Glee rant about queer teens and PDAs, again

[rm]

People,

As much as I, too, would like to think Kurt and Blaine kissed in that hall, at that moment:

- Blaine is still freaked out because when he last tried to go to a dance with another guy he got the crap beat out of him
- Kurt has just realized that things at McKinley are as bad as they ever were.
- The school is NOT a safe space, especially when the rest of it is empty -- what seems to give them privacy also puts them at risk if they run into someone else who might be feeling violent.


I cannot emphasize enough how complicated PDAs are for gay teens and gay people in general. I cannot emphasize enough that even though things may seem, and even be, perfectly safe they won't necessarily feel that way to people because of their own experiences with violence or being warned about violence or whatever.

I am 38-years-old. I live in New York City. I have let go of same-sex lovers' hands in public places within the last ten years when I wasn't entirely sure it was safe for us to be holding hands because I didn't know the neighborhood or it was late at night and drunk people make me more wary or whatever. And dudes, New York Fucking City, not a high school in Lima, Ohio.

This is huge mileage may vary territory for everyone. I'm totally okay with your "they kissed in the hall" head-cannon, but really worn out from the "Blaine sucks for not touching Kurt at x, y, or z moment" stuff and the "it's totally safe for them to be kissing!" assumptions and the "it must be evil FOX not giving us more gay kisses" theories.

This is complicated. This is complicated for gay people. This is complicated for US television. It's just complicated.

Please just let it be complicated.

And particularly for my straight readers, please, please, please take a moment to think about what it would be like to always be doing the math and then imagine what it would be like to do that math at 16. When you've already experienced assault. And you have one good thing and you're terrified that if you show affection for that thing in public, it will get it destroyed (and to be extremely fucking clear, by destroyed I mean murdered).

Being out and proud does not stop you from doing the math.

Comments

[prettybird.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I ended up leaving the discussion post early because I was getting frustrated with some of the comments being made.

[crown-of-weeds.livejournal.com]

"Please just let it be complicated.

And particularly for my straight readers, please, please, please take a moment to think about what it would be like to always be doing the math and then imagine what it would be like to do that math at 16. When you've already experienced assault. And you have one good thing and you're terrified that if you show affection for that thing in public, it will get it destroyed (and to be extremely fucking clear, by destroyed I mean murdered).

Being out and proud does not stop you from doing the math."

Thank you.

[lavender-love00.livejournal.com]

So, I'm about 9 days late to this discussion, but I read this post and the last little bit made me cry. Like, literally. I often squee in the fandom about "OMG THAT WAS SO AWESOME I WAS CRYING" but, seriously, I was sitting here with tears in my eyes.

Because it makes me feel awful because I don't always think about what it's like having to do the math all the time. I fully accept that it's complicated, and I don't try to oversimplify (I hope - I try not to), but it's just the fact that people have to do the math that's gotten me so upset, because it's wrong and unfair to have to live with that kind of fear all the time. I forget that my friends have to live with this. I tend to be overly-optimistic and idealistic and wonder why we can't all just get along and sing "Kumbaya" and hold hands and be happy and just love each other because that's what's right ... and I forget that just because I feel like that doesn't mean that the rest of the world does. And I'm sorry. Because that in and of itself is a really awful type of ignorance. And I don't want to be that person.

I'm sort of rambling here, spamming your comment wall with the longest comment ever, but ... yeah. Just wanted to say thanks for the reminder.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you for hearing this.

The funny (not ha ha) thing about this post is my partner and I PDA everywhere. In some ways, it's safer for women, so there is that. But it struck me as interesting because EVERYWHERE includes places other people in this thread have said they would not feel safe/comfortable doing so. So mileage varies, but for these kids? It's super hard.

I mean, I talk about this shit and then I get slagged on online because I haven't experienced significant violence or it's easy for me to be out, and it's like "hey, full story, you don't have it" although I have written about my personal experiences on that front once or twice. I'm luckier than many, but the things I've experienced are pretty jaw droppingly fucked.

[captain-lubey.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this.

I have been out for a few years now and have only just started dating my first girlfriend. When we were at our local shopping centre last week, we were holding hands, nothing else, and for the first time in my life, people were looking at us. Most were just curious glances but a select few were so disdainful.

We were also in a coffee shop yesterday, holding hands and talking and I so desperately wanted to kiss her. Just a peck, nothing more, but I just knew...that was not going to fly. I mean, there was an older man staring at us from his table simply for the hand holding.

I knew being gay wasn't going to be all sunshine and rainbows, although I've had it pretty good so far. This is all so new to me and I'm glad that I've read this so I can articulate just how I feel and what we have to go through.

I don't even know if I'm making sense at this point but I cannot emphasise my thanks enough for this.

[slayerkitty.livejournal.com]

Someone recc'd this at k_b, otherwise I might never have seen it.

As someone who's straight, I've never had to worry about something like this, and while I know that PDA, etc is an issue (IRL and on the show), I don't think I ever seriously considered how much of an issue it is until I read this.

I am in Ohio, and I just spent the last ten minutes thinking about what I was like in high school, what my high school was like, and one of my pretty good friends (now, we were not close back then - he's my best girl friend's ex, lol) who came out his senior year (I had graduated by then, so I don't know how he was treated after he came out, but I think people had suspected he was gay before that, so I'm not sure how that affected things).

Thinking about how I was back then, and then multiplying it times the number of students at my school who could possibly have felt the same way makes me want to cry (and hate myself).

Thank you for opening my eyes a little wider.

(Also long comment is long, and I feel like I'm not expressing myself very well, so I hope what I was trying to say comes across and makes some kind of sense.)

[kayboogie.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this. I live in LA, and I though I'm not gay, I have enough gay friends and have seen enough of the hatred to completely understand where you're coming from and how obnoxious it must be to have this completely misunderstood. I remember walking through West Hollywood (for those who don't know, WeHo is where all the gay clubs in LA, where the LA Pride events, are held, it's what it's known for), with friends one night, and people just driving by yelling "dyke" and "fag" at us, and all we were doing was walking and looking for a cab. No PDA, no hand holding, as a matter of fact, most of the people i was with were straight. That didn't matter, we were in West Hollywood, the one place you'd think would be safest. But these people sought out that part of town, just to be hateful. So no, it doesn't matter, you never know where you're going to be taunted, or worse, attacked. As much as I'd love to see Kurt and Blaine kiss or be affectionate, I completely understand why we haven't seen it.

[little-giddy.livejournal.com]

Being out and proud does not stop you from doing the math.

THANK YOU.

I'm out and in a lovely, accepting city, as opposed to the village I grew up in and I still do the math. The whole PDA-as-grand-gesture thing makes me really annoyed, because seriously, the correlation between how much you love someone and how much you PDA is just - well. Yes. You wrote this post, so you get what I'm trying to articulate, sorry for the flailing.

[sun-and-rain.livejournal.com]

Fucking amen, man. This post should be read by everyone.