How To Handle Curious Minds When Your Not Out?

[G-Lexington]

You said "no one".
I'm someone.
The exception disproves the rule.

Lex

 

[Lube]

OK, Momma did tell me never to say never.

"People rarely believe you when..."

Maybe it's because I never had a rebellious period as a teen that makes me so rebellious now. That, plus all the great advice I've gotten on the JUB forums over the past two years and how much more science and medicine and psychology and popular culture knows about homosexuality these days... means that there isn't much of an excuse to stay closeted.

Why are we coddling young guys nowadays? It's so different from when we grew up.

Visible minorities (blacks, asians, etc.) don't get to think up excuses about what they are. They are always "out of the closet" about their minorityness. Why do we coddle gay guys?

Hasn't the time for that passed?


Perhaps some of my incredulousness comes from the fact that I'm dating a guy from a small town who won't come out because he's in a small, rural town. So I'm his "girlfriend" he tells his coworkers, when he's talking about his love interest. And yet when they see me at his work place, I'm just "a buddy". And I just look at his coworkers and... they know! It's such a joke. He's in such denial that they "don't know". Of course they know. Oh, not all of them; but 80% of them do.

And I'm gonna tell some guy here to play the same game?

No.

 

[hanshansen]

Visible minorities (blacks, asians, etc.) don't get to think up excuses about what they are. They are always "out of the closet" about their minorityness. Why do we coddle gay guys?

Because there's still potential stigma involved and people need to figure out for themselves how to deal with that.

I don't care about other minorities - they have their own problems to deal with. I care about me .

Before I could even begin to be more open about this stuff to anybody, I had to discover for myself:

a) That I could 'be myself' and people either did not draw conclusions, or didn't care enough to really think about it - and in any case still treated me OK. In other words, me being me did not align me with some negative gay steriotype

b) That my circle of friends and acquaintances is a lot more diverse and open to this kind of thing than I thought it was

c) That there are actually gay people out there who are 'normal', i.e. basically like hetero people, just not hetero - and that conversely a lot of hetero people are a little more complex than one might give them credit for.

You may think that I had/have my priorities wrong, but these issues were/are very important to me. They matter for my self-respect.

I'm lucky in two ways. As a friend has said to me, the fact that I'm a foreigner gives me a free pass to be unconventional in all sorts of ways. In some respects, people tend to be a lot less tolerant of locals. Secondly, I happen to have a social base which is metro and liberal and not that fussed about your love life. I don't know what I would do if things were different.

That said, I would never have discovered this if I hadn't ventured outside my comfort zone and taken small risks, and I wish I had started doing that much sooner.

Perhaps some of my incredulousness comes from the fact that I'm dating a guy from a small town who won't come out because he's in a small, rural town. So I'm his "girlfriend" he tells his coworkers, when he's talking about his love interest. And yet when they see me at his work place, I'm just "a buddy". And I just look at his coworkers and... they know! It's such a joke. He's in such denial that they "don't know". Of course they know. Oh, not all of them; but 80% of them do.

Why is he talking to his colleagues about his love life, if he's not comfortable with them knowing about it? Why is he taking his boyfriend to the office?

 

[Lube]

Because there's still potential stigma involved and people need to figure out for themselves how to deal with that.

Of course. Every gay man has to go through that. It's just that there are so many resources nowadays--such as the Internet--that it's hard to imagine someone not availing themselves of them at a fairly early age: long before questions of dating come up. (Of course, I also assume that gay men know something about AIDS, but by the posts I see here on JUB, clearly many of them are not able or willing to educate themselves. *sigh*)

It's hard for young men to understand just how different things were 30 years ago. I never even heard the word "homosexual" until I was in my teens. Today, any 8 year old could tell you what it is.

Not a single person in my high school (of almost 3000 students) was out. Not a single one. Nowadays, not only are students out, there are support groups, gay-straight alliances, etc.

That said, I would never have discovered this if I hadn't ventured outside my comfort zone and taken small risks, and I wish I had started doing that much sooner.

That's pretty universally what out men say: I should've done it sooner.

Why is he talking to his colleagues about his love life, if he's not comfortable with them knowing about it? Why is he taking his boyfriend to the office?

Well, if you never talk about your love life, your colleagues will immediately assume you're gay. So he lies and, instead of using the impersonal pronoun game (which also quickly identifies you as gay), he actually says I'm his "girlfriend" and that we get along fabulously and that I'm coming down to visit for the weekend. So he uses "girlfriend" when he's talking about me (i.e., I'm not actually there). When I do show up (for his lunch break), I'm his "buddy". I just can't help but laugh. People are not stupid.

P.S.--It's not that he's not out to anyone. He's out to family & friends. And when he lived in the big city, he was out there to everyone. But he somehow thinks that small town America is different from big cities. In some ways it is, but they watch the same news and the same TV shows and same movies as people in big cities.

 

[helzeena]

Whattaya know? im 19...20 in August, too!!

I know what you're going through. Everyone wants to know why I don't date! Message me if u want to chat about it.

Me three! Well, September!

I've been asked it a few times but not too much thankfully. I just say No and the conversation seems to move on to something like "young boy like you must have the girls lining up". Bleh!

If my mom ever mentions it it's so awkward. Even if I was straight I wouldn't wanna talk to her about it