To all the people who think my feelings are up for debate:
It is not your job to tell me that my feelings are “irrational.” It is not within your rights to illegitamize my pain, my fear or my sadness. My experiences are not there for you to spark an intellectual debate on the merits of bigotry. Actually, the fact that you feel that my identity can be used as a talking point is downright dehumanizing. There is nothing intellectually stimulating about justifying my existence. There is no time where I should ever feel that I need to justify why I feel sad, why I feel threatened, why I feel uncomfortable.
I don’t need you to tell me, “Well I’M not homophobic, I just notice that all you gay people are getting really worked up for no reason." You don’t understand why this is the wrong question? Well, let’s back up. I can point you to hundreds of links telling you PRECISELY why I’m getting worked up “for a reason." But it’s not my job to do that. It’s not my job to justify why I should feel dehumanized or ashamed. And it’s not your job to pick apart my emotions to poke a hole in the way that I feel. The way that I feel is perfectly legitimate without your approval and without having to point to logical reasons for why I feel the way I do.
And sometimes, I am just too tired to explain to you why my existence is important. Sometimes I’m just too tired to deal with my feelings of shame, my feelings of sorrow for members of my community, and my feelings of anger for those that want to make us feel wrong for the way we identify. I’m too tired to read another article about how a 14 year old gets disowned and is homeless on the streets of Chicago, a 72 year old gets brutally attacked, a 24-year-old gets drowned, a Pastor in the United States on the 17th of November in 2015 says, “LGBTQ people should be put to death." I’m too tired to look at a picture of members of ISIS blindfolding four gay men and throwing them off of a building. I’m too tired to read about the couple in Utah who got their child taken away from them because queerness is apparently the same thing as child abuse. I’m too tired to explain to you why I’m crying. I’m too tired to explain to you why I’m so pissed off “even though gay marriage is legal." I’m too tired to justify my existence, to justify the existence of members of my community. I don’t have to be happy just because people are given basic human rights. It is no victory, in my opinion, that the historically oppressed have been given a small bit of what they have been denied. It is no spectacular feat when you don’t attack me or others because of our queerness. If it is an expectation that YOU are treated with respect, why should it be a celebration when you decide to treat me with respect?
So please stop asking me to explain why I’m so angry, why I’m so disheartened, why I’m “so ungrateful for the progress that has been made”. It is not my job to explain this to you, and it never will be. My feelings are no longer allowed to be a part of your debate.
