[NON BLOG] Being Out
May. 18th, 2005 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldLast night, while chatting over (I think) a Strongbow cider at my end of the table with (among other people) ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
feorag, the conversation somehow turned to the topic of the visibility of GLBT culture and GLBT individuals on the two sides of the Atlantic. I posited that Prince Edward Island might not be a place where being out is very common, but that unlike certain other areas of the North American continent, this low profile isn't a consequence of prejudice so much as it is because the category of non-heterosexual just doesn't exist in traditional Island culture. This void is frustrating and stifling. This void also provides convenient cover for people who can successfully work with it; I mentioned a certain prominent Island politico (who will go nameless) as an example of this.
Someone interjected here, asking what did it matter if certain prominent people were out or not in an ideal world. None of us believed that this is an ideal world. In this world, it made quite a bit of difference after 11:55 PM on the 4th of February, 2002, that I knew people who were out, even removed from me electronically as they were. Had I not known these people, I suspect that my online presence would have ceased sometime in March of that year, as a consequence of my unfortunate and mysterious decision to drown myself in icy Charlottetown harbour. (I had and have no access to firearms, absolutely no idea where to buy or otherwise acquire enough drugs to do the task, and am profoundly opposed as a matter of philiosophical principle to suicide methods which make others unintentional and unwilling accomplices. What else could I do?) It's entirely true, in case you're wondering, what GLBT advocates say about the poisonous and potentially lethal consequences of isolation for people just starting to realize that they're not straight. Before I got replies to my first desperate E-mails, the tension was building up unbearably.
It would be trivially easy, between blogging and USENET, for anyone curious about me to discover my sexual orientation. I'd outed myself on soc.history.what-if back in 2002, after all, and hundred-post USENET threads tend to rank highly for Google's search algorithms. Offline, I think that I'm out to everyone who matters to me. I'd like to think that I'm entirely comfortable with being that out, but I don't think that I am. My uncertainty about what being out actually entails doesn't help matters.
feorag, the conversation somehow turned to the topic of the visibility of GLBT culture and GLBT individuals on the two sides of the Atlantic. I posited that Prince Edward Island might not be a place where being out is very common, but that unlike certain other areas of the North American continent, this low profile isn't a consequence of prejudice so much as it is because the category of non-heterosexual just doesn't exist in traditional Island culture. This void is frustrating and stifling. This void also provides convenient cover for people who can successfully work with it; I mentioned a certain prominent Island politico (who will go nameless) as an example of this. Someone interjected here, asking what did it matter if certain prominent people were out or not in an ideal world. None of us believed that this is an ideal world. In this world, it made quite a bit of difference after 11:55 PM on the 4th of February, 2002, that I knew people who were out, even removed from me electronically as they were. Had I not known these people, I suspect that my online presence would have ceased sometime in March of that year, as a consequence of my unfortunate and mysterious decision to drown myself in icy Charlottetown harbour. (I had and have no access to firearms, absolutely no idea where to buy or otherwise acquire enough drugs to do the task, and am profoundly opposed as a matter of philiosophical principle to suicide methods which make others unintentional and unwilling accomplices. What else could I do?) It's entirely true, in case you're wondering, what GLBT advocates say about the poisonous and potentially lethal consequences of isolation for people just starting to realize that they're not straight. Before I got replies to my first desperate E-mails, the tension was building up unbearably.
It would be trivially easy, between blogging and USENET, for anyone curious about me to discover my sexual orientation. I'd outed myself on soc.history.what-if back in 2002, after all, and hundred-post USENET threads tend to rank highly for Google's search algorithms. Offline, I think that I'm out to everyone who matters to me. I'd like to think that I'm entirely comfortable with being that out, but I don't think that I am. My uncertainty about what being out actually entails doesn't help matters.
