LGBT, Get in here

Dear Gay People, we need to talk

Right now, you need this book. You need to read it yesterday.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

You’ve got all the legal rights that anyone else has, all the legislation has been passed. What you’re fighting for now…all that’s left…is for people to like you.  And no amount of fighting, name-calling, militancy, activism, or other coercion will accomplish that.

Oh, we get it. You were fed the Riddle Scale of ‘homophobia’ that says if people aren’t actively loving you and supporting you and celebrating you, then they are still homophobic.  And so now you believe that other people need to change until they are actively supporting you, celebrating you and loving you.  Oh boy.

Where do I begin?  Well, we’d better go back to the beginning. Nobody has to like anyone. We get to consent who we care about, support and celebrate. We get to choose on a very personal level, who we are friends with, who we accept, and who we hang with.  Heterosexuals do not all like, accept, tolerate, support, celebrate or love each other.  We don’t have to like each other, and no, we don’t HAVE to like you. Or celebrate you, or support you. We don’t have to be friends, buddies or pals with anyone who we don’t want to.  Its a human right to choose our friends and acquaintances ourselves. We don’t owe our time or energy to anyone else. This is a consent issue. We get to choose.

• Forcing people to like you by calling them names, won’t make them like you.
• Getting people to like you by public shaming them, won’t make them like you.
• Activism, marches, protests, parades, wont make people like you.

In fact, most of that is going to backfire in a spectacular way. This is why I’m writing. Trying to coerce someone into accepting you, supporting you, liking you and celebrating you, will only have the opposite effect.

What does work? That book I linked. Read it. And I have some more tips for you.

Become interesting.  If the most important thing about yourself, is that you are gay, if that’s your beginning and end, and that is all there will ever be about you, you aren’t going to win anyone over but other gay people. There MUST be more to you than who you fool around with. Hell, we all fool around; there is really nothing interesting about fooling around once you’ve done it a few times. Nobody cares, dude/tte. You have more to you than that, don’t you?  “Hi, Im Toby and I’m an artist. I’ve got a show at a gallery downtown” is interesting to other people. “Hi, Im Toby and I’m gay” is interesting only to other gay people who want to get down. BE more than your alphabet letter in the LGBTQQLMNOP. Surely, there is MORE to you than that.  There is more to heterosexual people than who they prefer to bump uglies with, and you really do want there to be more to you than your sexuality. At the end of your life, you don’t want to reminisce ‘What have I done with my life? Well, I was gay, so there’s that’.  If being gay is your entire identity, then don’t expect anyone to jump at the chance to be your friend.  (if your only interest in life, if your entire identity is being ‘into trains’, and trains are all you want to talk about, then don’t expect anyone but other train-nerds to hang with you.) Surely… SURELY… there is more to you than being homosexual.

Be Nice. Acceptance and friendship, celebration and support, must have common ground.  You’ll catch flies with honey, not vinegar. But naturally you wont get all the flies anyway. Be nice to everyone, and some will like you.  Stop with the over-dramatic name-calling ‘They don’t accept me, so they are homophobic’.  Not everyone will like you, and not everyone has to like you, so if someone doesn’t like you, move on. Seriously, let it go. Calling names to people who don’t like you is going to make them like you even less. And its going to make other people dislike you too. Calling people ‘homophobic’ is a punishment tool, a revenge upon them for not liking you, and everyone knows it.

Slap yourself awake. Nobody HAS to accept you. Hell, they don’t have to accept each other. Where do you get this notion, this deep-seated need for 7 billion other strangers to like and accept you for who you are?  Because it makes up for not liking yourself. I know that’s hard to hear, but there it is. You got to work on liking yourself first. Because when you like yourself, you won’t need the approval and acceptance of anyone else, let alone strangers. You got to get happy with who you are, and you got to like yourself first. Then you won’t need to go groveling for others to like you who never will. THEY don’t have to like you.  YOU have to like you.

GET REAL.  There’s only a tiny rare segment of population that hates you.  Just like any other spectrum, there’s a spectrum of opinions about homosexuality; it’s not an either/or (either everyone must love and accept us or they are homophobic.) That’s B.S., and you know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Their body, their choice. That’s a consent issue.  Even more so than their body/their choice, is their mind/their choice. Most people don’t care about it or you. In fact, the big bell-curve bulge in the middle consists of people who just want to ‘live and let live’.  Let them be, they’ll let you be. Live and let live. Tolerate them, and they’ll tolerate you.

‘Just Like’.  Are you really ‘just like’ everyone else? Do you want to be? That’s up to you, but if you want to say you are ‘just like’ heterosexuals then you might want to take a page from their book.  Aside from celebrities, how many straight people do you know who parade their sexuality in graphic ways?  You don’t have to be ‘just like’ straight people, but if you behave differently, then don’t expect to be treated the same.  I know this is anecdotal, but I didn’t know one of my co-workers was gay for a long time, till someone tried to set him up on a blind date and he said ‘no thanks’.  They responded with ‘What, you don’t like girls?’ and he laughed and said ‘No, I actually don’t.’  You do you, but if you want to be thought of as ‘just like’ straight people, then ‘just like’ requires being ‘just like’.

Um…you really want to stop comparing yourselves to animals.  “But animals do it, so homosexuality is ‘natural’.” Animals hump anything. Turtles hump rocks. Moose and rhinos hump cars. Animals hump dead animals. They’ll hump anything that moves and anything in the way, because the instinct to procreate is so strong and mindless.  Hump hump hump hump hump hump. Dogs hump coffee table legs and human legs, and it doesn’t make them legosexuals.  They are merely mindless rutting beasts. Humans don’t stick their shit in everything just because ‘instinct’, even when they get that random unexpected boner. I don’t think you do yourself any favors when you compare yourselves to mindless rutting beasts. That’s just me, though.