wrong for being born with a particular skin colour. Because if one could pick skin colour, or sexuality, why would anyone chose to be a part of the marginalised, dehumanised group? I want to bring up the Prop8 case and the Findings of Fact, because two of them strike me as the end to the argument. And I'm going to use them, instead of my story at 14 and 15 and 16 and 17 and today, because my story is one thread, too easy to dismiss as an 'opinion' on what shouldn't be a narrative in the first place. They are findings of fact 46, and 44 [partial], respectfully.

Individuals do not generally choose their sexual orientation. No credible evidence supports a finding that an individual may, through conscious decision, therapeutic intervention or any other method, change his or her sexual orientation. and, only a fragment, but no less important, sexual orientation is fundamental to a person’s identity.

Sexual orientation is neither an opinion nor a choice. And telling someone they're wrong for having a non-het/cis sexual/gender identity is denying someone pieces of their intrinsic human worth. No-one is worth less because of the way they were born. All men are created equal. It says so right there in the Declaration of Independence. And not only that, but it says that being created equal is self-evident. Deliberately infringing upon that, even if one does it under the guise of an opinion, is bullying. Period. [Should be] end of conversation.

If a person is disabled, poor, male/female, an immigrant, or LGBTQQIA, (to name a few), and you tell them they are wrong - that they exist wrongly as a human being - because of it you are bullying them.

And you should be ashamed of yourself.

I don't think I've ever told this story. Perhaps just pieces.

I knew something was wrong with my body when I was twelve and starting bleeding. I told my mother once shortly after that I didn't want to be a girl, if that's what being a girl was. I never got used the idea, even today, many many many moons later. When I was 15 I dated Robert. He was a sweet enough guy, we worked together, but every time he'd try to kiss me, I'd flip out. I liked him, I liked him a lot, I just didn't want to kiss him. When I was a junior in high school, Nate announced to everyone in homeroom that anyone who wore yellow sweatshirts was gay - and not in the 'that's so gay' sense. At 17, I fell in love with my best friend, Kate. I told the librarian of my school that I wanted to cut myself to death because I couldn't take everything going on at school and everything in my head anymore.

This whole time, I maintained, even to myself, that I was straight and cis, even though I had no idea the concept of what cis/trans was.

After I successfully fought for my school to be allowed to partake in the Day of Silence protest, we were told that the fliers we wanted to distribute needed to make no mention to transgender or transsexual, because God had created us in his image, and we might have girls liking girls, and that was fine, but girls who wanted to change their parts and be boys were abominating their God-given bodies. Even as an atheist, I readily agreed.

I was teased mercilessly in high school, and some of it was attacks on my sexuality, which are cheap, and easy to make, and shouldn't have hurt as much as they did. I mean, I wasn't gay, so why would it hurt so much, right? I denied the concept to everyone else, and ran away from it myself, but I still threw out my favourite yellow sweatshirt and tried, desperately, to find a guy at my school to go out with. Falling in love with Kate, well, that didn't really help matters much. There was an explosion in my head of everything I wanted, everything I denied I was, and everything I didn't have.

I never felt emotionally safe enough to confront anything that had been rattling in my head in since the age of 12. My mother told me they made pills that would help make the bleeding stop, but that it would all be worth it when I had children of my own. The thought was anathema to me. Why the hell would I want anything growing inside of me, and then ... pop it out? It didn't make any sense, and it didn't make being a girl any easier - it wasn't exactly comforting words. Shiraz had been shoved out of the school for being gay - he was outed at a birthday party in front of more than a few of our classmates. The subsequent lack of support from his friends and school system left him to leave. I didn't want to be like Shiraz, I still hadn't even defined my own sexuality and gender, but I wanted my classmates to know what they had done was wrong on a basic, human level. For that I was told I must be gay, because no man would ever take me, but maybe a really ugly woman would. These kids weren't exactly full of originality. But standing up for someone clearly meant I was in the same boat as they were, so why didn't I just go find some bitch to go rub against?

The words weren't true - I wasn't gay, I did like boys, I wanted to have sex - all driving points I went home and told myself after I fought with my mother and went to sob upstairs. I couldn't figure out why it hurt so much. Until Kate. And then, rather than having everything suddenly make sense, it suddenly all made so much less sense. Because now I really did like Kate. And really wanted things to happen with Kate - but there was still a part of me that thought being gay was perfectly fine as long as it happened to other people. That was the lesson my parents taught me.

So I ran. From myself, from my sexuality, from any exploration of gender. I ran and ran and ran and didn't stop until I happened upon a particular part of the internet and a community that accepted everyone. At first, I stood on the edges, calling myself a straight-ally, until I figured out that it was okay to say 'hey, I don't know'. So I called myself asexual, and decided I wasn't going to do anything, with anyone, ever again. Having to testify against an ex-boyfriend and a separate rape helped fuel that idea. But with a lot of time and a lot of struggle, I learned to look at the pieces of myself and figure out which whole they made up.

Now? Now I'm genderqueer and don't care and if you don't like it, you can leave.