Back in the Closet!
by Toby Hamman
Shit! It’s happened again! I’m back in this overly familiar dark dungeon. From early adolescence through my young adult years, it was my unwelcome home, my pseudo safety. I never thought I would return to this desperate place, but here I sit. Fortunately, I have the ability and opportunity to make this a short backwards step—not a permanent decision. This paper and especially the reading of it is a big step forward!
I look back over my 43 years and see that I have come way too far to not end this relapse…immediately. I need to remember all the work I’ve done on my esteem, my pride. I need to remember the thousands of brave souls that have walked ahead of me, often in much more treacherous journeys than mine. I need to remember those who didn’t make it. Those who died, either by their own hand or by the violence of others. These folks didn’t get to see their walls come down. I often reflect on my best friend in college who hung himself in his dorm room. He believed the lies…he bought the hate and made it his own. It’s for Monty and the others who didn’t make it that I need to continue…moving forward…breaking down the walls.
When will we finally learn? Our history is replete with the majority using their power in an attempt to destroy or at least subjugate the minority. This includes the Germans over the Jews, Whites over Blacks, men over women and rich over poor…over and over, these are just obvious examples. In this class we have seen that minorities can’t wait around for the majority to “give” them rights. They must step up to the plate for themselves—in a sense step out of the darkness…take their inherent “right” in the world. This may look different for each group, but it’s essential for the continued existence.
Most often minorities are very familiar to us and easy to separate from the majority. Skin color, gender, national identity, and even physical characteristics…but mine is different. My experience as a minority is often called the invisible minority. As a gay man, I am a sexual minority. Many have much more colorful and derogatory terms for me, but I stick with proudly identifying as just a gay man. One out of 10 people are in my community, often a large part in quiet and in pain. Believing those colorful, hateful words, words that come from fear most often. In more politically savvy circles we are often lumped together with the term LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender). For political strength, the bringing us together is important, but we are very different sub-communities.
I must reject the closet, must refuse to be silent even though that world makes me more comfortable in some ways. For my own sense of self-respect and for my diverse community—I’m called to walk with pride. I’ve never been one of those in your face folks. I am who I am…and a part of me is this. It does affect me when I hear you disparaging at my folks, or when you talk about the person you love and I feel this pressure to de-gender my romance or sometimes even lie.
I know some of my desire to repress or be quiet about this part of me is out of my own insecurities…but look at our world. It is not a safe place for us. It’s even a more heightening sense of fear in prisons; there seems to be a higher level of prejudice than in the general public. I am well aware of the concerns, but I cannot let them push me back into the closet. The prejudice is all over… look at how the conservatives use us to win their elections. Nothing is more effective to get red states to run to the polls than to tell them “the queers are coming”…somehow we will be able to win marriages and decimate the family structure in a blink of an eye…or in some of our cases a flip of the wrist. By giving us protections in health care, housing and jobs this would be “special” rights? Can you imagine them saying this about sitting in the front of the bus…truly ridiculous…and serving in the military. I have always found it amazing that a big tough marine would be afraid to shower with a “fairy”…how ridiculous. Did anyone else find it fascinating when Gen. Colin Powell used the same fear based logic in keeping gays out of the military that White racists used to attempt to keep Blacks out of the military. They sure seemed to want me to reenlist after my initial tour of duty.
Oh…and the fundamentalist Christians…their exuberance for God’s love really shines when dealing with us. Some of their more vocal leaders blamed us for the disintegration of the Twin Towers and all sorts of other natural calamities. The fact that the suicide rate in questioning Christian teens has hit epidemic proportions seems of little interest to these extremists. At times the closet seems safer than dealing with the conservatives and these religious zealots…at least it’s quieter.
If you think our position as a minority is diminished because we choose this direction—you need to let that one go. Who would wish for such abuse? As a young man, I feared and hated this part of me. In later years I spent a great deal of money and energy in therapy to become a part of the majority. It didn’t work. The American Psychological Association has called this form of therapy abuse. For the most part our sexuality is as permanent as your gender and skin pigmentation. It’s as permanent as your heterosexuality is!
Please rest assured, this paper isn’t an attempt to recruit or be in your face. If you hesitate at the next queer joke…I’d call it a success. This paper is a selfish act of not letting myself return to the closet…nothing more, nothing less. It’s an attempt to not be squashed by the majority. I am very comfortable with your discomfort, hell it took me 28 years to get comfortable with it, but I’m not okay with your hate. Again, it’s a well established belief that sexual minorities make up 10% of the population… let’s see there are 1,000 people in North Block, 1,000 in H-Unit… I am far from alone…but the repression we experience makes us often very lonely. Minorities have to stick up for themselves, just because some of my crowd does it in these classes…doesn’t make the act less heroic… maybe even more so. Just like other minorities we do it because there is no other choice…as you’ve heard in the past, power to the people…all people!
