This article may be considered controversial. It only covers my own opinion on the subject, not necessarily the opinions of my fellow bloggers.
A while ago, I was thinking about the fact that homophobic people, who don’t know or understand anything about being gay, shouldn't judge us unless they first do some research on the subject. In my opinion, they aren't allowed to hurt us, either physically or mentally, they aren't allowed to tell us what we are, or what we are not, they aren't allowed to think negatively about us for being different, heck, they aren't even allowed to talk about the subject without knowing anything about it. It blows my mind that so many people dare to tell us that we are wrong, even thought they don’t know anything about us.
Whenever I talk about a subject I don’t know much about, for example Christianity, I make sure I don’t say anything I can’t back up with facts or resources. I ask my Christian friend as many questions I can think of, so that in the future, I will be able to actually talk about the subject. I am furious that other people don’t do this same thing when talking about homosexuality.
When I was thinking about this, I started to realise that, ironically I am guilty of the same thing. In fact, I think almost every single one of us is. We all tend to make judgements about subjects we don’t know anything about. For example, what do you think about bullies? I have talked about bullies before, in one of my previous posts. Even though they are really unfriendly and tend to judge you on your looks, race, sexuality or hobbies, we have to be careful not to judge them wrong ourselves. I admit, I find it really hard to summon any respect for bullies, but we have to understand that they have difficult lives themselves. The cause for bullying is often problems at home. Either the bully has divorced parents, lives in a really poor family, or was abused as a kid, I don’t know what could have happened, but I am fairly sure that someone doesn’t just become an (excuse my language) asshole out of nowhere.
Many bullies are very insecure. When you are insecure, you are afraid that you will be judged by other. You are afraid that you will be bullied yourself. One thing to do in such a situation is just go along with the crowd. Wear whatever clothes are hip at that moment, listen to whatever music is popular at that moment and use whatever words are popular at that moment. Try to befriend the ‘coolest’ kids of the class, so that you too will be viewed as ‘cool’. The problem with this is that the ‘coolest’ kids are often not so friendly. I see it everywhere, the ‘cool’ kids are always the bullies. When an insecure person decides to join the ‘cool’ kids, chances are that he too will become a bully. In the end, he became a bully out of fear of being bullied, how sad is that? I don’t mean sad in a degrading way. I literally mean sad. I feel bad for kids that end up in that situation.
Don’t think I am talking about nothing here, I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes. One of my best friends (who you might remember from my first post as “Duck”) recently made some new friends. He is now part of the ‘cool’ group, or at least a ‘cooler’ group than we are, and even though he isn’t a bully, I can clearly see that he started to act completely different from before, and not in a good way. I also found out that he has been telling my secret around. Now that my sexuality is up on Facebook, it doesn’t really matter anymore that people know that I am bi, that is not what I am mad about. I am mad about the fact that he violated my trust. He clearly did so to be ‘cool’, and since I am not ‘cool’ in his eyes, that made it okay for him to back-stab me.
Now this blog is not supposed to be a rant, I will explain why I brought up this situation. Duck is very insecure. He used to be part of my friend group, but would always talk badly of us behind our backs whenever ‘cooler’ people were around. We always got mad at him whenever he was acting like an asshole, but we never really tried to understand him. I understand him now. He is hell bound on being part of something big. He has been bullied in the past, and he is incredibly sensitive to it. My group of friends wasn’t exactly a ‘cool’ one (although we were the friendliest, not that that matters) but Duck just happened to be in our class, and so, from the beginning, he was part of our group. Whenever one of our friends would do something stupid, instead of backing him up, Duck would make fun of him so that outsiders would think that he wasn’t part of this group. Last year, Duck didn’t manage to finish his work, so he had to do the year all over again. Almost everyone from our group passed, and we ended up in the same class all over again, Duck on the other hand ended up in a different class with new people and a new chance to choose which people he wanted to hang out with. He chose the ‘cooler’ people and stopped hanging out with us. Although it is a pity that he left our group for another one, and although it is a shame that he decided to tell my secret to other people, I still understand him. His parents divorced when he was young and he has been bullied a lot in the past. He is very insecure and he needs to make sure that he isn’t ‘different’ in any way. I think he feels like he has to make up for hanging with ‘un-cool’ people, by making fun of those same people.
I hope I taught you a lesson today, not to judge anyone without knowing what’s up first. Ever since I realised it, I have lived by that rule and it worked out so far. I hope you will do the same, making this world a little better, with a little more understanding.
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