One of these last few days was National Coming Out Day. I don't know which one, since I was mostly updated on this matter via Facebook, and Lowering the Bar: Internet Discourse in the age of Facebook seems to be quickly adopting something akin to a Hallmark Holidays, where various political and social causes are encouraged beyond what they would be if someone actually had to put effort into it. Not to say that "National Coming Out Day" is not something that some people are putting effort into coming out. But most of the people updating their facebook status aren't them.
But, I thought I would tell a little story about my own coming out. A way to unbottle my shame.
A little over a year ago, I was at an organization that I volunteered at. I had not been there for a while, and I was "taken aside", to be softly told that I had done something "inappropriate". Now, since it had been several weeks since I had been there, I had no idea what this was. While I was blinking in confusion, I was further told that when I don't know someone, I should be careful about what I say. And that I should make an effort to not say the type of things that I said, which people might take wrongly. I asked for further details, but apparently they were not forthcoming. All I was told that at some point in the past few weeks, I had said something to someone that they did not like.
So I went home, but was later told via e-Mail who I had said the thing that I said to, although I was not told what I had said. The person who I offended was a teenage girl, and I quickly became very depressed, to the point of suicidal thoughts, at the thought that I was so perverse and unsocial and overall gross and disgusting, that I had sexually harassed a 17 year old girl. This was just proof to me of what I had often suspected, (and have been told in so many words by a member of this site): that I had no social skills and needed to spend time in the real world to realize that women were afraid of me. For over a week, I suffered a perception of myself as someone who is both normatively and factually not able to socialize with others. This was actually when I decided to move to Montana, where socialization and my chances to hurt and offend people, would be very limited.
First point: I got over the incredible self-recrimination, in part because I realized that since I could never remember saying anything to the person that I said something to, there was a chance that I perhaps did not. And that I was misunderstood. Or that someone out-and-out lied about me.
Second point: I do not, as the kids say, have teh gay. And yet this is the story that I chose to share vis-a-vis National Coming Out Day. And why?
We live in a society that is saturated in shame, and feelings towards the self that can honestly be described as fear, doubt & disgust. Sometimes things are obscure because they are hidden, but sometimes things are obscure because they are too obvious. I could go and search for specific examples of what I mean when I say that the basic state of people in my society is an overall anxiety over the fact that we are dirty and worthless. But I will just say that it is so omnipresent that specific examples are both hard to find and unnecessary. And much of this constant low-level shame is sexual in nature. (Much of it is economic, but that is a subject for another node) Not that people shouldn't feel guilt over actual actions that transgress others, but shame at simply being a person is an unneeded thing. And yet here we are, decades after the sexual revolution, when sex is an open and encouraged part of life, when things have ceased to titillate us, and the basic social attitude of sex from generations past, that sex is a predatory, filthy activity is still with us.
So while I applaud any attempt to lesson the shame that people must feel based on their identity, I also wonder what National Coming Out Day means: does it mean that gay people should be free from the general anxiety and shame of society? Or just the specific shame of being gay? Because if it is the first, I don't see why they should be given a free pass while the rest of us must constantly be sandbagging the levees that hold back self-hatred. Also, I don't think that factually overcoming such a widespread social attitude can be done by fiat. Or perhaps the day is just to overcome the specific shame of being gay, but that the individuals involved just continue to live lives of quiet desperation and inadequacy in every other manner. In either case, it seems to be a fairly pointless action.
Of course, we could just try to move into the 21st century by doing away with a hierarchal society that strips people of their intrinsic worth and then sets them on a hamster wheel to reclaim it. But that would be, I am sure you must agree, UNPOSSIBLE.