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sereneI have bowed out of a discussion elsewhere, but I still have thoughts in my head about outness, and I'm putting them here. Feel free to argue with me -- I may not argue back, depending on my energy levels.
1) I think it's everyone's right to choose to stay closeted. While I think it's a suboptimal choice, I fully support the right of every human being to make choices I find to be suboptimal, given that I really don't have any faith in my own omniscience.
2) I think that if you're an adult, and you say you have no choice in the matter, and you *have* to stay in the closet, I'm not going to take you seriously unless someone has a gun to your head or has you locked in the cellar or something. It may be a difficult choice, but you're making a choice. Again, the fact that I don't like your choice shouldn't give you the impression I think you're bad/wrong/evil if you make that choice.
3) I think that if you're out to select people and not to others, [edit: and you think that no one will find out about it,] you're deluding yourself about the reliability of your closet.
4) I do not consent to helping people maintain their closets. This is not to say that I will go spouting off to everyone I know that you're queer/poly/whatever. If someone asks me if you're queer/poly/whatever, I'm likely to ask them why they're not asking you instead of me. However, if we're partners, I'm not gonna pretend I'm your pal if we're really licking each other's cunts. If we're seen in a gay bar, I'm not gonna pretend you're my straight friend along for the ride. If someone tells me something that makes it obvious they know you're queer, I'm not going to correct them to "cover" for you. I'm not going to enter into a don't-ask-don't-tell relationship. And so on.
5) If you say to me that you will lose your job if you come out, my response is likely to be, "Okay, then don't come out, but I want to let you and others know that many of us are out and still manage to put food on the table." This is not in any way intended to shame you -- it's intended to offer options to others who may be reading, and to perhaps let you know that your option field is broader than you may think it is. If you still choose to be in the closet, fine. If you still insist it's not a choice but an imperative, see #2.
6) I'm not sure why it annoys me so much when people say things like "Well, you're lucky you can be out of the closet -- I don't have choices like you have." But it *utterly*. *Annoys*. *Me*. I did not fall into outness because the luck fairy came and bonked me on the head with his magick wand and made my life consequence-free. I grew up in Navy towns. I lived in a conservative shit-kicker town with my wife. I worked for military contractors and other corporate weenies. I chose to be out, *knowing* I could get fired or even killed. If you don't want to do that, you don't have to, and that's entirely fine with me. But you insult me when you say it's just because I live in some magical world where being out is completely consequence-free.
Being out is both a personal and a political act for me. It costs me something. I don't expect everyone else to make the same choices I make, but dammit, I made the choice, and if you want to, you can, too.
Okay, rant over for now. Moving on.
1) I think it's everyone's right to choose to stay closeted. While I think it's a suboptimal choice, I fully support the right of every human being to make choices I find to be suboptimal, given that I really don't have any faith in my own omniscience.
2) I think that if you're an adult, and you say you have no choice in the matter, and you *have* to stay in the closet, I'm not going to take you seriously unless someone has a gun to your head or has you locked in the cellar or something. It may be a difficult choice, but you're making a choice. Again, the fact that I don't like your choice shouldn't give you the impression I think you're bad/wrong/evil if you make that choice.
3) I think that if you're out to select people and not to others, [edit: and you think that no one will find out about it,] you're deluding yourself about the reliability of your closet.
4) I do not consent to helping people maintain their closets. This is not to say that I will go spouting off to everyone I know that you're queer/poly/whatever. If someone asks me if you're queer/poly/whatever, I'm likely to ask them why they're not asking you instead of me. However, if we're partners, I'm not gonna pretend I'm your pal if we're really licking each other's cunts. If we're seen in a gay bar, I'm not gonna pretend you're my straight friend along for the ride. If someone tells me something that makes it obvious they know you're queer, I'm not going to correct them to "cover" for you. I'm not going to enter into a don't-ask-don't-tell relationship. And so on.
5) If you say to me that you will lose your job if you come out, my response is likely to be, "Okay, then don't come out, but I want to let you and others know that many of us are out and still manage to put food on the table." This is not in any way intended to shame you -- it's intended to offer options to others who may be reading, and to perhaps let you know that your option field is broader than you may think it is. If you still choose to be in the closet, fine. If you still insist it's not a choice but an imperative, see #2.
6) I'm not sure why it annoys me so much when people say things like "Well, you're lucky you can be out of the closet -- I don't have choices like you have." But it *utterly*. *Annoys*. *Me*. I did not fall into outness because the luck fairy came and bonked me on the head with his magick wand and made my life consequence-free. I grew up in Navy towns. I lived in a conservative shit-kicker town with my wife. I worked for military contractors and other corporate weenies. I chose to be out, *knowing* I could get fired or even killed. If you don't want to do that, you don't have to, and that's entirely fine with me. But you insult me when you say it's just because I live in some magical world where being out is completely consequence-free.
Being out is both a personal and a political act for me. It costs me something. I don't expect everyone else to make the same choices I make, but dammit, I made the choice, and if you want to, you can, too.
Okay, rant over for now. Moving on.
digressions in response
Date: 2006-12-04 11:13 pm (UTC)I also think I'm more sympathetic to someone who says "I can't afford to be out now because $reason" if the reason makes sense to me (no invisible pink unicorns, and "I might lose custody of my child" is more convincing than "some of my neighbors wouldn't talk to me anymore") than if they just say "well, you're lucky, you can do this." The former recognizes that there are prices, and trade-offs between risks, and that you and I also live in the real world.
I'm not thrilled about referring to one of my partners as "Q" here, but I know the reasons why zie wants this, and they make sense to me. And if we're out somewhere, people are likely to figure out that we are, in fact, partners, and mostly zie doesn't worry about that (with specific exceptions that make sense to me, but that I don't think I should detail here). It also matters to me that the specific reasons aren't going to last forever, and that Q doesn't like this either.
From another angle, part of my discomfort with closeting is that it distorts my behavior; using "Q" instead of zir real name isn't much of a distortion in a context where I'm using LJ handles for a lot of other people. Come to think of it, someone reading only my LJ wouldn't find any of my partners' real names;