Gay or not, get over it

What’s also odd is that members of the gay community can be the harshest critics of other gay people... A case in point is Supreme Court spokesman Midas Marquez whose reaction to a microphone bumped off the podium went viral in the Internet.

Gay or not, get over it

Johnna Villaviray-Giolagon

Bakit dumadami ang bading, hindi naman sila nanganganak? [They don’t give birth but why are gays increasing?]

That’s a remark I often hear from a colleague whenever a gay man happens to ride with us in the elevator.

I don’t believe he meant any real animosity against them. But the lack of hostility apparently doesn’t stop him, or other men and women, from cracking jokes at the expense of the homosexual community.

Of course, the only other group of people pelted with more taunts than members of the gay community are those who are suspected of being part of it.

A case in point is Supreme Court spokesman Midas Marquez whose reaction to a microphone bumped off the podium went viral in the Internet. His masculinity came under doubt because his reaction was one we normally see in openly gay men.

And then there’s heartthrob Piolo Pascual whose sexual orientation came under question, for the umpteenth time, after his breakup with KC Concepcion.

Men suspected of being gay might not be gay at all but that doesn’t stop other people from watching and salivating until the day the truth comes out of the closet. A denial only fuels suspicion.

Won’t you agree that the curiosity over one’s sexual orientation is odd considering that even our largely conservative society has come to accept gay people as useful members of the community? Old prejudices remain, true, but hostility is not at the level of our lolo’s time.

What’s also odd is that members of the gay community can be the harshest critics of other gay people. A gay man who doesn’t act feminine enough is scoffed at as pa-mihn or in denial.

Perhaps that’s because we—members of the gay community included—have gotten too used to putting people in the boxes society assigned.

Women act like women.
Men act like men.
Gay people act like gay people.
Digress at the risk of turning yourself into a curiosity.

Many of us are reluctant to accept that some gay people—I use the term ‘gay’ only because ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender’ or even the initials LGBT is a mouthful—do not see the need to announce to the world their sexual orientation.

Maybe they do not think it is any more liberating to confirm their non-conformity than to keeping their
preferences to themselves. Perhaps it is a personal choice as much as heterosexuals do not feel the need to emphasize that they are.

Which ever, won’t you agree that the choice to come out of or stay in the closet rests on the individual concerned? We can hardly bully anyone into confirming his or her sexual orientation simply to satisfy our curiosity.

Children develop a consciousness of gender as early as two or three years old.

The sense of gender identity is reinforced as they grow into preschoolers. They also begin to assume gender roles as they see it played out in their immediate community, meaning the family.

By the time children are in elementary, they already have a good sense of the roles assigned to each gender.

To a few, this is the age when they realize they are different from other kids of the same gender. (A friend intimated that he was around 7 or 8 when he began delighting in going to the loo with his
friends just to smell the other boy’s piss.)

This would also be the age that children start teasing a playmate deviating from assigned gender roles.

How much malice that accusation carries and how much it affects the target varies. But because children are children—with raw emotions and ideas lacking in the normal adult—these gibes tend to come off more intense.

Supposedly as we grow up and mature, and as society polishes our manners and sensitivities, we develop deeper tolerance of the differences common to the human race.

Obviously, that isn’t the case. Adults still relish in the natural desire to call attention to that which we think is out of the ordinary.

But while that is so, there’s no real impediment to try to mature as individuals. We don’t have to act like children with little tolerance for what we deem to be nonstandard.

If we allow ourselves to be more broadminded, we will come to accept that homos are homogenous only as much as heteros are homogenous.

We’re all different. Get over it.