Being a gay male is a life ruiner. Reddit post.

[Charon]

Bumping your own old threads is fun, I guess.

 

[Taralen]

Bumping your own old threads is fun, I guess.

It's not fun. This thread is so true and relevant.

 

[Cormac135]

I can see this ending badly.

 

[rareboy]

Hopefully this episode will pass and you will regain some inner balance and perspective again.

 

[Taralen]

Hopefully this episode will pass and you will regain some inner balance and perspective again.

What episode? This isn't an episode. This is my life.

I didn't ask to be black and gay.

 

[luckynumbah7]

I didn't ask to be black and gay.

Yeah, you've got other issues you're roundly ignoring. Part of growing up is taking responsibility for your actions. That includes when you've wandered past the edge by creating complaint threads when no disagreement existed and also when you're resurrecting dead threads in what seems to be the hope of focusing your many social mistakes on something outside of your control.

It gets old, Mr "This time I'll take responsibility for my actions impacting my overall mental health".

 

[Taralen]

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go off like that. I need to change my attitude, and I'm sorry.

 

[luckynumbah7]

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go off like that. I need to change my attitude, and I'm sorry.

It isn't your 'attitude', it's your conception of events. Your overall comprehension is bad, in part, because you create unlikely and downright inaccurate assumptions via an itty bitty level of experience. Example; I'm certain that due to the population density (among other indicators) Los Angeles has multiple and varied gay clubs with a very wide range of music, clientele and business hours. The city is multicultural, it's a given. As a hypothetical scenario, that wouldn't be likely to keep you from insisting that you're limited (when comparing numbers-wise about where you've been vs where you haven't) club experience are applicable everywhere. So.

When you find yourself rushing to a defense of your views, try and look up the information presented and see if it fits the belief.* Take a gander at how many club listings and theme nights there are, to further the example, and see if they match up with what you tell yourself about there being jack shit available. Get used to looking for discrepancies in all manner of ways when examining your own opinion - but if I were you, I'd focus on the concretely checkable first. Your attitude will adjust itself when you've stopped radically skewing your own perceptions and basing your beliefs on 'em.

* Don't go getting fancy and researching sociology until you've got a better grasp of separating facts from your tunnel vision, either. Can't really apply knowledge with tunnel vision, it's how people end up confusing the hell out've themselves and blaming everything on x, y or z.

Tho really, fact checking just brushes the beginning of interpreting events. You've other things to work on as well. Everyone does. Provided you put in the effort it's bound to get better.

 

[mikemizanin729]

What episode? This isn't an episode. This is my life.

I didn't ask to be black and gay.

Maybe not, but you are choosing to have an attitude problem.

 

[Taralen]

Maybe not, but you are choosing to have an attitude problem.

I'm not. This is me and this is who I am.

I'm choosing to be civil though.

 

[Taralen]

It isn't your 'attitude', it's your conception of events. Your overall comprehension is bad, in part, because you create unlikely and downright inaccurate assumptions via an itty bitty level of experience. Example; I'm certain that due to the population density (among other indicators) Los Angeles has multiple and varied gay clubs with a very wide range of music, clientele and business hours. The city is multicultural, it's a given. As a hypothetical scenario, that wouldn't be likely to keep you from insisting that you're limited (when comparing numbers-wise about where you've been vs where you haven't) club experience are applicable everywhere. So.

When you find yourself rushing to a defense of your views, try and look up the information presented and see if it fits the belief.* Take a gander at how many club listings and theme nights there are, to further the example, and see if they match up with what you tell yourself about there being jack shit available. Get used to looking for discrepancies in all manner of ways when examining your own opinion - but if I were you, I'd focus on the concretely checkable first. Your attitude will adjust itself when you've stopped radically skewing your own perceptions and basing your beliefs on 'em.

* Don't go getting fancy and researching sociology until you've got a better grasp of separating facts from your tunnel vision, either. Can't really apply knowledge with tunnel vision, it's how people end up confusing the hell out've themselves and blaming everything on x, y or z.

Tho really, fact checking just brushes the beginning of interpreting events. You've other things to work on as well. Everyone does. Provided you put in the effort it's bound to get better.

I have done research.

LA is a big city yes, but I don't like how you are assuming all of that shit.

We are in 2018, and people have different music tastes now.

It doesn't help that I'm a millennial growing up in the late 90s.

Like that Cardi B trap shit, I don't like, and wouldn't be caught dead jamming to that shit.

Gay clubs here in LA play hardcore techno music in their clubs. Maybe they might play some cheezy 70s non smooth disco or some shit like that.

Like I like soul and R&B disco, not camp disco.

Maybe some sappy non smooth 90s pop/rock if I'm really lucky.

Being single and alone, and having to deal with shitty music is not good for me.

I would have to fucking pay the DJ to play smooth jazz or electro dance nobody wants to listen to and get the business shut the fuck down.

Even these so called clubs that have a jukebox, it's very rare they have songs I like. If I pick a song nobody likes, I'm looked at funny.

My best bet is to do what I'm doing now is to find a boyfriend so me and him can party in our own damn house.

Maybe once I'm with him, we can go to clubs, (not for the shitty ass music) but to go out.

 

[Taralen]

So that's it. You have nothing else to refute me on?

 

[rareboy]

I think you may have exhausted this topic and it might be time to move on?

 

[Taralen]

I think you may have exhausted this topic and it might be time to move on?

I haven't, and I'm not done. I feel I'm still not convinced or ready to settle and let this move on.

The fact I'm still being challenged on my points causes concerns as well.

 

[TheLoveableLoner]

So that's it. You have nothing else to refute me on?

You never listen to anything anyone says to you, so why should anyone bother?

 

[Happenis1]

Hey, life is what you make of it..

I'm gay (and also black) and made the universe work for me. The author of that article is stuck in a cycle of victimhood.

1. I'm openly gay at work and haven't been mistreated or discriminated at all (though I get snarky but harmless comments from one of the guys every now and then). I find that the office ladies actually like me more and find me more relatable compared to when I was in the closet. I think I actually have an advantage since the white folks supposedly find gay black men a little less threatening than straight ones.

2. I'm not involved in the gay community and have zero desire to be. I will agree that the gay community is messy, shady and high-drama but there's plenty of effeminate gay men with THRIVING social lives in the gay community. Based on my experience living between Manhattan and Fire Island, fems actually seem to be the ones that thrive the most in the gay community social circles.

3. Kids... I can really care less about parenting and paying any-high family health insurance premiums. Personally: I rather save my money, travel the world and stack up my retirement accounts.

4. I agree that most family act funny but usually there's at least a couple of relatives who are ride or die for you. Plus, my boyfriend and I are both established and independent so we don't have to rely on anybody. If they don't like us them they can screw themselves. Simple as that! As the saying goes, I have blood that's not family and family that's not blood.

5. I found a quality and loving boyfriend (who happens to be cute too). None of us are macho. We've been together for almost 2 years and are going strong!

6. How is it hard for gay men to go on vacation? Most of the homophobic countries in the world are shitholes and aren't worth visiting anyways; there are so many beautiful and tolerant countries worth spending your tourism dollars in. Even if you wanted to visit those craphole places then you'll probably be fine as long as you don't put your homosexuality on display.

7. I don't feel the need to make out and hold hands in public but I live in New York where people really don't care anyways (so I guess I'm lucky). I've held hands in public and I've rarely had anyone so much as bat an eye here in NY; tons of more taboo things going on in the city lol.

 

[nycguydowntown]

^^ agree with you--I live in NYC and think what you say is correct---there are a lot of good people in the world and the ones who are going to hate you for whatever reason---they can fuck off----I spend a lot of time in Los Angeles---in West Hollywood area there are a lot of gay guys with the what can you do for me attitude. I hear there is a cool gay scene in Long Beach but never been there. Having said that I don't go to gay clubs at all---I have been in LA because my friend likes to go and I'm his house guest lol

 

[Zeno Lorea]

Straight men in general are dogs and like any type of women as long as she can raise their children. Women just like men that treat her right and can provide and man up.

Gay men just fuck guys in restrooms, go to bathhouses, turn on their cell phone when they are horny and exchange pictures or sext or have phone sex. That's it.

Nonsense. We can have a promiscuous sex life as well as a long-term relationship. Just like the straight daddies who go to hookers. Only for us it's cheaper and the spouse can take part. We win!

 

[Laboyes]

I can only speak from my own experience. Obviously it won't tack up with anyone else's what with multiple marginalities and all that, but we can at least try to connect.

It doesn't take a lot to see that members of the gay community, as a marginalized group, must necessarily have a harder time than people who belong to the norm. The world is set up primarily by people for purposes that don't fit what a majority of people consider an "alternative lifestyle". Discrimination is admittedly high, and sometimes the only possible recourse is to hide who we are --something that is never healthy. That sort of thing can't work for everyone, and no one should have to deal with it or anything like it because of something they cannot change.

Unfortunately --as acknowledged in the OP-- things are unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Our community is likely to be oppressed far longer than anyone posting here will exist.

I've said this on here as I've discovered it myself: I don't personally just want "fun" or whatever. I want love and all that. It's become a game of numbers. There will be fewer people with whom I can try for what I want than if I were primarily trying with females alone.
The number of those people to whom I'm also attracted and compatible is going to be quite low. As I age that number will probably begin to decrease. I've probably said this on here as well, because it is something that typically assuages my fears and grants me some form of quiescence:
"[A]ll human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.'" - Alexander Dumas
At the end of the day everyone who wants what I want --regardless of their sexual preferences and other aspects of identity-- must do what is wise. I and people closer to my identity and further from the norm are just less likely to find what we're looking for as readily as others. As such, it'll take time. Time is humankind's most valuable vanishing resource, but until I see proof that mine has run out I will continue investing mine in that which I want above all else.

A hostel roommate accused me of sexual deviancy before I'd ever had sex. I've had co-workers to whom I came out spread the news around our workplace for no apparent reason other than to make my life harder. My immediate family and some of my only friends sort of ostracized me for a time because --in their eyes-- I have deviated from the right way to live. The worst thing to me is the fact that I lost the first person with whom I've ever been in love due to my own inexperience and the acts of folly I committed because I didn't know not know how to act in a committed relationship. I wouldn't have had those problems if it had been easier for me to have a relationship earlier in my life, which was impossible due to my sexuality.

Mine have been issues which might most accurately be classified "champagne problems," and I have already found at least some semblance of the sort of relationship I want. That's more than some people, but it was still plagued by some of the problems discussed here.

There were times when our gayness definitely put us in danger. Times like when we were walking to the place we'd had our first date hand-in-hand downtown and some drunk, apparently straight men started shouting at us about being gay. There were places we had to agree not to go because cars had been tagged or even houses broken into because of thing like sexual identity and orientation. We sometimes had to pretend to be brothers just in case something bad was going on that might affix targets to our backs. Even the more minor shit like going to a restaurant and being treated like some sort of second class citizens hurt. Luckily, I've never experienced physical trauma (or its undeniable resultant psychological trauma) because of my sexuality, but I've still been hurt. Not fun stuff, and I still don't live in the most accepting place.

Still, my life has become generally better since I began to accept that I like guys. I've become much more human by being able to know myself further. I now know what I want as well, and I know the lengths to which I'm willing to go in order to find and be deserving of love and all that mushy stuff. I will continue to try being true to myself, accepting change as it comes but I'm not going to indulge in self-loathing when I find things about myself that I don't find palatable.

We are all who we are, and as others have pointed out there's no point in self-loathing as a result of others' closed-minded opinions. Validation comes best from within, and sources without will never serve to replace that sort of thing. Until we can accept our own lots in life it'll be impossible to find the serenity to deal with the reality of our situations. We don't have the time for that, and it'll get us nowhere positive.

I'm going to avoid all of the Trump stuff because that topic of conversation is obviously going nowhere as well, and everyone involved will continue to look to the proof that reaffirms the truth they yearn to perceive. I don't want to start personally attacking people or change the topic in the way that seems to define this thread's conversation, so glossing over all of that...

Love the song, pat grimshaw.

I find the call for unity heartening. I'm hoping that I can become more accepting of people and waiting for the day that society in continues to become more willing to accommodate everyone and allow us all to become who we intend to be, no matter how Disney or Dr. Seuss that sounds.

I hope we're all able to find what we're looking for. I hope we'll all be able to find some peace in who we are. It takes a lot to search for any sort of connection with others, but hopefully we'll be able to get there by seeing ourselves more completely. When the time comes, I hope we're all graciously received for who we are. The people who can't be receptive aren't worth the wasted time trying to connect.

 

[Zeno Lorea]

What episode? This isn't an episode. This is my life.

I didn't ask to be black and gay.

No, but it's what you have to deal with. See the opportunities, not the inconveniences.