IDAHo

IDAHo
International Day Against Homophobia
Celebrating the day, on 17th May 1990, when the World Health Organisation finally took homosexuality off their list of mental illnesses.
Yes, it was only 18 years ago!

I am a 35 year old gay male who has been out on the scene for about 16 years, been out to work colleagues for about 14 years and to family for about 7 years. In all that time I have experienced 5 instances of homophobia, of various levels of severity, that I can recall, though obviously all are unacceptable.
My first experience of abuse of this nature was when I was about 20. I was living in Grays, in Essex at the time and on a day off, a Sunday if I recall correctly, I was walking across a main road on my way to a cash point before heading into London for some drinks.
Just as I'd crossed the road a car sped past and someone yelled out of the window, “Fuckin' Poof!”
It may well have been obvious that I was gay, I was wearing jeans that accentuated my arse and a tight, ribbed white t-shirt, but even so, that sort of abuse isn't acceptable.

Probably the same year, while I was working at Ravel, in the Lakeside shopping centre, the shop was “invaded” by a group of travellers trying to get money back on a pair of stolen shoes. When they realised that they wouldn't get their way they began to leave and insulted every member of staff, and some customers.
I was singled out a bit when one of the women said to me, “And you! You're a poof!” To which I replied, “Yeah! And?”
She was taken aback that I had agreed with her and said, “I'm gonna get my dad in to sort you out!” To which I replied, “Only if he's good looking!”
It was while regaling this story to the weekend staff on the following Saturday that everyone who worked there came to know I was gay. So they did me a favour really.
A few months later we had a particularly grumpy and disagreeable young woman working with us. She walked out one evening saying that she quit. She came back the next day demanding her job back, but the manageress refused, which resulted in her getting some abuse from the woman's boyfriend who was doing all the talking. He then turned on me with a few special words,
“As for you! You're just a fucking pervert!”
Ravel took the easy option for this woman and gave her a job at a fairly local branch, though it was at a lower hourly rate, shorter hours and the manageress, who knew and liked me, made sure that she quit within the week!

The next incident I experienced was, by a long way, the most serious that I have personally experienced.
I'd moved to Torquay by this point and had been enjoying a night out with friends at Munroe's night club.
Originally, Munroe's had opened as a gay club, but over time more and more straight people were going as the music and atmosphere were so great, oh and the fact that drugs were easy to come by probably had something to do with it!
This particular night, as I began to leave with my boyfriend and my mate, who I was renting a room off at the time, we saw a can of beer fly across outside the front door! We thought nothing much of it, but then got verbal abuse, the details of which I cannot recall, as we walked out. We just ignored it being uninterested and a bit merry.
As we had got a couple of minutes along the road, just out of sight of the club, I heard a noise and looked around to see three guys running at us. I managed to warn my companions just in time for my friend to get punched right in the face by the leader of the trio. He was a big bodybuilder type guy and was standing over my friend just pummelling him with punches. The other two acolytes didn't do anything, just egged him on.
At the time, I was a skinny 10 stone weakling who had never been in a fight outside of the school yard, and so I couldn't take on this guy. I did manage to place myself in between him and my friend until he got bored of punching us and ran off with his mates.
All the while this was going on, there was a young couple leaning out of the bedroom window of the nearest house watching. I had yelled for them to phone the police, but they didn't seem bothered. “We haven't got a phone!” was the excuse, and this was in the days before everyone had mobiles, but his tone said it all.
My friend suffered a fractured jaw and tons of bruises and was off work for about two weeks. I was off just the next day with shock, though I only had a few bruises and bumps to show for the ordeal.
We did hear a few months later that the leader of this group had been attacked himself, over drugs we think, and was in a vegetative state in hospital. Strangely we had little sympathy for him.

My latest experience of homophobia was one I covered recently on the blog. A new work colleague, still in training, had interrupted a conversation I was having with another work mate about Heath Ledger, just after he had died. His comment was along the lines of:
“He topped himself because he was fed up with comments about that batty boy film!” meaning Brokeback Mountain.
He then told us that he had tried to watch the film with his girlfriend but couldn't as it made him "feel sick!” He then added that “Gays are wrong! Just wrong!”
He apologised afterwards when I had informed him that I was gay and didn't appreciate being told I was “wrong.” But he left early that day and, when my supervisor and the building manager found out what had happened, they banned him from the site.
My employers still kept him on though, sending him to another site, their justification for this being that he hadn't actually insulted me directly and he had been given a final warning! Which is hardly going to get them on Stonewall's list of good gay employers is it?

I have said that these are the only incidents of homophobia that I recall, but what do you class as homophobia? Should I have included the time when a long-time friend refused to discuss my sexuality when I tried to come out to her?
What about the fact that my sister has still not told her kids that I am gay, even though I've told her that it is alright to do so?

I look back at these events and think to myself in 16 years I haven't experienced that many incidents of homophobia and consider myself lucky. Lucky? I feel lucky that I have had to endure only a few of these incidents? That says quite a lot about my expectations of today's society doesn't it. I should expect to be treated as an equal and not to be judge on who I am attracted to, or what happens, or doesn't, in my bedroom!

Attitudes need to change throughout society. Acceptance and tolerance are bad words for the gay community to use. Do we accept red-heads? Do we tolerate people with blue eyes? No, because it isn't an issue.

Being gay needs to become a non-issue, just a description. We should be able to say:

“I fancy girls with long legs!”
“I like big boobs!”
“I like my men tall dark and handsome”

Whether we are male, female or transsexual and it shouldn't matter.

As the latest slogan says: