Angry Gay Things

Frankly written commentary from a young gay professional twixt anger and despair. uncensored and emotional: may offend, may enthrall, won't eat your firstborn. probably.

[angrygaythings]

6 months in the making

I haven't written on here for a while, though I've often felt I should. I've been dealing with my mental health difficulties for the last few months, and after the responses I got from a couple of articles, I honestly considered not picking up where I left off. I've moved into more of a 'fuck it' stage, so here goes...

Today, I made (to me) a rather fundamental decision whose knock-on effects may well change my life forever. I'm not entirely sure how I feel writing about it in public and I expect that were I not well into a bottle of pinot noir, I wouldn't be doing so at all.

I've written previously about barebacking (I got quite a lot of flak for that post), about how condoms really don't work for me, about the risks that you take when you decide to have sex without barriers and the way people look down on you for making a choice they don't agree with as a consenting adult. You can consider this post as an update of that one with a bit more as an addendum.

For starters, I wish to retract some of what I said. Serosorting is a useful measure, but it's certainly not the be-all and end-all. Statistics have been waved at me that indicate that ~80% of all new HIV infections come from having sex with people who believe themselves to be negative. The best thing you can do in terms of serosorting is to sort for people who are HIV+ with an undetectable viral load. Risk of transmission with such a person is sufficiently low that it's drastically safer than shagging someone who believes themselves to be negative but indulges in bareback sex.

Secondly, I caught chlamydia six months ago, which rather shook me. As someone who doesn't use condoms in the general case, I couldn't shake the feeling that it could have been HIV. I didn't have sex for 3 months because of the anxiety that caused. In fact I haven't had sex for the last 3 months either. It's not even just the risk of HIV, either. While I'm a sex positivist, all of the indoctrination of my childhood about sex being dirty came back to haunt me. I felt dirty because of something that took a week of antibiotics to clear up.

The scenario I've been facing is a choice between risking HIV (a risk that seemed a whole lot more real) and not having sex. Initially it wasn't that big a deal since I was going through a low patch anyway, but abstinence is hard (heh, no pun intended) and as my sex drive has begun to re-exert itself, the choice has effectively been made for me.

If I look back at my sexual history, I've slept with about 30 guys and I can only count three that I've exclusively used condoms with. I've almost certainly unknowingly slept with several HIV+ people. At this point, it looks like a certainly that I'll contract HIV at some point in my life. The question is, how can I take control back over this situation?

One of my friends has been ordering PrEP off the internet for some time to limit his risk. He also serosorts for undetectable guys to further reduce his chances of contracting HIV. He describes the experience as having taken away the inevitability of HIV, as having given him power over it and a reason to attempt to avoid it (so much for that "PrEP will cause people to be more reckless" nonsense that's been floating around).

I have a 3 month supply of PrEP ready to go, but it's not that simple. You need to take regular liver and kidney function tests to ensure that you aren't risking your health. The last time I asked my GP about this, I was told in no uncertain terms that they wouldn't provide them (and use a condom, you filthy hippie!). The only place I'm aware of that I can actually get the bloods done regularly is a clinic for injection drug users in the gay community. Even with that, I'd probably have to give up drinking so as not to stress my liver as much (and to not fuck with the results when I get my bloods done).

I've also adjusted myself to the idea of sleeping with HIV+ people who have undetectable viral loads (even knowing the statistics, it still felt like a big step). I probably won't stop sleeping with people who believe themselves to be negative, however (the pool of people who want to have sex with me is quite small enough without discarding the largest segment of them). Maybe in time, I'll change my mind on that.

Conquering my demons will take more time, but I do at least know what it is that I want to do. I haven't given up on the idea of remaining HIV-, however much sex it means I turn down (you would not believe how many people really don't care about their status and will shag anyone). Hopefully, with the odds a bit more in my favour than they were before, I can stay negative without all that painful abstinence.

[angrygaythings]

Keep young and beautiful

Keep young and beautiful, It's your duty to be beautiful, Keep young and beautiful, If you want to be loved[1]. If I could convince every person on earth that this is utter bullshit, the world would be a much happier place.

You start off with this idea that being gay is a terrible thing and then as you start to identify with being gay you internalise this idea and somehow consider yourself tainted. Homophobes reinforce this notion and before long you feel ugly inside[2].

Not content with feeling ugly inside, why not feel ugly outside too? Handily, the scene can help with that by being full of the sort of people who consider you to be scum if you don't classify as an Adonis[3]. If you do happen to be exceptionally attractive, it won't stop them insulting you all the same.

Whether you feel ugly inside or out, it's something far more general: being too concerned what people think of you. Beauty inside and out is only relevant within the realms of the judgment of others.The idea you should change your behaviour to satisfy others is a cancer and we must act to destroy it.

Of course that's just an apparently random collection of thoughts that doesn't tie together very well. I haven't published an article in ages[4] and the basic reason is that I've been utterly miserably depressed, and a large chunk of that was down to me concerning myself of what other people thought of me (and consequently found many silly reasons to dislike myself). I was living in fear.

I've learned a lot of things about mental health in the last year or so, but not minding what other people think of me has really made a lot of difference. People will either love you or hate you and it doesn't actually matter either way. You'll do things you couldn't bring yourself to do before out of fear. You'll become instantly more attractive[5]. Most importantly you'll be happier.

Go forth and be yourself. And stop worrying so much.

Footnotes: 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfk8kLJMab0 2. Trying very hard here to avoid quoting Radiohead lyrics because I want to save them for another article 3. Their reasoning does seem to be on roughly the same level as small children, however 4. Not because I haven't written any. I've written 6. Yes, 6. 6. Yes, it sounds like an infomercial, but confidence is attractive.

[angrygaythings]

Never A Frown

As the lyrics to 'Golden Brown' by The Stranglers go, "never a frown with golden brown". You might wonder what a song about heroin addiction has to do with gay youth, and indeed it's not immediately obvious, but the answer turns out to be "quite a lot".

Gay youth tend to distract themselves in two ways: substance abuse and sex. The former is easy to understand and even taking out the prevalence of drugs on the gay scene, alcoholism is the norm. Never a frown with golden brown[1]. A quick sniff of mephedrone, a line of coke or 3 bottles of wine, it's all the same. Why think about where you find yourself when you can temporarily forget, even briefly consider your life isn't that bad[2].

Once you're nicely off your tits, how about a bit of escapist sex[3]? Some physical sensation and an endorphin rush ought to take your mind off the present. The more you spiral down, the less self esteem you have to draw upon and the more likely you are to make stupid decisions. You'd be surprised how many people catch HIV that way.

So while I go find a bottle of wine and chainsmoke[4], ask yourself if you're happy. And spare a thought for those who aren't. Take them for a drink, have a conversation with them, give them a hug, let them know you're there for them. You just might help someone in need.

No, I never came into contact with heroin when I spent time on the gay scene, but there wasn't exactly a shortage of other drugs going around.

Speaking as a former alcoholic.

Which I'm not having since I've gone to the step beyond - complete lack of sex drive.

I really do need to give up smoking again. There's an e-cig sat next to my bed, but I'm still waiting on the nicely flavoured liquids to arrive.

[angrygaythings]

Responsible barebacking

*Please note that some of my views have changed. Read this, then read http://angrygaythings.tumblr.com/post/72143356358/6-months-in-the-making

Before you read the rest of this post, I'm going to be flat out: it's divisive and a lot of people will get pissed off reading it. Also you'll read far too much about the mechanics of gay sex and about my sex life. You have your warning.

Modern medicine long ago invented this thing called a condom. You put it in on and unless it breaks, you don't catch most things you can catch from sex (oh yes, you can still spread genital warts and crabs)[1]. If you had the benefit of any sex education beyond "wear a condom to stop her getting pregnant", which was much what I got in school, it's the mantra they repeat to you. The NHS has even gone so far as to put ads on the tellybox that show peer pressure looking down on people who have sex without condoms, completely missing the irony that this is what already happens in a large part of the gay community.

If you ask any straight man (or any gay man who likes being on top)[2], they'll tell you that condoms suck the pleasure out of sex. For some, it's an acceptable amount and for others it isn't acceptable and actually causes real difficulties. The official response is "you're an idiot if you're not using a condom", when for some people, it's really problematic and no matter what you tell them, a condom isn't a realistic solution. The typical response to this is to double down on on the "use a condom" rhetoric and shout louder about how these people are irresponsible. Frankly, given a choice between unsafe sex and no sex, I think I know which is going to win.

And it's not just straight men and top gay men, it's women and bottoms too. One of my female friends recently admitted that she doesn't like the sensation of sex with a condom. The best sex of my life as a top was with a guy who said he derives no pleasure at all from being fucked with a condom. And he's clearly not alone if you look around and see all the people not using condoms and stop assuming they're all idiots.

Why is barebacking such a divisive issue? That's rather complex. The way I see it there are five reasons why people may choose not to have safer sex: - Idiocy - Poor self esteem - Poor understanding of the reasons to have safer sex, usually through poor sex education - Hatred of condoms/inability to use them - Bugchasing. People deliberately going out of their way to catch HIV.

Idiocy can't really be helped. Some people can be fully aware of the risks, not have a deathwish and still not care. Often people see it as an inevitable part of the bareback lifestyle and just get on with it.

Poor self esteem is a hard one. My last article was about mental health in the gay community, which is pretty fragile. Many men cease to care about themselves and whether they catch HIV or not. In a depressive spiral, people may actually think they deserve it and society's hatred for having it.[3]

Poor understanding is a tricky one, but we're starting to fix that through education, though we have a long way to go before it really addresses the issues and puts to shame the "use a condom to stop her getting pregnant" education I had. I came out of school without any conception that HIV was serious and lifelong[4] and with a fairly uninterested attitude towards safer sex. That changed for me when I lived with a sex therapist, but most people don't get that life experience.

Hatred of condoms/inability to use them is a tough one that isn't easy to solve. While they remain the bedrock of HIV prevention, people for whom condoms aren't an acceptable solution will always slip through the net. There are options such as PrEP which I'll outline below and discuss in much more depth in a future blog post or seven.

Bugchasing is a complex phenomenon that I'll cover in much greater detail in the future where I can devote an entire blog post or two to it. It would also help if I finished reading the book I'm currently reading[5] so I can get another clinical perspective on it.

The group I'm primarily focusing on today is the people who hate condoms or can't use them, mostly because I'm one of them[6] and I'm sick of biting my tongue when people spout their uninformed opinions at me. If you know me, that last sentence might come as a bit of a shock, particularly since I'm knowledgeable and happy to discuss the subject at length. Suffice to say that a) I'm probably better informed than you and b) I don't want your pity/outrage/going off on one c) I'm sorry if the last two point didn't apply to you, but at least one did to most people I know. Particular apologies to my HIV+ activist friends who feel I'm undermining their message.

So I called this post 'Responsible Barebacking' and I'm going to justify that now we have the prequel out of the way. The idea of responsible barebacking isn't particularly popular because of the way society looks down on people who choose not to have safer sex, but the fact is that people choose it every day, in fact a recent statistic shows about 50% of gay men who sleep around have barebacked in the last year with someone who isn't their partner. It's a very real thing we have to face as a community, something we can't just ignore. If people are going to bareback, at the least they should do so responsibly. For purposes of this, I'm dividing people into HIV+ and HIV- people.

I maintain there are two STIs that are actually something to be afraid of: HIV and Hepatitis. Of those, Hepatitis can be split into A, B and C. Hep A is moderately easy to cure, Hep B can usually be cured with persistence and Hep C is a bitch to cure. Hep A and B can be vaccinated against (in fact with the Twinrix dual A/B vaccine, you can have immunity within 3 months), but there is no Hep C vaccination. Anything else can be cleared up with a course of drugs. Not exactly a fun conversation to have if you catch something and pass it on to someone else, but not serious if caught early enough[7].

There's an old technique that's fallen out of favour now, but that people still use without realising what it's called. It's called serosorting - only sleeping with people of the same HIV status. For HIV- people, it's usually asking "are you neg and STD free" before getting down to things. Done right, it's remarkably effective, but people usually forget about the window period for HIV.

For serosorting to work properly, people have to get tested regularly and know their status. Combined with serosorting, this is the coernerstone of responsible barebacking. Yes, people lie. Yes, people don't get tested as often as they should, and yes, people can get the wrong answer and still have the sex anyway, but that's about making an informed risk.

The other part of responsible barebacking as a HIV- person is understanding that things can and do go wrong and you're only reducing the risk. There is still a possibility you might catch something. With any luck it won't be HIV or Hepatitis.

For HIV+ people, there are three cornerstones to responsible barebacking: disclosure, testing and medication. Leaving disclosure for now, testing[8] and medication combined work to monitor your condition, check you aren't co-infected with something else and to reduce your infectivity, which is important when being responsible.

Controversially, I don't take a hardline on HIV+ people having sex with HIV- people provided they disclose their status. No, I don't accept that a lack of a HIV- person's asking the right questions is morally defensible. At the same time, if a HIV- person is aware that their sex partner is HIV+, that's down to the HIV- person at that point in my view, regardless of reason for it.

Bottom line: If you're HIV- and you choose to have unsafe sex, you lose the right to play victim if you catch something. Be informed about the risks and don't kid yourself you're invincible.

"Safer sex", not safe sex. Condoms break and they don't stop everything when they don't.

Okay, there was one who actually really prefers them. One that I've ever met.

Studies show that in areas with greater HIV acceptance and less demonisation, infection rates go down. Take that, society!

Yes, I know it's not a death sentence any more. It's still serious. I will be producing an article about this in the future.

"Unlimited Intimacy" by Tim Dean. Available at the excellent "Gay's the word" gay bookshop near Russell Square. Or on amazon if you're lazy and don't care about supporting small business.

That felt like coming out again. I can only imagine how HIV+ people feel when they tell people about their status.

In men. Chlamydia can render women infertile. Did I mention this was a gay male blog?

Testing as a HIV+ person becomes a monitoring of your condition and general health, far beyond checking your viral load and co-existing conditions.

[angrygaythings]

Losing yourself

It's not a secret, but an often overlooked fact that depression rates are substantially higher in the gay community. I've previously touched upon how society expects you to be straight and how coming out is nothing if not a trainwreck of emotions, but suffice to say, there's a real problem with depression amongst gay youth.

In the general population, one in four people will at some point suffer from a mental health problem. It's usually depression. Amongst gay youth, it's double that; yes 50% of gay youth suffer from mental illness and you have to ask why. I'm pretty sure the mechanics of our sex lives aren't to do with it, so again society has to take a hit for this one.

Gay soho is a study in depressed people trying to avoid the lives in which they find no meaning. "Of course I can drink you under the table, I'm gay" is far closer to truth than any of us would like to admit[1], and yet I see it being lived out in every bar in Soho. I've been that guy. Half of us have.

Even as I write this article, I'm sitting in bed with a glass of wine from my second bottle and smoking a cigarette. Most of my gay friends are alcoholics. In fact, I can't think of a single one who isn't. I used to go out to a bar after work, have between 1 and 3 bottles of wine and talk nonsense with people until I had to catch the last tube home (by which time I would be very much trashed). It was an empty life, but I never noticed it because I was constantly drunk[2]. Thing is, I packed it in and my friends never did. It numbs the pain, it fills the whole, even if only temporarily.

The gay community also has a drug problem. You probably don't see it because you don't go to the right places, but believe me it happens. In Vauxhall clubs, probably half of people are on something (usually MDMA), and in saunas, people snort mephedrone, coke and ketamine, smoke crystal meth and drop GHB into their drink, all the while sniffing poppers to disassociate themselves from their surroundings. In fact, poppers are pretty synonymous with gay sex, and other drugs aren't exactly far behind. "Wired" sex (also known as PNP, Party and Play) usually means crystal meth, though it may be coke or mephedrone. There are 'chillout parties'[3] in the gay community for people to go to a house and take shedloads of drugs and possibly engage in sex as well.

In and of itself, sex is a tool for escapism. Why think about your miserable life when you can concentrate on the good sensations? But that too becomes an obsession. It's not long before you're spending your entire waking life on Grindr[4] and lining up your next brief moments of hedonism. Gay men have gotten this down to an art, which is why we're generally known for sleeping around[5]. We've perfected the art of 'clinical sex', without emotion. You arrive at someone's flat, get naked, fuck and put your clothes on, possibly not even stopping to introduce yourself. A lot of people then have post-climax remorse and feel dirty for it thanks to society's greatness and then console themselves in yet more sex, or maybe next time a more hardcore kind of sex, or wired sex. Sex works on the serotonin and dopamine systems just the way drugs do, it's addictive.

With any kind of need to lose yourself, it's not a good way to make sensible decisions. The gay community has a real problem with HIV, that's not exactly a secret, but the usual cop-out of people is to say "well you're an idiot if you didn't wear a condom"[6]. If things were that simple, we wouldn't have a problem, but this kind of narrowmindedness makes the situation worse. When people are in a situation they need to lose themselves from, things happens, and people make bad decisions they may go on to regret, but that's only human and not something to demonise them for.

Of course it would be naive to say that the problems stop if someone catches HIV. In most people it causes a rollercoaster of negative emotions to ride off the tracks and paint the floor with the remains of your brain. Only natural then that people would absorb themselves further into alcohol, drugs and sex.

As a community, we don't seem to want to know ourselves, only to escape, to lose ourselves in the moment.

January this year I gave up drinking for a whole month. I didn't miss it. Then my life generally got more and more miserable and now I'm drinking too much again.

One day, one of my friends turned to me and said "James, you're an alcoholic", and I realised and I cleaned myself up.

I was invited to one of these once. They terrified me.

Or Bender, or Skout, or GayRomeo, or Craigslist. And then all the other ones.

Not all of us do.

Tell that to my friend who caught HIV from giving a blowjob. Do you normally use condoms for that? Thought not.

[angrygaythings]

Hiding in Bushes

Like any modern gay man, I spend 90% of the time I'm not sleeping hiding behind bushes in my local park waiting to pounce upon unsuspecting straight men and forcefully rape them. In the few minutes a day we aren't waiting to violate the harassed majority, we share stories about all of the straights we've turned gay and pat each other on the back at how good we are at destroying the fabric of society.

Stereotypes aside, some people actually think like this. Case in point was last night where I couldn't identify why a friend was pissed off with me when I'd appeared to not do anything. My "crime" was to say "it's my round" at a time that coincided with an increase in the price of drinks. Clearly I was doing my damnedest to get him into bed.

This is someone I've known for 3 years and I've never once expressed an interest in (largely because there isn't one). Even after 3 years, he still thought that way. I don't actually have it in for straight men (however attractive they may be), I don't generally do things to undermine society (in fact I do things to improve society) and I don't want to be your scapegoat again this week, Daily Mail hack, so kindly take your hate and shove it up your tight little virgin hole.

[angrygaythings]

Ex-gay bus ads, Tatch and Freedom of Speech

I normally quite respect Peter Tatchell ("Tatch"). Today I lost an enormous amount of respect for him when he came forward to say that he disagrees with the ban on the ex-gay bus ads. In fact, I'm 100% behind the ban and I'm going to explain why.

Ex-gay therapy is bullshit. It's never been proven to work because it can't. The entire edifice is built upon the principle that sexuality is a choice, which it isn't. The rough theory is "if sexuality is a choice, people can choose to be straight". Obviously they then step in and indoctrinatehelp you to realise that you want to be straight, that god loves you but you'll burn in hell if you don't go back to being straight.

You won't be entirely surprised to hear that this sort of thing has been proven to be extremely psychologically damaging. In fact, you can attribute a fair number of deaths to it, either from the beatings (oh yes, some ex-gay courses "beat the gay away" (which doesn't at all sound like a euphemism for masturbation)) or from suicides. Even when it doesn't result in death, it often takes years for people to recover, and in many cases they never do.

So we have here a therapy that doesn't work and causes extreme damage, possibly even death. And yet we haven't banned it yet. Which we should. So why if we can't find a good reason for the therapy to exist should we allow them to advertise it? Tatch's argument is that this is purely a question of freedom of speech, that they have a right to voice their opinion and we have no right not to be offended. That much I entirely agree with, but the problem is that he hasn't considered everything. If this were purely a question of banning something because it's offensive (and yes, it's very offensive to allow someone to misrepresent something so base as your sexuality), I'd be fine and I'd leave it there, but the fact is that the other reason it should be banned is far more offensive.

When it comes to freedom, I'm fairly libertarian. If you want to do something, then provided you do not harm another human being, be my guest. Underpinning that are two things: - Do not harm - You're a rational adult able to make a decision on whether something is a good idea or carries an acceptable risk/reward profile for you

These ads promote the idea that gay men can be 'cured' (which is ludicrous, as if sexuality were something to be ashamed of), through a process that will damage them and may even result in their death. I'm pretty sure that doesn't qualify as not harming if it leads to people enrolling in the program. However, given they're not actively forcing you to, there's an element of freedom to it and a certain argument that people should be able to enroll themselves.

Fine, let's go with that. But let's keep the kids out of it. And there are kids being enrolled in these ex-gay programmes every day. They are not adults and they cannot make a sensible decision about enrolling in such a program. They don't understand how the world works or their place in it, and they should not be able to enroll. Even more worrying, parents are enrolling their kids in these programmes. Condemning their kids to years of suffering until they finally pick up the pieces and fix their broken self image or they commit suicide. Hardly fair on them.

So I say to you, Peter Tatchell that you're arguing for the right to promote child abuse. That's something I can take no part in and you should be ashamed of yourself.

James

Yes, I'm aware it was banned on offence grounds. Frankly, so long as they aren't allowed to display the damn ads, I don't care why they were banned.

[angrygaythings]

Straight society

Side-notedly, I’d just like to say I’ve been overwhelmed by the positive and appreciative reactions I’ve been having on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks folks. Please share things to your friends, this blogging project is about raising awareness.

Society expects you to be straight. There's no getting around it. However much we claim to be accepting and free of discrimination, there is a basic expectation that you are straight. The Lynx adverts with (fairly chauvinistic and masculist) men pulling (fairly bimbo-esque) women. The people in soaps, where straight relationships are the norm but gay relationships rarely happen and when they do they're a source of controversy. The people you meet when you go out. The people of the opposite sex who hit on you.

Everywhere you look, there are straight people[1]. The woman in front of you in the coffee shop. Yes, the one with the wedding ring. The obnoxious pair sat to the right who really should get a room. Even the tramp who just begged you for change[2]. Surely you're one of them. There's a fairly high chance you are, of course[3], so you couldn't possibly be the exception, could you? You get talking to someone and they automatically assume you're straight. Why? What gives you the right to assume I'm straight? Today, I got talking to a market trader who suggested I move to Dubai. Obviously, being a gay man, that wasn't on the cards. Do I risk turning a conversation I was enjoying into an argument in the case he's a bigot or do I let it slide and not let my views about the horrific way they treat LGBT people be known?[4].

Believe it or not, some of my friends still don't know I'm gay. It's not that I actively hide the fact from them, it's just that I don't go out of my way to parade it either. Don't get me wrong, my sexuality is an enormous part of my life because the society we live in makes it so, but it isn't everything either. It's worst when you're in a relationship[5] and an old friend invites you to a BBQ or social gathering or something. "Can I bring my partner?". Oh yes, that magical word partner. The one that clearly marks you as gay without you having to say it. The one that allows the other person the mental breathing room to deny the fact you're gay. To deny that you're in a persecuted minority. To keep out of their mind that you suffer every day. And oh god, now you get to find out they're a bigot and you didn't want to go to their stupid BBQ anyway[6].

I get hit on by girls. I don't know what it is, a sense of safety perhaps. I wish I got hit on by boys half as much. But if I hit on a guy I think might be gay (and hey, chances are I'll talk myself out of it in case he isn't), I risk having my head kicked in. The girl who asks me out just gets a "sorry, I'm gay", and the worst that can really happen is she thinks I wasn't interested and lied about being gay. I've lost friends because they thought I was hitting on them when I wasn't[11] (this says a lot more about their insecurity than it does about my inability to express myself (which is admittedly a problem)). The only place I can go where I know people are likely to be gay is a gay bar and then I have to suffer truly awful music[12] and the sort of people that you typically find there (pricks)[13].

I read articles about gay guys kissing in a bar and being kicked out. So it's okay for you to kiss your girlfriend[7] in a bar, but when I kiss my boyfriend[5], it's "offensive"? FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU IN THE FACE WITH A BRICK. You try being told that what feels natural isn't. You try being beaten up because someone doesn't like the fact you like people of the same sex. You try feeling unsafe because you're walking home with someone you love and your body language might give away that you're together[8]. Try being picked out in a pub as a "queer" or a "faggot" because they've correct identified the guy you're with is someone you're close to because you behave differently around them. I have the bruises to show from the night I was punched to the floor in Soho[9]. I've watched far worse happen to other people and shrunk into the shadows, hoping I wouldn't be noticed[10].

Not good enough, society. Not good enough.

James

Possibly right now was the wrong moment to write that since I'm at home and my flatmate is gay, but in general it holds

Although as I identified in yesterday's article, he has a higher than average change of not being straight. Sad is life.

Oh to hell with Kinsey, most men are insufficiently bisexual to consider themselves anything other than straight, even if they shag men sometimes.

Today it worked out fine. I'd like to think it always would, but we're not there yet

Hah, not much chance of that!

And then there are the ones who pretend to be very okay with it and then quietly cut you out of their life. It is not your thing to be okay with. You aren't the one who has to put up with crap every day of your life because of something outside of your control.

Or indeed any girl

That anecdote from last time about being unable to hold hands? That happened. He was italian, he couldn't understand that two men couldn't hold hands in Hackney for fear of death.

Soho. Fucking gay central and I still got beaten up.

In defence of my cowardice, I never have been much of a fighter. I'd get my head kicked in. These days I'm probably brave/stupid/self-righteous enough to risk it, but back then I wasn't.

Oh believe me, you'd know if I was hitting on you. I forewent subtlety a long time ago and adopted an approach where everybody knows where they stand.

Oh god, the music. Kill me now.

I can't actually stand the scene any more. I refuse to go out there now[14][15]

Actually, most people on the scene are young people trying to find themselves. Most of them spend most of their lives failing because trying to fit the bitchy stereotype isn't helping them make sense of their lives, it's just ruining everyone else's.

There will be a LOT of articles coming on the scene and the sorts of people you find there. It's way too complicated to sum up in a sentence.

[angrygaythings]

Growing up gay

You know you're not quite the same as everyone else, but you can't quite put your finger on why. You try desperately to fit in but you know you don't belong. The kids at school make fun because you're not one of them. You start to isolate yourself, avoid situations that might make you feel worse, but you can't, not really. You escape into books, computers, a hobby you can do on your own: your book would never judge you. Escapism masks the torment inside - why do you not belong? why can't you belong? why can't you just be normal? You can only put your head down for so long before it starts to tear you apart.

In my mid teens, I tried to take my own life. I felt I was driven past the point where life made sense, past the point I could cope with it, even past the point I wanted to try and cope with it. Sometimes you can see no light at the end of the tunnel and sometimes the tunnel collapses in itself. The thing about depression is it's self-reinforcing: 99% of the time you don't want to snap out of it. Once you've crossed that line, it takes enormous emotional strength to pull yourself back over, and at that age, with so little experience under your belt and with so much confusion on your plate, can you really expect anyone to do that? There's a reason why we have the "it gets better" project[1]

Initial (oh boy, you didn't think it was nearly over, did you?) hurdles out of the way, you start to question your sexuality. "Might I be gay?" Pandora's box is opened up and questions are loosed upon the world. Oh, you'll stay in this state for a good while, hoping your suspicions aren't true. Hate intensifies, maybe you'll try and kill yourself again. They still have power over you while you aren't sure who you are. With every fibre of your being you resist it because it makes you abnormal in the eyes of a society that abhors difference.

Questioning gives way to tacit acceptance. "Okay, I'm gay". It's a simple mindset shift. You're not comfortable yet, it will take time before you are. Self-hatred intensifies now you have a "diagnosis" to work with. You tell a few people. If you're lucky, they take it well, but if you're not so lucky, you're shunned. If you're really unlucky, you told your family and they kicked you out of the house (oh yes, this happens). Now you have to pick up the pieces from a friend's couch, a homeless shelter or the street[2]. Maybe you'll try to deal with things by throwing yourself in the deep end, trying to date or have sex. So many get stuck trying to replicate the love lost from their family, and turning it into a cycle of abuse to reinforce their self-hatred.

Tacit acceptance eventually gives way to advanced acceptance. You stop trying to beat yourself up for your and start trying to live your life with your new realisation in what you perceive to be a normal and natural way. You'll tend towards the stereotype, you'll likely find yourself heading from one failed relationship to another and you'll never quite get over the feeling that you're dirty every time you have sex. Every time you open a newspaper some bigot will be arguing to restrict your rights or calling you a sinner. Every time you see a gay character in a TV drama, there'll be a corresponding furore by the Daily Mail-reading public, disgusted that the TV network don't try and pretend that gays don't exist. You'll start meeting other gay people, going to gay bars. You'll probably be beaten up just because of your sexuality. And one day, you'll get used to it. You'll meet a cute guy at a club and take him home. He'll want to hold your hand and you'll try to explain that around here, you'll get knifed if you hold hands with another man.

Oh it will get better, but it will take time.

James

It gets better, a project to spread the word to LGBT youth that things get better to try and cut the rate of LGBT youth suicide

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[angrygaythings]

A lamentable truth

Growing up gay isn't quite as rosy as the movies would lead you to believe. The fashionable, bitchy, happy-go-lucky gay best friend isn't a reflection of reality, there are still people out there who'd like to see you shot for a simple fact of your genetics[1] and you will be shunned by a society that wants to pretend we don't have a problem with difference. No-one grows up realising they're gay and it's okay, without fear of being rejected for their sexuality, without guilt because a puritanical society marks you as a sexual deviant. Every day, young LGBT people suffer because as a society we can't take care of each other.

Earlier today, I was explaining to a friend on the phone how angry all of this makes me, and I resolved to write about it. This is, I suppose my first ham-fisted attempt to write about the plight of so many people that daily goes ignored or worse, encouraged. I'm not writing this to give you the feel-goods, I'm telling it like it is. You'll probably be offended at some point, however accepting you might think you are. Maybe, just maybe I'll convince you to go out and be the change you want to see.

James

[1] Nature-versus-nurture is still up for debate. The only thing I know is I didn't choose to be this way.