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- Oct 27, 2016
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I am brand new to this forum, but I thought that you all might rejoice with me for a moment. I have made a huge step in coming out to my siblings. I have never, in my life, felt such unbelievable relief, joy, and elation.
I am 36 years old and this is the first time that I have been able to show them my entire self. The denial and hiding (even after educating myself and accepting myself inside) was destroying me not only in soul but even in body.
All of us kids were severely scarred by years of fundamentalist religion which inculcated in us a crippling guilt and shame about anything sexual. My siblings are all straight and yet they have also struggled, and still struggle with this deeply ingrained negativity about the human body and the legitimacy of sexual pleasure.
In my own case, I was loaded with an extra heavy burden because of my own sexuality. What my straight siblings experienced paled in comparison to the propaganda I was confronted with for the most formative and impressionable years of my life.
Their image of homosexual men, which obviously became mine, was that they were crazed sex monsters roaming the streets by day and by night looking for seedy anonymous encounters, molesting boys, and riddled with AIDS and venereal disease. And then imagine what it's like for a teenage boy with strong sexual feelings for men, how he begins to superimpose that image upon himself!
Unfortunately I do not feel able to come out to my mother and father. They are loving, it's true, and have largely rejected the fundamentalist past, but I'm afraid that their conception of gay sexuality is still very much in the neighbourhood of the disgusting caricature I outlined above. Maybe some day I will be able to prepare them gradually and gently.
But for now I am elated not just to be out to a select group of sympathetic friends, but now to close family members. The two separated parts are coming together again.
Anyhow, I thought you all would like to share in some way in my joy!
I am 36 years old and this is the first time that I have been able to show them my entire self. The denial and hiding (even after educating myself and accepting myself inside) was destroying me not only in soul but even in body.
All of us kids were severely scarred by years of fundamentalist religion which inculcated in us a crippling guilt and shame about anything sexual. My siblings are all straight and yet they have also struggled, and still struggle with this deeply ingrained negativity about the human body and the legitimacy of sexual pleasure.
In my own case, I was loaded with an extra heavy burden because of my own sexuality. What my straight siblings experienced paled in comparison to the propaganda I was confronted with for the most formative and impressionable years of my life.
Their image of homosexual men, which obviously became mine, was that they were crazed sex monsters roaming the streets by day and by night looking for seedy anonymous encounters, molesting boys, and riddled with AIDS and venereal disease. And then imagine what it's like for a teenage boy with strong sexual feelings for men, how he begins to superimpose that image upon himself!
Unfortunately I do not feel able to come out to my mother and father. They are loving, it's true, and have largely rejected the fundamentalist past, but I'm afraid that their conception of gay sexuality is still very much in the neighbourhood of the disgusting caricature I outlined above. Maybe some day I will be able to prepare them gradually and gently.
But for now I am elated not just to be out to a select group of sympathetic friends, but now to close family members. The two separated parts are coming together again.
Anyhow, I thought you all would like to share in some way in my joy!
