We need to talk about internalized hatred
"I am tired of feeling disgusted with myself." - from The Miseducation of Cameron Post
This is going to be a very different article. This is because I am not going to talk about any film in specific. I have something important to say that needs to be said, because I feel that, if I don’t say it, I’m going to implode. I have a confession to make - I suffer from a terrible condition, a condition that we all suffer from. That condition is called internalized homophobia. I am a homophobe. And we are all homophobes. What I want to talk about here is about my experience. I want to talk about the internal fight that I have been fighting for as long as I understood my sexual orientation. And I want people to understand what I and many other queer people go through every day in this society that we live in. I started writing in here because I felt the need to express my thoughts through what I think about films. Now I decided to write something in the rawest form possible and explain exactly what I feel as a gay man who struggles with internalized homophobia.
First of all, what is internalized homophobia? Internalized homophobia is different than expressed homophobia, because it’s not conscious, it’s a subconscious reaction, a reflex, that is put into place by our society. This is because homophobia is something that is so deeply ingrained in our society for centuries that it’s something that we can’t escape from. I want to talk about my experience so that you can understand my point.
I consider myself an extremely privileged person. I come from a family that I would consider progressive. I have always been taught by my parents to respect and love everyone no matter the ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. My parents have gay friends, so it’s not that I had never been in contact with queer people in my life. Yet I struggled to come to terms with my own sexual orientation. I still struggle with it. And why is this, I started thinking. And so, I started analyzing many of my memories from school. Because one thing that we forget is that children spend more time in school than with their parents, so no matter how progressively our parents try to teach us, we always get influenced by the vices of our society. It’s precisely in school where I can pinpoint the bulk of the reasons why I struggle with internalized homophobia.
It starts very early. Immediately in kindergarten what is the first thing that people say when a boy and a girl start to become friendly towards each other? “Look, who has a new boyfriend/girlfriend!” Immediately we start being led to think that a boy and a girl must always form a couple, that anything else is just not possible. In Sex Ed, the only sex we talk about is heterosexual sex. I don’t even remember any instance where homosexuality or transgenderism was talked about. The first time I heard it being talked about in a Sex Ed class was in 11th grade and the way my teacher talked about it was just in the most obnoxious and disgusting way. I remember feeling physically disgusted of myself when my teacher scoffed to himself when he referred in a very scornful way to homosexual couples. It made me even more confused in a time when I was already struggling with my identity.
But this isn’t even the worst of my memories or even the worst of what created this homophobia inside of myself. One of the things that people love the most is to use the word “gay” as an insult. What people don’t realize is the damage and insecurity that the employment of that word as an insult does to children. I remember the number of times every single day that the word “gay” was used in a hateful way by my friends and other kids in the playground. Don’t get me wrong, they had no fault in it. What happens is that children absorb the ideals of their parents. And the truth is that queer people have always been and still are the targets of numerous jokes that portray in an unjustifiable negative way. Even my father, who I consider to be an ally, tells “gay jokes” from time to time. This is because we all have this internalized homophobia, and that passes on to children.
I want to talk about an episode that I think portrays this in a better way. I remember one day when I was hanging out with my friends. We were playing videogames in a Nintendo console. I must have been sitting in a sort of feminine way, with my legs crossed. I don’t think my friends paid any mind to it, but a couple of older boys passing by obviously paid mind to it. They came to me and asked why I was sitting like a girl and insulted me, saying that I probably had a vagina and not a penis. This is probably the most traumatic memory I have, or at least that I remember this clearly. It may seem like a non-important episode, but it has affected me to this day. I think about it a lot. Only very recently was I able to sit with my legs crossed without feeling repulsed by myself. And I think this is one of the episodes that sparked the most of self-hate in myself.
I only started coming out when I turned 18, and I only came out to my parents this Summer. And I believe that it took so much because of this internalized hatred against who I am. It made me insecure and it made me retreat into myself. My adolescence was an extremely confusing one and the last thing I want is to go back to it. And the reason why it was so confusing is because I wasn’t conscient of this hate that resided inside of me. I think that this blog was one of the most important things that I did in my life because it made me open up, and I have been able to do this because I have been able to realize that I have this problem, and I understand now that it’s a problem that everyone has. Only very recently do we have mainstream films portraying gay stories in an accurate way, and so that may be a good sign for our future. But on the other hand, we have politicians that cultivate the hatred that is existent in people through an extremely hateful rhetoric that say that there should be “Straight Pride Parades”. And it hurts. It hurts deep in my heart when I hear about countries legalising the death sentence as punishment for gay sex. It hurts so much that I just get so tired of everything. I have struggled for as long as I remember and then straight students in many universities across Portugal (which is where I live) create “Straight Pride groups” as if heterosexuals are some kind of oppressed minority. And I hate them so much. I know that “hate” is a very strong and irrational word, but I can’t help to use that word. Because when “Straight Pride groups” are formed, they trivialize the pain that I and all queer people feel all across the world. No, straight people aren’t oppressed. Society is built to favour straight people. 95% of all stories of all time are about straight people. Most great thinkers of history have somewhere in their work a word of condemnation against homosexual behaviours. So, no, you don’t get to have “Straight Pride groups”. Until people come to you insulting you for your heterosexual behaviour, you don’t get to act like you struggle in this society, because that is simply and bluntly untrue.
Creating “Straight Pride groups” and everything else is counter-productive. What is productive is awareness. We need to be aware of our hate, not only our homophobia, but also our transphobia, biphobia, racism and misogyny. Only through awareness can we eradicate these regressive behaviours. Only through awareness can we eradicate hatred. We live in a society that has been unconscious and in denial for far too long. We need to wake up, accept that we have hatred inside of us, exorcise that hatred. Only then can things really change. There is no other way. And I beg everyone that is reading this to do the same. Our society is so filled with hate, and this just cannot go any longer. It just needs to stop. And it starts in all of us. We are the crucial generation that is going to change this internalized homophobia, this internalized racism, this internalized misogyny, this internalized hatred that lies in all of us. Because I am so tired of it all. I am tired of hearing world leaders take away the humanity of minority groups. I am tired of hearing the ones in power acting as if they are the victims. I am tired of the trivialization of the pain that I feel. I am tired of all this hate and disrespect. I am so, so tired and fed up of it all. And most of all, I am tired of feeling disgusted with myself.
The late Agnès Varda, one of the most beautiful human beings to ever live and a role model to all of us, once said, “I tried to be a joyful feminist, but I was very angry”. Well, I tried to be a joyful gay, but I am just too damn angry.
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