Trigger Warning in Current Events

[The following entry may contain opinions that may not be suitable for all audiences. Reader discretion is advised]

I did some window shopping online on Friday and I accidentally placed an order. I wouldn’t even know if the transaction would be approved until Monday, I had that moment at the grocery store where it declined the day before and I was kind of hoping that my online order would get declined too because do I need a sequin kimono? Anyways it’s apparently going to be here in a week or two. I used to dress the fuck up all the time. I used to have an ultramodern aesthetic, back in the day (2010-2016?). My style was like edgy avant-garde meets bohemian goth. I was serving layers, textures, silhouettes and it looked more chic than camp and it didn’t feel like a big statement. Now it’s just jeans and a fitted t-shirt. I remember standing outside with my friends at the gay club in the smoking section, everybody else was wearing jeans and a fitted t-shirt. We even had the same modern man haircuts. I had a faded, disconnected undercut and I styled it like a pompadour. I remember thinking about how basic I felt after seeing that I was just like everybody else for the first time. Well, to be fair that wasn’t everybody but it was a lot of us. I changed that to my aesthetic a few years ago because I decided that I wanted to look more masculine. I wanted to be more masculine even. When I grew out my goatee people started treating me differently. I got more respect. I’m currently using minoxidil on my face in an attempt to grow a full beard lol. This is embarrassing but a couple of years ago I looked up how to deepen my voice so I could even sound less feminine. I’m even conscious of my mannerisms. Now I’m feeling a bit of the effect of how toxic masculinity can be because I am afraid to be anything else. It makes me feel vulnerable.

Am I experiencing a gender identity crisis? I used to be a little more androgynous. I even wore a little bit of makeup back then. I don’t think of myself as nonbinary. I identify myself as male. I didn’t have all these options to choose from growing up so I dunno what label to use. Things were just so black & white growing up. lol but man, my clothes used to be like battle armour and the makeup was like warpaint and I used to feel so confident in my own “skin”. Now I’m scared to stand out. I think the reason I am thinking about this so hard is that I want to give myself a little makeover. Starting with chopping off all of my hair. This could make or break me. I don’t know if my confidence can take a low blow right now. If I fall in love with the new haircut maybe I will be more confident during my job search? My confidence is dropping lower and lower these days.

My therapist and I were working on my social anxiety earlier this year and a lot of it came from my issues with my identity. I don’t like that society needs a label and a name for everything. If you give something a label then it will never get to be anything else. Like if I tell somebody that I am gay then they assume that they now know everything about me. Now I’m the gay coworker, the gay friend, the gay relative and I will be treated and talked about differently than everybody else. I hate meeting women who immediately want to talk about hair and makeup only because they think that is what all gays want to talk about. I hate meeting men who immediately get a little uncomfortable around me because they think that I am checking them out or that I will hit on them. My therapist kept saying “being gay is who you are” and I left him shook when I got all defensive about that statement. “No! being gay is not WHO I am. I can change WHO I am. Being gay is just WHAT I am. I can’t change WHAT I am.” I don’t perceive myself as that gay coworker, that gay friend or that gay relative. I’m just me. Of course, in the LGBT world, I am not just me there either. That’s a whole other long, complicated, messy story.

I used being gay as an example of how a label affects my identity because if I brought race into this… white people would get triggered. It’s like, as a male I can see that I am treated differently than a female. As a gay person, I can see that I am treated differently than a straight person. As a person of colour, I can see that I am treated differently than a person who is not. Even my vegan label gets me different treatment. Nobody invites me to things anymore lol. I can’t imagine how I would be treated if I was a black, gay, woman who is a single mother that is Muslim. Do I treat people differently because of their race, gender or sexuality? Yes, a little bit. Particularly straight white men because they make me feel threatened. I go out of my way to avoid them because in my mind, who I am is wrong to them and I am afraid of being mistreated for being different. Or worse, for talking about how I am treated differently. They just can’t see it and they have the privilege of not even having to look because they do not have to experience it. The world is changing though. The minorities have never been so loud and we’re all breaking through the all the molds. I think Obama gave the minorities of the first world that voice. Political correctness started to feel like oppression to the status quo and Trump gave them “their voice back” and I think that is why everything is so charged up right now. Race, gender, sexuality, religion, feminism etc. Everybody is chiming in now. I try and stay quiet because just the slightest peep about anything turns into a big debate these days. It doesn’t feel fair that I have to act like everything is fair but I stay quiet anyway. Until this entry anyway.

So, is it fair to assume that all straight, white men think the same? Probably not. I just don’t feel safe. I feel like there is something wrong with me and that makes me feel threatened. I could get gay-bashed. I could be denied a job because I am a person of colour. I could get shot by a police officer. A straight man could be afraid that I am a predator that wants to hit on them. A white man could be afraid that I am taking a job away from another person that is more entitled to it. A police officer could be afraid that I am a violent gang member. Their fear of me is not oppression. My fear of them is. I have to carry these labels and the stereotypes that go with them everywhere I go. I have to be conscious about how I act and how I dress and I conduct myself in society to get by. I don’t get to act like it doesn’t exist. I had watched a segment the other day in which a woman conducted a social experiment on racism and right before they conducted the experiment she asked the people of colour if they knew how to act white and they all laughed because the answer was a big yes. Us POC’s turn it on over the phone, in customer service etc. It’s how we make everybody else feel comfortable to be around us. Us gay people even have a go-to straight mode for certain situations too so that we’re not “acting too gay” for the public. There is no doubt that women have to put on a facade for men as well to get more respect. To just feel safe even. I watched another social experiment where traditional people had open discussions with transgendered people about gender. Not everybody agreed with each other but every single person in that room had the exact same fear in common. Predatory men.

There is no real point to this entry. I just wanted to let out some steam. I binged watched a show yesterday and I felt a little disturbed when they killed off a very strong female character. She was the boss of a very powerful dynamic group of people and the way she treated them was kind of menacing. The most powerful of those people wanted to know why she treated him the way that she did. She answered, “Because I am afraid of you.” Then he killed her. My takeaway was that I need to own what I am afraid of so that I can finally understand how that has been affecting my choices. Blah

Last updated July 31, 2019