Tuesday, June 16, 2009

It's the End of The World As We Know It...It's Gay Prom!

It never fails to amaze me that the fundamentalist Xtians, and terrified suburbanites have no problems vilifying their own children, and driving them ever closer to suicide through outraged articles like this one over the recent gay prom held in Chicago.

I was kicked out of my home as a lesbian, in the middle of an academic school year, by a mother, whose fundamentalist xtianity led her to believe that by permitting me to be homosexual she was exposing me and herself to sin, demons, and all sorts of other evil.

Fortunately for me, and for her, we have since reconciled, but it's been a rocky 15 years, and I don't think things will ever be quite the way they could have been without the addition of religious bigotry.

I don't doubt that there was some aspect of my as-yet unaknowledged sexuality behind my suicide attempt at 15 as well. I was at an Xtian boarding school, my granparents, the only people in the world to love me unconditionally were gone, my grandmother to alzheimers, and my grandfather having just died.

It was a few years before my best friend would come out to me that he was gay, and a few more before we would move out into our first appartment together.

But those moments, both at 15, and again at 20, it was amazing to me that just who I was was anathaema to the world. I was unacceptable. It took a long time to undo that, and I still struggle with it.

The difficult part of it is that little did anyone know I was so much more unacceptable than anyone knew: Yeah, I'm queer, but not just a "nice lesbian", I've been known to sleep with men, and I'm not necessarily averse to a penis. I'm not vanilla, and I'm into pain. My fantasies are not about consent, and they range from cop/runaway to Master/slave to everything in between. I'm mostly into male-dominant archetypes played by female-bodied butches, and I'm particularly into Daddy/girl play, and you can read whatever the hell you want to into that. See, I knew most of this when I was 13 stealing porno from the corner store and sneaking it out to the trash bins in the back parking lot when no one was looking, when the Penthouse forum had stories about ripping people's clothes off, and when I found the hardcore in the bathroom cabinet where I babysat for the people upstairs.

I struggled for so long feeling like god hated me, I really didn't need to have my family hate me too.

So yeah, I think it's great that there's a gay prom, and that there's Mister Leather as the security, and that there's a place to go and be yourself. I read that piece of right-wing hate, and I STILL got tears in my eyes, because, you know what? That's a place I could have gone at 15, and been me. Maybe I wouldn't have needed to OD on tylenols. Maybe I would have found a peer group, or some people to talk to, or maybe there would have been someone who could have talked to my Mom, and maybe I wouldn't have had to re-write all those essays, and have lost a year of university.

The photos in the article are cute. It looks like kids having fun. At a prom. Where no one is going to beat them up, or hate them. Feeling gorgeous and enjoying being kids. Isn't that the point after all?

More photos here

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