This above all: to thine own self be true.
-Polonius: Hamlet Act 1, scene 3
We’ve all heard variations of this piece of advice over the course of our lives. Whenever we question something about ourselves, or feel unsure about what to do, we normally hear someone tell us that we need to stay true to who we are. That if you’re not honest with yourself, you’ll never really find any measure of happiness. It is a sound piece of advice, because I think we’ve all felt that moment when you realize you’ve been lying to yourself, or have ignored something that was really important to who you are, and realized that it was causing you great emotional pain.
However, historically, there have been a few exceptions. If part of who you really are is considered “deviant” in any way, then society at large will demand that you keep that part hidden. The problem is that what society considers “deviant” is subjective, but nonetheless, that part of you still exists. It’s especially a problem if that part of you is in no way harmful, whether physically or mentally, to anyone else, yet society still wants you to suppress it.
In our current society, we are in a struggle with the concepts of homosexuality and transgender people. For some reason, at least in my experience, it is mostly tied to religious belief, and it would seem that a lot people have a problem with both of these traits. There exists a belief that homosexuals and transgender people choose to be that way. That somehow, they have decided that they want to behave in a way that would get them shunned, persecuted, ostracized, oppressed, attacked, hated, and any number of actions that would cause them great harm.
What I have to wonder is, of the people who believe that they would choose to be homosexual or transgender, what would cause them to believe that anyone would choose to be something that would garner so much negative attention? There is no logical reason that people choose to put themselves in a situation that would bring great distress and pain on themselves. And for those that would call them masochists, realize that masochists derive pleasure from physical pain, the complete opposite of someone who is being hurt emotionally and made to feel that they are worth less than what they are because they are just trying to be who they feel themselves to be.
It’s an important distinction to make, and to understand. Choosing to be something means that you can also choose to not be that something, at any point. There is no inherent connection to that choice, aside from the attachments you make. However, to be born as either homosexual or transgender, is an essential part of the very core of your being. To deny something that is an important part of who you are, especially when it is due to coercion by outside influences (family, friends, society) causes such strife, such pain, in your very being, your soul if you believe in such things, that a lot of times, people can only free themselves from that distress by ending their own lives. If it was simply a “choice,” then people would not feel such self-loathing if they were to “choose wrong” so to speak.
Identity issues are difficult enough, even if you don’t have societal pressure trying to crush you into conforming. I’m ethnically Chinese, but I was born in the US. Anyone who is born a second generation immigrant understands the difficulty in trying to balance the different cultures that you grow up with. Many want to honor their heritage, but at the same time, they have to live in the society that they were born in. If you don’t assimilate, then you feel separated from your community. If you do assimilate, you drift away from your family and cultural history. Trying to be both is admirable, but nearly impossible. There’s a great deal of compromise needed in order to keep both sides happy, and a lot of times, despite so many people going through it, it’s not a shared experience. So imagine adding on top of that the idea that you’ll be hated by the world at large if you want to be yourself. Your whole life, people tell you to be honest with yourself, but when you are, they come down hard on you to bury it away, to deny that part of you.
Which brings me to the whole point of this entry. The courage it takes to come out, and to claim your homosexuality, or your gender identity, is immense. To know that just by proclaiming who you are, you will face great hatred, persecution, violence, and even threats to your life, requires greater courage than many of us can ever fathom.
People will try to co-opt that bravery, by claiming that somehow, your ownership of your identity somehow infringes on their existence. That being true to yourself will damage the very fabric of society, and that they are somehow courageous and righteous by standing up against your right to be who you are. There are those who would attempt to negate your courage by saying it pales in comparison to people who put their lives on the line on a regular basis by being soldiers or police officers, as though somehow finding employment, knowing full well what the hazards of the job are, immediately raises you to heroic levels.
If that were true, why does no one hold up loggers as heroes? They have the highest per capita fatalities, and they work hard to provide fuel, raw material for nearly every aspect of your life, and they don’t even get paid all that much. Or fishermen who help to put food on your table. They travel to remote locations, risk being thrown into the merciless ocean, freeze to death, drown, or any other number of horrific ways to die. Yes, you can say they do it for monetary gains, or to better their own life situations, but can you really say that most of the people who go into the military or into law enforcement aren’t doing it for the same purpose? Can you really say that the majority of them are people wanting to do those jobs for noble reasons?
Even then, even when held in comparison to these jobs that people take willingly, knowing that they may lose their life, it doesn’t change the fact that coming out requires massive stores of will and courage. To know that the possibility that you may lose friends and family over your choice to come out, that you may lose your livelihood because of unfair labor laws, that you may be looked down upon by your community, would make the decision against coming out seem almost like a no-brainer. However, the fact that living a lie is so painful, where the only choices they have are coming out, living in misery for the rest of their days, or ending it all, should tell you what kind of courage it takes to come out and be honest with yourself, and to be true to yourself.
Ultimately, the point I want to make is that it shouldn’t be a matter of competition on how brave something is in order for it to be validated as being worthy of the label. Everything has its challenges, and to dismiss one thing because your personal measure of bravery lies in something else is terribly narrow-minded. Identity issues are never simple, and we’re all struggling to find out who we really are, and what our place in the universe is. Don’t stomp on someone else just because their journey takes a different path than yours.
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