the heterosexual world

alright so I'm supposed to be sleep (when am I not?) and I got the motivation to blog instead so I decided to take my body up on it. and the one thing that popped up in my mind is the constant struggles I have within myself to speak up or not speak up. particularly in situations in which I feel people are broadly stereotyping without even knowing that they're doing so. or in situations where people make statements with which I am uncomfortable with but I, once again, realize that they had no bad intentions or meant any harm by the situation.

many times I think people don't even realize how hard it is for a non-heterosexual person to live in the "regular world". many things are geared toward the heterosexual population and norm. what's even worse is that being anything else is looked at as a phase and something you do for a fun fling, nothing to be taken serious. it's actually the complete opposite, some people take their sexuality very serious and still respect the rights of others. why can't heterosexual people do the same? many times I get the feeling that the vast majority of people do not respect homosexual (or people of other non-hetero identities) at all and it's mostly in the statements people make. like today my friend was speaking about how on "sex and the city" they were talking about the "straight gay man" and "gay straight man". now I realize that she meant no harm by saying this and the show probably didn't either but that statement bothers me because it equivocates all behaviors of a certain type of being straight or gay. the main problem with this is that that means that all gay men are gay because of the way they act and not what they like (and the same for straight men). the conversation had a pretext of a male is automatically gay when he's extremely feminine and while there is immense overlap of behavior and sexuality I still think it is wrong to assume that just because an individual follows a set of behaviors that makes them a certain sexuality.

the saddest part is that even as a homosexual person I have been so conditioned by this heterosexual world that I too participate in this behavior and catch myself labeling people because of the way they act. and I apologize but that brings me to another point: labeling.

I went through a "I hate labels" phase myself and I realize now that that was mostly because I didn't want to label myself as lesbian because of all the negativity I associated with it. I am now more educated, have accepted myself and become perfectly fine with being called such. looking back I realized that during that phase I was an intense hypocrite because I would advocate one thing and do another. I was an intense proponent of not labeling myself and letting people be. I believed that labels were evil and what caused so much hatred among the human race (I now realize that non-acceptance and intolerance does that) yet I still labeled people when they said certain things or merely walked past me in the mall. the thing is labels are a necessary evil in our lives. we must learn to accept this because it is a natural instinct for us to label things and put them into their separate categories. that is what we as humans do. it's really as simple as that and as soon as we learn to accept this fact and stop trying to fight it the better off we are. if this weren't true people wouldn't always create new words and combine words to explain what they are, they're simply creating their own labels. instead of worrying about labels we should all put more effort into teaching tolerance of everyone and their quirks. not even acceptance in some cases, simply tolerance. trust me, it'd be a better place if we did.

finally I'd like to say that I wish we didn't have a default sexuality. I understand that as long as religion exists we always will but I'm saying I wish we didn't. why is it that the coming out process is even necessary? this is yet another downfall of living in this highly hetero world. a lot of times (and I'm not saying this is true for all) people do not choose their sexuality. they can't help who they're attracted to so instead of criticizing them and putting them down for who they love we should accept them. we should make it so that children everywhere know it's okay to not be heterosexual. so they know it's okay to have feelings for members of the same sex because otherwise kids end up doing bad things to themselves or simply stifling their sexuality because of the negativity they hear about other sexualities. I know this won't happen in my lifetime (if at all) because let's face it gays are still fighting for simple civil rights, however it would be an amazing thing to see/live through or even hear about later on in life. let's let our kids know you can be gay and beautiful (or any other identity). as long as you're okay with you that's what matters the most.

let me tell you something life is about creating yourself. so be who you wanna be and love yourself. it took me a long ass time to get there so you just be you and you'll be a lot better off. I'll love you either way and that speaks volumes 'cause I don't even know you. =D

&& I'm out.
-- lexy.