Socials and Support by Duffy

The LGBTA sometimes attracts criticism for not having a focus beyond being… well, LGBT. After all, the argument goes, what can you really get out of socialising with a group of people with whom your only common ground is your sexuality or gender identity? Well… A lot. I love that I can wander into any LGBT social and find someone with an entirely different lifestyle and world view – the diversity makes it interesting (and it makes it all the more exciting when I meet someone else who does BSL!). But why can’t I get that from any other group of people? Why the LGBTA? I suppose I feel that there is something incredibly honest about walking into a room full of people cheerfully acknowledging something which might well be a secret in the rest of their lives but at the same time I know that’s not all.

Within a couple of days of coming out to my family, I was sitting in hospital. Having just witnessed a seizure so abrupt and violent it took even the paramedics off guard, I had been ushered into a room tucked safely away from A&E by staff. As I sat waiting to find out whether or not a close relative would be OK, I can’t say I felt that great about my decision. Feeling exposed under the florescent lighting, I numbly texted a couple of friends explaining where I was. Sympathy flooded in – from all but one person. A friend from the LGBTA simply asked ‘You remember this isn’t your fault, right?’. It instantly pulled me out of my haze. Whilst the support I’d got from all my other friends was invaluable, he had managed to get inside my head and identify an insecurity I hadn’t yet realised I had. Whilst I knew that my coming out and the hospital trip were unrelated, there was a more emotional part of me that had been starting to murmur ‘what if…?’. Most of the time, our friendship involved Klute and some distinctly off­ colour jokes but, at the point where I really needed it, he was able to show me a part of myself I hadn’t yet realised was there and remind me that my guilt was unfounded. I was sat for three more hours in that room with an air freshener for company and a lot of time to regret – but my friend managed to stop me from turning things over in my head and wishing I had done things differently.

Regardless of how diverse my friends at LGBTA are or how different their opinions or life experiences are from my own, we always have at least one thing in common and as a result, I know there will always be someone around who just ‘gets it’. The fantastic thing about socialising with other LGBT people is that you’re not just watching films or meeting up for drinks or developing a progressively more camp taste in music (…just me?). Whilst you have fun and meet new people you may well, without really thinking about it, be building a safety net. Being around other LGBT people, especially LGBT people with whom you have nothing else in common, can help remind you that the only thing being gay defines about you is the people you are attracted to. That, regardless of any prejudiced responses you might get as a result, it is certainly not all you are. The difficult truth is, however, that even if you are confident about your sexuality and feel secure about it, sometimes life throws you a curveball. I know from experience that when that happens, it’s wonderful to have LGBT friends around who understand.

Coming Out When You Don’t Want to by Anon

Fun fact. I came out to my doctor before I came out to my parents. He had asked me about the last time I had had sex with someone. I think I turned a strange shade of beetroot, said “Um” (or variations thereupon) for what felt like half an hour, before finally blurting out “It, um…wasn’t…with a man,” I think he looked as embarrassed as I did, to be totally honest, but he took it quite well.

I recently came out again, to about 50 potential employers. For some reason job application forms now carry a question about sexuality (they lump Transgender with sexuality, but still insist on gender binary tick boxes). This one really caused me some agonising – do I really want to be potentially discriminated against because of my sexuality? But do I really want to work anywhere that WOULD discriminate? And why is my sexuality anyone’s business but my own? Beyond my moral agonising, this coming out was far simpler – I just chose from the most fitting of five boxes, then stuck the lot in the post.

When I came out to my parents, I announced it indirectly. “How would you feel if I said I had a girlfriend?”
“I’d think that was nice,”
“I have a girlfriend!”

“That’s nice,”
We then went on to discuss the colour of the hallway paint (they didn’t ask me to do any DIY).

When I was a student, a housemate of mine came out to us. He looked so awkward, and relieved. We weren’t all that surprised, told him it was great that he told us, then went back to our Coco­Pops. He looked a bit crestfallen that we hadn’t reacted with more astonishment.

I think that this experience is common to many LGBT people. Coming out seems like a massive thing, some insurmountable barrier, which, once it has been overcome need never be climbed again. There should be fireworks, barbeques, possibly some sort of ticker­tape parade. The reality is that coming out is not some closet­escaping one­off, where we don a tank­top and scream “I’m queeeeeeeeeeer!” for all to hear. It’s more like Narnia, if Narnia were comprised only of closets belonging to different people. Coming out is a gradual process – starting with yourself and working outwards from there. It may never be the most fun (try telling a potential landlord that you want your same­sex partner to be able to visit at the same time as his children) but it does tend to get easier each time. Experiences of coming out of the closet may vary – sometimes you’ll get the biscuit cupboard, other times you’ll get a disused P.E. locker with ten­ year­old kit still sitting inside, but the Hob­Nobs are worth it. And by Hob­Nobs I mean acceptance.

Dating a Bisexual by Jasper Jackson

My girlfriend is bisexual. She identifies as gay, or ‘homoflexible’ if pressed. Her sexual orientation is not an issue in our relationship. When we first started going out, I worried if it was a problem that I didn’t have breasts (and in fairness, so did she), but I got over that pretty quickly. From my end, we are perfectly sexually compatible. And she says that she does, in fact like me ‘like that’. And I can’t say fairer than that.

In fact, her attraction to girls is rather good, in many ways. It’s easier to bond over Great Boobs We Have Seen than to understand my previous girlfriend’s obsession with Will Smith. To anyone who would say to me “Isn’t it weird that your girlfriend is bi?” I would say “No. No it isn’t really”. I would possibly feel quite strange about meeting her ex, but then, I’d feel strange about meeting her ex anyway.

No. From my perspective in life as a straight guy, with a few LGBT friends but no tangible connection with the issues such as homophobia faced by many people every day, the biggest impact of my partner’s sexuality on my life is the awareness and emotional connection it has given me to problems faced by LGBT people; the perspective it has brought.

Things like homophobia and biphobia (which I hadn’t even heard of before meeting my partner) are much more immediate if you’re going out with someone who’s been affected by them in the past. While I would not say that I’m lucky that I’m straight, I feel fortunate that I don’t have to battle social prejudices just to be myself every day. It was a pretty stark reminder, and quiteshocking to me, when my girlfriend mentioned early in in our relationship that she wasn’t used to publicly holding hands with someone without having to face stares and comments from people in the street.

I have always had sympathy with people ‘coming out’, and heard horror stories aplenty, but going out with a gay girl has given me my own small experience. Worrying how to say to my more laddish friends that my girlfriend had a girlfriend, and possibly having to deal with awkward questions or even homophobia – a little thing in comparison. And in a way quite insidious in that it would probably be easier for me to avoid the topic, instead of giving her the support she deserves in being open about her sexuality. Although society is much more accepting of gay people now, these experiences have given me two important things: the realisation of how important it still is to tackle sexual prejudice and a great respect for LGBT people who are ‘out’ to any degree at all.

Gay, Every Day by Liz Laurence

No one tells you that you have to come out more than once. I always thought there was the ‘Coming Out’, the big deal, the telling­your­family­and­close­friends, the moment you’ve been waiting for, the grand finale.

However, we live in a society based on assumptions. If you go to Durham, people assume you are a rah/wealthy/sporty/country bumpkin (delete accordingly), if you study a certain subject suppositions often follow, if you play a specific sport you are assumed to be a specific calibre of person, if you read a particular newspaper, you are of a particular political persuasion – the list goes on. In a world where roughly 1 in 10 people are gay, assumptions are made that a person is straight, and whilst to a degree, this is justified, it makes the task of young gay adult’s identification with themselves that much harder.

There’s the family ‘Coming Out’. Who do you tell? Just your immediate family or does Nana need to know too? There is the dynamic of being comfortable and proud of who you are and respecting the fact that although Nana loves you, she comes from another time and it would upset her, and maybe it’s just better to keep Nana happy in her latter years.

There’s the friend ‘Coming Out’. Who do you want to know? Just close friends or does Kelly, from Junior School, who you never really liked, need to know about your sexuality also? There is the way you tell people too, the casual meet­up or the Facebook status update, whether it is important for some people to be told face­to­face and some to just let it filter through to.

There’s the new friend ‘Coming Out’. People you’ve just met, a university you’ve just started. Here lies the question of whether it needs to be said straight off or whether it can be just popped in further down the line. It is a personal choice of how much you feel your identity is defined by your sexuality and how important it is to you for people to know. There’s the workplace ‘Coming Out’. Will your colleagues see you differently? Will it hurt your chances for promotion? Work environments vary and so do people’s attitudes. Is it helping a co­worker in the long run to expose them to your seemingly alien way of life or is it unnecessary during a temporary placement?

People don’t realise that gay people come out every day. We come out to friends we haven’t seen in a long time, to the woman on the phone when you are trying to book a double bed at a hotel for yourself and your girlfriend, to the Olympic Gamesmaker application form requesting your sexuality for equal opportunity purposes, to the bicycle hire man when you and your boyfriend ask to rent a tandem.

Gay people come out when they walk down the street holding hands, when they put their arm around their significant other during a film and when they kiss each other goodbye. It’s not a hardship and it’s not a call for sympathy but it should be recognised that on the whole, for a gay person to be happy and fulfilled, they have to have the courage to do so, not just once but every day.

Pop Culture and It’s Getting Better by Louise Matthews

I guess I knew around the age of 14 but it was something I literally couldn’t come to terms with. Surely it was a one time crush everyone goes through? As Meredith Grey says “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt” (for the record I’m totally more of a Christina Yang worshipper but feel free to argue with me at socials). I avidly watched the relationship between Marissa and Alex unfold on The OC and voiced my approval to astonished friends who believed her and Ryan were of course meant to be. I maintain to this day that I was right. Gay people, however dysfunctional and misrepresentational, in a TV show that was so popular certainly helped me come to terms and realise that actually, fancying girls is perfectly fine. I remember consuming all three seasons of the L Word in about 2 weeks after my GCSEs, and sorry Iliene Chaiken but I wish I stopped there (who killed Jenny? Need I say anymore?!). Its from TV shows like South of Nowhere and Sugar Rush, Queer as folk, not to mention Gay and Lesbian people in the public eye (I once gave directions to Clare Balding, gay claim to fame or what?!) that makes you realise it aint just you. Other girls like girls other boys like boys and there’s a whole beautiful spectrum in between. As people we don’t wanna be the only one, the odd one out. Aristotle said, humans are ultimately political and rational animals, admittedly some more rational than others; im looking at you Michele Bachmann. But we thrive in groups, we crave common ground and need people to be a person. Being able to sing along with girls who like girls, or see a relationship represented that you identify with is reassuring to say the least.

Telling my parents was a huge anti­climax, I thought there would be shock, disbelief and raised voices but apparently they already knew. I had been introduced to a girl by a mutual friend and we just clicked. When I told my mum I was seeing someone, a girl, her response left me as the stunned party. Apparently it was obvious. Given that I hadn’t brought a boy home and my trip to Brighton happened to coincide with Gay Pride, her suspicions had been sealed. My dad had a similar response, but got emotional about the prejudices I would face but I pointed out everyone does at some point be it because of your religion, ethnicity, gender, political line or who you love. But if you face it for being yourself then it only reflects badly on the perpetrator, not on you. And as for my brothers, they were just jealous that I was with a fitter girl than either of them. Ahhh sibling rivalry. It’s so easy to look back now at the teenage angst and wonder what on earth all the fuss was about ­ but hindsight is a beautiful thing.

A friend once called Cornwall “the Alabama of the UK,” and yes xenophobia is rife, but I definitely feel I should have given people more credit and I think deep down I knew it was myself I was worried about. Growing up in a liberal home I knew my family would be accepting of my sexuality yet I still had an inexplicable fear that they wouldn’t, an irrational worry that I realised was about personal rather than public acceptance. There will be people who don’t accept you everywhere you go, and people who don’t accept you for far less than your sexuality. My friends were wonderfully supportive, many had guessed and one assured me that “it’s cool Weez, I’m liberal, I read the Guardian”.

As I have emerged and engaged with the LGBT community, I increasingly realise how fortunate my coming out experience was. Countless men and women have devoted their lives to campaigning for equality, the likes of Harvey Milk and Carole Migden, have ultimately played a part in every LGBT person’s life by fighting to make it better. Quite a sobering thought. The Stonewall riots of the late 1960s followed the Lavender Scare of the 1950s and marked the beginning of change in social attitudes towards homosexuality. Despite being 50years ago, legislation and public opinion still lags behind in much of the western world. New York has only just legalised Gay marriage, and California legalised then revoked it. Here in the UK, we can only get a Civil Partnership, which most certainly isn’t just a different name for the same beast. Call me old fashioned, but I’m going to want a wedding dam it! However arguing about semantics can seem petty in the face of the homophobic legislation in parts of the developing world where being gay is punishable by the death penalty. There is still so far to go with gay rights and the process is very much a group struggle for acceptance and equality akin to that of the Civil Rights struggle. Something that has cemented the community essence of being LGBT.

If you are interested in Gay rights issues check out Stonewall’s website, the Trevor Project and look out for a documentary on the Lavender Scare. Peter Tatchell’s website is also worth a look. For something slightly lighter check out afterellen.com and afterelton.com for everything from recaps of gay tv shows to interviews and political pieces. Oh and a personal favourite is autostraddle.com, which can be slightly off the wall but the L word recaps are hilarious.

Mental Health by Anon

Mental health problems aren’t commonly talked about, although up to 9% of people in Britain are believed to meet the criteria for diagnosis of depression. That figure sounds plausible, but what if I had said around 58% of the population had suffered from depression? Shocking, right? That is exactly the figure uncovered by a survey of 1145 lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered people and their mental health experiences. But is it really so surprising that LGBT people appear to suffer so much more from mental illness?

The first time I cut myself I don’t know why I did it, I hadn’t really heard of self harm before and, at age 12, it was a very out of character thing for me to do. A group of boys in my class kept calling me a dyke and throwing screwed up paper at my chair. Cutting myself felt good, like a way to express the pain and confusion I felt inside; I still have that scar. You see, I knew that it was entirely my fault, all of the name calling at school. I kissed my best friend, another girl; it was just messing around, experimenting. But she got scared afterwards and told her best friend and, well, news travels fast in a secondary school and I soon found myself subject to accusations and taunts in the playground. I didn’t outright deny what had happened but the truth spiralled out of control into accusations of a relationship or sex, and the worst one; female rape. I thought it was just rumour and gossip and would disappear as quickly as it started. But things got worse. One girl started threatening me over MSN. She said that she was going to get her 25 year old male friend to rape me “to turn me straight”. The same girl told me she was waiting for me in the bushes one day after school with her older friends who had a knife.

After that I started to feel down all the time. I was cutting myself daily by then; I used to carve the word “LESBO” on my wrist under my watch where only I could look at it, because that’s what everybody said I was and deep inside I felt that it was true and always had been. I looked self harm up on the internet and found websites portraying cutting as glamorous and an artistic thing to do. At first I didn’t bother to hide my scars much but when people started noticing I became more withdrawn and secretive about what I was doing to stop anyone from finding out. Around that time I also stopped eating for three weeks, I knew I was overweight and I wanted a quick and easy solution to limit the bullying. That was more difficult to hide, however, and my teachers and parents found out and started to watch me at mealtimes to make sure I was eating. Eventually the bullying and threats went too far. My mum found out I was receiving threats over MSN and by phone call so I told her some of the things that had been happening to me.

A few years later and things were worse: my Dad was diagnosed with cancer, there were rumours that I fancied a female PE teacher (looking back she was rather attractive!) and girls started to refuse to change in front of me at school. That suited me fine as I tried to hide every bit of my body and what I was doing to it as much as I could. One of my friends got so worried about me that she told the school nurse I was hurting myself. The nurse threatened to call my parents unless I showed her all of my cuts. I felt violated at the thought of showing my body to anybody as a self­conscious teenager, so I refused. I couldn’t face my parents finding out so I told her about my Dad’s illness and how it would ruin my family even more if they knew. I threatened to run away and never go home if she called my mum, so she didn’t. It was easy and I had them wrapped around my little finger. I was offered a few counselling sessions but I couldn’t face talking about my sexuality with a complete stranger, I didn’t think I would be taken seriously as I was still just a child. After that half term break, none of the teachers bothered me about it again.

When I went to college I felt like I could try to make a new start. But old issues kept surfacing. After five years I still couldn’t admit to myself that I might be gay, even though I knew deep inside that I liked women, I just felt constantly confused. My issues with my body came back stronger and I started to make myself sick after meals. This time I had the freedom of college life and had improved my techniques and nobody found out so I didn’t have to worry about what people thought.

When I came to Durham I didn’t really know what to expect. By then I had found myself a long­ term boyfriend but I still didn’t feel as though I fit into the heterosexual community. I joined the LGBTA because it is something I feel strongly about and I’m glad I did. It wasn’t easy being away from family and friends. I spent a lot of time feeling as though I didn’t have any friends or anyone to talk to. I started cutting more than I ever had before, and much deeper too. When I cut so deep that I had to have stitches in my arm I was shocked at how out of control I had become. I was still making myself sick and everything felt so mixed up. I spent almost a whole term in bed as I couldn’t face leaving my room, I missed 80% of my lectures and tutorials and I couldn’t see the point in anything anymore. I knew there was something seriously wrong with me but after my experiences in school, I was too frightened to seek help.

Eventually one of my flatmates realised something was wrong and inspired me to go the university counselling service. Throughout my counselling sessions I came to realise that everything I had bottled up inside of me came from that one moment, seven years ago, when I realised I might be gay. One night everything got too much for me and I decided I wanted to end my life. Luckily I had Durham University nightline added on Skype and I decided to try talking to them. I spoke online for hours then walked down to the nightline office and sat and talked to a volunteer until 7am the next morning, I was inconsolable, and felt as though things would never get better. I knew I needed more professional help and eventually plucked up the courage to see a GP and was really surprised when she took me seriously. Even though it was near to the exam period she realised that what I felt wasn’t just exam stress, I had a real problem and I was diagnosed with Bulimia and prescribed antidepressants.

The last year hasn’t been the quick fix I was after though. The NHS have a really long waiting list for mental health issues and I have only recently been allocated a care worker. I am now waiting for a course of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy to see if that can help me even more. But this help has only come about because of my continued struggles for the two years since plucking up the courage to seek help, and particularly because of April of this year, when I was sent to hospital for stitches and then again a few days later for taking an overdose of pills. Fighting not to get sent to hospital in an ambulance and having a whole load of tests run on me wasn’t a pleasant experience. But through that experience I got in contact with their crisis team who organised some extra help for me. It’s just disappointing that I felt I had to go to such lengths to get the support I needed.

These days I’ve been through a few different medications. I am still on the waiting list for DBT and know that this year there will be support available for me if I need it. I now receive disabled students’ allowance to help me with my studies, which was organised through DUSSD. I would love to be able to finish this story with a fairytale ending, but life isn’t a fairytale and everyone experiences difficulties. Since opening up about my illness, I have come across a number of other LGBT students who have also experienced some depression, eating disorders and self harm, and I’m sure there are many more. We’re not alone, other people do understand how it feels and I wish mental illness wasn’t such a taboo subject to talk about. Talking about things that worry us is so important. I wasted seven years of my life in and out of bouts of depression, anxiety and distress because I was too scared to talk about how I was feeling and confront my fears. I’m not going to waste any longer.

I encourage you all to use the welfare services that the association, DSU and your colleges provide, and don’t be afraid to ask for help if you need it – asking for help almost eight years ago would have saved me a lot of pain. This true account was inspired by Mindout (http://www.lgbtmind.com/), a charity focusing on LGBT people with mental illness, and brought many tears and painful memories back to me whilst writing it. But it was worth it; as long as I can make just one person feel less alone in the world, I consider it a success.

Why do you Define Yourself by Your Sexuality? by Anon

I have lost count of the number of times straight people have asked me “Why do gay people define themselves by their sexuality?” If I had a pound for every time it happened, I would probably have enough to buy my own bar in Soho, plus a bit left over to pay Megan Fox and Scarlett Johanssen to run a kiss­o­gram every Saturday night. Despite this, I have never really come up with an answer which satisfied either me, or the person who asked me. The strangest thing is that (even though we probably come to the EXACT same conclusion) when I talk through the question with gay friends, the answer is more satisfying than a stuffed­crust­meat­ feast pizza (that’s not a euphemism, I just like pizza).

The above example is just one of the reasons why LGBT people do define themselves by their sexuality. Once we are defined, it becomes far easier to find other people with a similar definition, and through understanding them, understand ourselves.

Just as LGBTa is a collection of people from all over with one thing in common, so too is Animesoc, the rowing team, or Poker Club (it’s not about Lady Gaga. I checked). That’s not a bad thing, that’s just how societies work. I choose to come to the LGBTA because its where I know I can be totally honest about my sexuality, where I can be out, or in, or somewhere in the middle. Where there are no awkward pauses in conversation when you mention that you kissed a girl, and, actually, yes, you did like it.

The simple fact is that, anything which will affect your future job, home, lifestyle, partner or child will define you, whether you like it or not. But that doesn’t mean that you are defined only by your sexuality. Your choice of where you live will be informed by whether or not you like stairs, your job by what you are good at, your partner by your sense of aesthetics, and none of these are your defining features either. You can define yourself by your sexuality, and that’s ok, just as it’s ok to define yourself as a trainspotter, geek, sibling, vegetarian, parent or student. But that is never all you are, and nor should it be.

You don’t choose your sexuality, but you can choose what you make of it. So, if you need me, I’ll be in the dictionary, under LGBT. And geek. And big sister. And shoulder for crying on, and student and and beer drinking and baddancingguitarplayingvideogameplaying and well…you get the picture.