10%
Posted By Prophecy in Gays and lesbiansI was just recently informed by my 14 year old niece that she is bisexual.
Now I know what some of you are thinking; this is just Lady Gaga’s influence. That it’s now cool to be gay. That kids today are just experimenting and are more curious than anything else.
Well, I know my niece well enough to believe that she is for real but I’m also secretly hoping that you are wrong.
You see all my life, I have had issues with both heterosexual men and women even though I belong to that group myself.
Examples of those issues with respect heterosexual men include but are not limited to:
Their intense love for sports. If they are not doing it, they are watching it, playing it on video games, reading about it, discussing it…………..
Let’s not forget climbing the corporate ladder. That’s relentless.
There’s also the never ending need to be destructive, join the army, shoot something or activities like that.
Heterosexual women?
They become dumb early in their lives, somewhere in grade school in an effort to draw that stupid boy’s attention. From there it really escalates to bigger hair, smellier perfumes, longer nails, caked-on make-up, tighter, shorter outfits……………
Now I know that it sounds like I’m stereotyping. I fully realize that. I also realize that not all men and women are like that. Perhaps the percentage that actually are like that (in some variation) is around 50% but you must admit, that 50% is in your face.
So much so that that they begin to look like the poster-child for the entire heterosexual community. A community that I myself am not proud to be a member of. Unfortunately, the best that I could do was to receive a honorary membership from the gay community. Oh well.
So where did the 10% figure come from?
I personally don’t believe that only 10% of the population is gay, just as I don’t believe that only 20-40% of the population is introverted.
Remember just like the introverts, gays & lesbians have had to put on this mask and master hiding their sexual preferences in order to just survive. Oh sure, there are those brave flamboyant & obvious-ones but the rest are not as easily detected, not without a decent gaydar anyway.
So the next time you talk to or look at your parents, children, neighbours, co-workers, minister….. keep in mind that there is probably more like 40% non-heterosexuals amongst us.
I, for one, am only too happy to learn from them how to get in touch with my feelings, live life to the fullest and be myself, as opposed to what/who society tells me to be.
So Happy Pride my gay & lesbian friends. Here’s hoping that the rest of us can learn a few lessons from you.
July 13th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
For sure, especially most straight couples have a lot to learn from gay couples.
August 11th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Brilliant. I agree that many people are pretending to be something they aren’t. However, as you said in your passing mention of Lady Gaga and the sudden popularity of bisexuality, it has become commonplace for my peers to masquerade as bisexual. While I find it rather flattering that people find my sexuality interesting enough to imitate, I become infuriated by the casual attitude with which they flaunt it. For me, coming out as bisexual was difficult and frightening. Even now, I’m slightly hesitant to tell people my sexuality, for fear that they will treat me differently because of it. To see people pretending to be bisexual, while never having the slightest interest in people of the same gender as themselves, is aggravating, because I know that they have never suffered or been taunted for doing so. No one has called them names or pushed them: they have never had to go through coming out to their families, or risked losing anything. For them, it is simply a game that they play for five hours at school: a word, thrown out casually. It demeans the plight of those who are actually bisexual, and causes even those in the gay community to mistrust us. Thank you, incidentally, for writing about my coming out, and please excuse my rambling.
-Eva
August 12th, 2010 at 5:58 am
First of all let me tell you how proud I am of you.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the kids in your school and/or later in life. Think of it as an exclusive club that you & only 10%? of the population is a member of.
As you know I was believed to be too ugly to be gay so they made me an honorary member.
Listen my hope for you is to one day totally shed your bisexual skin and make your move to the other side of the fence for I see very little in-terms of positive traits for heterosexual male(sorry everyone. Present company excepted of course, though myself included)
Thanks for sharing Eva
August 12th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Thanks. I don’t particularly care about what people think of me, I just find it infuriating when others pretend to be something that they’re not. Being queer certainly is a privilege, in my opinion, and I delight in it.
Yes, you did mention that….I am currently chuckling about it, but I didn’t want to do something as childish and juvenile as typing “lol”.
Well, to be perfectly honest, I am more attracted sexually to females. However, I have liked males in the past (although I don’t exactly think of them as “male”: I consider any intelligent male genderless), so I don’t intend to label myself as one thing or another. For now, I identify as “queer”, and perhaps a 3 on a scale of 0-10 (with 0 being completely gay, and 10 being completely straight).
No problem!
August 20th, 2010 at 10:12 am
The funny thing is that we all should view people as genderless. Just like we were born with the view of genderless. Babies are mentally genderless when they are born, its up to the environment that baby is put into that determines its views.