At the Intersection of Race and Orientation

Disillusioned Face? I need you again!

Ladies, gentlemen, variations thereof and none of the above, the honeymoon period is over. I say this with a heavy heart, but the inevitable has happened. My bleeding leftist heart is quick to attach itself to various causes and is just as easily disillusioned with every transgression my new comrades commit. I thought I'd learned after Julian Assange was accused of rape that no movement is perfect. Evidently I have not learned well enough. Ladies, gentlemen, variations thereof and none of the above, the LGBT movement has a race problem. It's here. It's queer. And we are not going to get used to it.

"Sup Fa&&ot?"

I should have gotten the license plate number. Next time! (s)

Today, I was biking through the campus next to me, Babson College, and some bro in a white SUV shouts at me, “SUP FAGGOT!” This really caught me off-guard, and I first was not sure he had yelled that at me, then it sunk in that someone was stereotyping me and trying to bring me down.

In my day to day life, I’m very comfortable with my friends discussing gay things, and if my sexuality is relevant in a conversation with a stranger, I will come out. I think of myself as someone who is comfortable with his sexuality and my identity as a gay man. However, when that bro in that SUV shouted at me this afternoon, I still felt a lot of pain and anger. I felt really small at that moment, and I felt frustrated that someone could make me feel so small by calling me “faggot.” It’s not that I feel that being gay is wrong or that it’s wrong for a guy’s gender expression to not be entirely hetero-normative.Yet somehow, the words hurt.