It’s your problem that you’re homophobic

It’s your problem that you’re homophobic
Hello. Today I’m here to share my experiences as a member of the LGBT
community who comes from a provincial city in Greece. I am 20 years old and I
grew up in Larissa. Like many other people, I can start by saying that from a very
young age I somehow knew that I did not imagine a future for myself with men.
However, being from a small town, I had no knowledge of what was out there.
Because of course there was no one to tell me that there was an entire
community, so many people out there loving whoever they love, feeling good
and accepting themselves and so it took me several years to come to terms
with everything. I had no exposure to the LGBT community at all, I had no idea
that this part of the world existed.
It all started for me in junior high. At that age we’re basically kids
beginning to explore romantic topics a little bit, starting to discover ourselves,
starting to have feelings towards people. Little crushes, that kind of thing. It was
around that age that I found myself being out of sync with my female friends,
not really feeling like I was in the same situation as them. But I didn’t yet have
any conscious awareness of liking a particular girl or being interested in girls in
general or anything like that.
The whole journey really got started when I met a girl – that’s usually what
happens, right? And as we were getting to know each other, she told me that
she was bisexual and that’s when I first learned that there was an entire
community out there. I was 13 or 14 when that happened, and it was a time for
me in which I had so much to learn, because up until that point, all I knew
about LGBT issues and all I had in my mind were negative judgements and
negative opinions, mostly about gay men, because unfortunately that kind of
prejudice is extremely widespread – belittling gay men with slurs and rude
comments.

So growing up, the only exposure I had to the community consisted of
very negative opinions expressed by straight people, mostly curses about
perverts. In our rural city this was judged very harshly and everybody prayed
that this kind of perversion wouldn’t happen in their home. People in the LGBT
community were singled out for harassment and judgment, and unfortunately in
my family environment there is a lot of homophobia. My parents themselves
grew up in a provincial town, so I don’t know how much you can expect of
them, but at the same time there’s no excuse for their behavior and their
opinions because they’ve actively chosen to be uninformed. Of course, from a
very young age they too were taught that all of this is very bad, they were
taught that LGBT people are choosing to be deviants. Besides, there was no one
in their environment standing up to say I’m gay, I’m transgender, I’m this, I’m
that, so they never had the motivation to try and learn more and sympathize
with people. Yet at this point. I’m not going to be that person in their lives either.
So in school and in my family there were these negative views. However, I
would like to mention that I never heard anything too extreme either, that is,
nothing that made me fear for my physical safety. In that way I had it easier
than some other people, especially those in even smaller towns and villages. The
only exposure I had to LGBT issues was very negative and maybe that’s why I
didn’t look any further. I wasn’t well informed because it was framed as this very
negative minority that is bad for society. At the end of the day, it never
occurred to me what anyone was doing in and out of bed and it goes without
saying that there was no visibility, not at all. It wasn’t the same as how it is in
Athens where you might see someone kissing, someone holding their partner’s
hand and walking around without fear. In Larissa, everything happened in
secret, in the dark, everyone saying, “don’t let them see us, don’t let them
know… I don’t want my friends to know, I don’t want my family to know.” That’s
how we grew up and that was my experience during my years in Larissa.

As for school, there was no visibility there either, just as there was no
advocacy for any social minority group at all. If there was any discussion about
people who were outside of the dominant paradigm, our teachers would try to
stop the discussion as soon as possible because it always created tensions. The
teachers didn’t want to deal with any strong opinions. They weren’t willing to
teach us to respect people’s differences…not just in the area of sexuality but
also for religion, anything. So of course if they won’t approach the basics of
human respect they won’t confront racism or homophobia either.
So that’s how the years went, every time there was any mention of LGBT
topics, I can only remember fights and tensions in the classroom, with two very
polarized viewpoints being expressed. I think that hasn’t changed, to this day.
There will always be at least one person in every classroom who has something
negative and ignorant to say about the community. Unfortunately. We want to
believe that that will change at some point.
So, while I was a junior high student I met a girl who I hung out with a lot
and who ultimately came out to me, who told me that she was bisexual. That
was the wakeup call for me when I realized that there is a huge world out there,
a world that for some reason I hadn’t looked into before, maybe out of fear,
maybe because of ignorance, maybe because I didn’t want to know what I
would find. Perhaps because I had it hardwired in my mind that this was
something very negative that I should avoid, not go out seeking.
But inspired by this girl, I finally started searching and seeking out more
information. I was discovering identities, discovering different sexualities and
trying to understand what I was finding. I started identifying with some of the
things I found, but I also had a lot of self-doubt. I was thinking, yes, I feel this way
too, but is this normal? Is it okay? Because ultimately what I was finding didn’t
seem like something bad or awful, it didn’t seem wrong. At the end of the day it
was just people who loved people other than the group they were supposed to,
or people who didn’t identify with their assigned gender, and it’s not as if people
were going out of their way to choose to be abnormal deviants. And that’s
when I unraveled the whole homophobic lie that I had been taught. And
somewhere in there I also found my own identity but at that time it was still
something I kept very close and I didn’t share it.
I never went to anyone to ask for advice or support or opinions. Because
up to that point I had never asked my friends what they thought of LGBT people.
Because we really didn’t know of anyone who was openly LGBT and we had no
role models or examples to look to, so it really was the elephant in the room;
completely undiscussed. So I didn’t know where to go to get help, I didn’t know
who I could talk to, and it was still very, very fresh so I was very hesitant to share
how I felt.
I was afraid that there was something wrong with me. I was afraid that if I
told my close friends they would say that what I was feeling was not normal and
not acceptable.Back when I was about 14 I went to see my school psychologist
for the first time. It was before I had come out to anyone, and I told the
psychologist that I was worried about it, that I thought I was gay, and I had
these concerns that were bothering me. I remember clearly that the
psychologist was extremely uncomfortable. She turned to me and said, “Well,
what do you want to do, tell your parents all about this?!” I was there in tears,
telling her how I felt, how scared I was, thinking I wasn’t normal. And instead of
trying to reassure me or help me calm down, her response was, “Okay, think
about it carefully. Don’t make any quick moves. Don’t tell your parents, don’t
tell your friends. Let some time pass; it’s a phase.” This was such a disheartening
reaction to hear as a teenager who was having all these difficult thoughts and
worries, and to hear that from someone who was supposedly a trained
professional?

So for a long time, I didn’t share anything. I think it was about a year
before I finally confided in one friend and said, “You know what? I think that I’m
bisexual.. I think I might like girls too.” But at the same time, even though I had
no interest in guys I pretended that I did so I could still hold onto some part of
normalcy. It was just that, you know,I might like girls as well.
And that first friend that I told, it was someone I wasn’t particularly close
with, just so that I could see what it would be like to tell someone and because I
was afraid that if I told my best friend she’d have a negative reaction. She and I
had never discussed gay issues before, and while she hadn’t gone out of her
way to show that she was homophobic, we had never approached the topic at
all. So I wanted to get practice telling people and seeing how people reacted,
and it also helped to get it off my chest. So the friend I told first, she just said,
“Oh, okay, fine.” And in my gut I was thinking, “Oh, that’s it? You don’t care? You
don’t think it’s abnormal?” And through that experience I gained the courage to
accept that this is how I feel, it’s not a bad thing, other people can accept it,
and if some people don’t that’s their problem and they’re homophobic. It’s not
me liking girls that is the problem.
It was in the final year of junior high that I met the girl who was bisexual,
and shortly thereafter I started to meet more people–accidentally, or maybe
not– more people who are part of the LGBT community. So it helped me come
out of my shell a bit and stop telling myself, “I’m the only one in all of Larissa who
feels something different than everyone else,” and that’s when I realized that it’s
probably more common than I thought and it’s probably very covert. This girl
and I became friends, and somewhere in the midst of it I started to have a
crush on her. This was new for me, and I was thinking, “well, who can I talk to
about this… that I think I like her?” Because at the time all my female friends were
telling me about their crushes on various boys and how cute they all were. With
my crush, I thought she was absolutely gorgeous, and I was interested in her not
as a friend…and I distinctly remember the moment when I wanted to tell my
best friend about the crush. She is still my best friend to this day, we’ve grown up
together since we were three years old. So when I wanted to tell her about my
crush, I had so much fear because she was, and still is, my favorite person and it
felt almost as heavy as if I were coming out to my parents somehow. I
remember we were sitting in a café and I told myself, “I have to tell her today…
I have to tell her today… how is she going to react? This might be the last day
that she speaks to me! She might never speak to me again!” And I was too
nervous to say it outloud so I picked up her cell phone and I typed a note saying
I think I’m bi and I think I like so-and-so, and I showed it to her. She was shocked
but it wasn’t a bad shock, it was more like surprise. And I remember that she
turned to me and asked, “Why are you so nervous? Do you think I don’t love you
anymore, or am I going to stop loving who you are because you have a crush
on so-and-so?” And I was full of so much emotion, just so happy and relieved
that my best friend still loves me, she doesn’t think this is bad or unreasonable. I
had confided in someone who was so important to me and it made me feel so
safe and like everything would all be ok.
Life went on, of course. There were other girls that got my attention, and in
the course of it all there were more coming out experiences, some of which
didn’t go well. There were actually friends of mine who thought it was a bit weird
or said things like “OK, sure, she’s a very pretty girl, but you can’t have sex with
her. I mean, how can you even do that? Technically it doesn’t really count the
same as sex with a man, right? And how about when you grow up? How will you
have a family?” All kinds of questions like this, which come from a place of
ignorance. But again, I would say that I’m lucky because I didn’t face any
particularly extreme reactions. No one said they wouldn’t talk to me again
because of my not being straight. I think after high school it started to be clear
to everyone that ultimately I didn’t like men at all and I think everyone figured
out that I was a lesbian without me making a point of saying, “You guys know
what? I think I’m a lesbian after all.” Being with a man never occurred to me.

And eventually it was just an obvious part of my friends’s social dynamic that I
was a lesbian, it was very present in a lighthearted way.
And I think I got to the point at the end of high school where I could
clearly say yes, I’m a lesbian, I like women and I don’t care if someone has an
issue with it anymore. I’ve accepted it. I know how things are. I knew that there
was a huge community out there somewhere and my mind was focused on the
fact that I would be taking my university entrance exams and then leaving. I
would tell myself, “I’m going to leave this small town, I’m going to go to Athens.
I’m going to go to Athens where I know there’s a community and I know people
are more open.” Of course, I’m not saying that everyone in Athens is accepting
and there’s no homophobia, right? There is a lot of homophobia out there.
However, people here don’t care that much, unlike in the countryside or even
smaller villages, where they will indeed point the finger at you and you can’t talk
about who you are dating because there is so much gossip being passed
around, from relative to relative, and people will say judgmental things like, “oh,
that’s too bad! She was such a good kid.”
So in high school there were the first flirtations and crushes and it’s when
you usually make your first move with a girl, have your first kiss, and feel it all so
intensely. Especially if you’ve had some experiences with guys in the past and
didn’t feel anything, and then suddenly do something with a girl and it’s like,
“oh, is that what I have missed all this time?” And it’s great because you can
finally feel what people should experience in their teenage years, that
excitement and romance. And eventually as you grow up, the full range of
love and commitment.
So I left the countryside after high school and came to Athens, where I
can say with certainty that I have never had to hide my identity. It’s not that I’m
meeting people and saying, “Hello, I’m so-and-so and I like women.” It’s that if
we talk, my girlfriend or my ex or whomever I’m dating will probably come up in
the conversation. I take it for granted that you won’t have a problem with it. And
if you do, ok, it’s your problem that you’re homophobic and you need to solve.
And if I kick someone out of my life who is homophobic, someone who will never
accept the people that I love, it’s no loss to me.
I’ve been very lucky. I don’t have to hide my identity at my university
department, which is generally a pretty open-minded place because of the
subject matter, and I don’t have to hide myself at my work or in my social circles
either. And I have felt very safe and very welcomed in the LGBT communities
that exist here in Athens. It’s interesting to hear the stories from people who grew
up in a big city because indeed, when I was growing up in Larissa… when I was
hiding and feeling afraid all the time, now I see a lot of people being
themselves, without being afraid and suddenly I can hold hands and walk
around Thiseio, or walk around Monastiraki, without being looked at strangely,
without being pointed at, without being scared and it’s definitely a new
experience. Yes, and even now at 20 it’s still a new experience.
I’m still not completely accustomed to the fact that now I’m in a big city
and I don’t have to hide and I don’t have to be scared. I can go out and walk
around and hold hands and hug and kiss and everything. I’m still getting used to
it, I’m still trying to get the fear out of me because of how I grew up and how my
discovery of myself evolved through the environment that I grew up in.
As I mentioned I’m lucky enough that at school, with my friends, and at
work I’ve never had to be afraid of my identity or have to hide parts of myself or
cover up some stories I want to tell. I don’t have to hide my past or my present.
However, one piece that I’m still working on is coming out to my family. I still
can’t imagine it happening. I thought that when I left home it would be so easy
to just leave all those feelings behind and say “I don’t care if you accept me or
not.”

However, it’s harder than that. You can’t just block off your feelings and
say things that you know will be hard for them to hear, or least I’m not a person
who can do that.I don’t think the word lesbian has ever been brought up in any
conversation with my family. My parents don’t know anything accurate at all
about gay people, transgender people…they really know nothing. They might
see pictures from Pride during the summer and they’ll say something like, “What
is that? They’ve got the perverts gathered at Syntagma Square!” I remember
one summer when I was in high school, I think my parents had recently joined
Facebook so they were seeing more kinds of news, and they had watched
some moments of Pride coverage that was presented really poorly and out of
context. So they drew a very negative conclusion and remember them sitting
around and yelling and talking badly about the whole LGBT community.
Meanwhile, I was in my room crying or just feeling very upset that they were
seeing things this way. There was another moment too, when I was in my second
year of high school, that my mom had read or seen something homophobic
and she spoke very harshly about the community. I actually broke out of my
silence at that point and told her, you are so wrong. These are people living
their lives, they did not make a choice to be perverts and bother you and I tried
to teach her a few basic things.
However, she was not at all receptive to listening to me. She gave me the
classic parent line, “I know more than you, you don’t know anything, you don’t
have any real world experience.” Which obviously wasn’t true and of course she
doesn’t have any real experience here either! Even today, I don’t think she has
been exposed to as much as I have, even being only 20 years old and living in a
big city. I think people, especially older people, who have grown up in a
country town, can’t see the boundaries they’ve built to keep things out,
boundaries which are not just physical and geographical, but also spiritual and
cerebral for sure. I remember having this conversation with my mother and
trying to change her mind and trying to get her to think for herself. I was trying
to defend gay people and people who don’t identify with their assigned gender
and people who don’t feel the sexual desire like most people do, and she just
looks at me and asks, “Why do you care so much? Why do these faggots
concern you anyways?” I started crying at that moment and tried to explain to
her that the way she was talking was so rude and that it’s rude to talk to anyone
that way. I don’t think that I was upset because my mom thinks I’m a pervert,
because we’ve never had the kind of relationship in which she would ask me if I
like a boy or if I’m in a relationship like my friends were.
Because on top of everything my parents thought that any relationship
before age 18 was very bad. I think they believe that sex is, let’s say, just
something that happens after university or at least after 18. Sex was a big taboo
in our house, you couldn’t have a conversation with anybody about that kind of
stuff, so there was nobody even trying to teach me about straight relationships!
No one to say, this is how these things happen, you have to keep these things in
mind, protect yourself in this way, you always have the right to say no… And this
is why we have so many problems in Greece, because families are so unwilling
to teach their children about sex. Even if I were straight, I wouldn’t have been
able to talk to my parents openly. All this to say that when I had this
confrontation with my mom, I really wasn’t in a position to turn to her and say
“you know what? Yeah, those perverts include your child, so get over it. ”
Instead, I went back to my room and cried for the rest of the night. I remember
a very good friend of mine was a volunteer that year at Pride and she was at
the flag and I remember asking her how it was, how was it, how was your
experience and she said it was just great, an amazing experience, and I was so
jealous and I couldn’t wait for the time when I could go too. Well, I haven’t been
able to go Pride yet due to the circumstances…of course it didn’t happen due
to COVID, then the next year I was working, but I’d like to go this year.
So to this day, at age 20, I still have not revealed my identity to my
parents, but it’s also because of the type of relationship we have with each
other. I don’t think I would even feel comfortable sharing a heterosexual
relationship with them! However, I no longer feel the obligation to come out to
them either, because I don’t feel that I am the problem here. I feel that they
need to work out their own issues. If and when the time comes that I want to tell
them, “this is my partner, the person I love” they will need to digest it and take it
in. I’m no longer willing to waste any mental energy wondering what would be a
good time to talk to my parents about it, because I’ve come to accept myself
completely.
I think that if I’m talking to anyone, having a conversation about my
identity, I think it’s completely on them to resolve their own prejudices, it’s not
my obligation to feel like I’m the problem. As far as family is concerned, there is
always fear and anxiety for me because as they say, it’s such a small world, and
if somehow word gets out, if somebody says something like, “oh, I heard that
your daughter in Athens is doing this and that,” I do worry about what would
happen if my family found out from somebody else, and I won’t have the
choice to say it in my own way and the way I want it to be said, in whatever
way it is. I don’t think I’m so much afraid of the reaction, I’m more afraid that
someone will have taken this moment from me, taken something personal of
mine and used it against me, knowing that it will hurt my parents. Because my
parents are obviously not the kind of people who seem like they would receive
that kind of news well, so if anyone said something to them about me, it would
definitely be with bad intentions. I think it’s quite obvious that my parents have
issues, a little homophobic, a little racist, all of that unfortunately with the
upbringing they have and their assumptions. So I do have this fear that someone
would take the moment away from me and I would lose the opportunity to
externalize who I am to my parents in the way I want it to happen.
The reaction would definitely be…Well, I would definitely have fear and
anxiety about how they’re going to react, because you really don’t know what’s
going to come into their minds at that moment, how it’s going to go. However,
this is something I no longer spend time thinking and worrying about. I’m over it ,
and when the moment comes, whichever way it comes, I will welcome the
moment, sit with it, and I will face it as it is.
That’s how I see it now. Maybe three years from now I’ll see things
differently, I don’t know. This is how I feel now that I have the security of my
home, my friends, and my chosen circle. I’m no longer dependent upon only
the people that have been imposed on me. I have overcome almost every fear
and anxiety that I have, although even in Athens where people are more open
and things are relatively safe, it goes without saying that there is fear here too.
There is fear, there is homophobia. We frequently hear about incidents of
harassment and violence towards homosexuals and other groups. And about
police violence. So you never feel completely safe. Even in the capital city you
can’t say, “I came to Athens and now I feel 100% safe and I will do whatever I
want without fear.” That’s what I believe. Until we reach the point at which we
are actually protected by anti-discrimination law, I think it is very difficult to feel
comfortable and safe going out in public and acting just like a heterosexual
person does.
There are still many challenges that need to be addressed. The process of
changing legal gender is still long and complicated, and it’s difficult to access
gender transition resources. There are also legislative issues, like when will LGBT
families gain rights? Especially in Athens there are unfortunately so many families
in which both parents do not have equal rights. It’s sad to see two people
giving all their love to a child but without the protection of the law that
heterosexual parents have on their side. So there are many issues that still need
to be resolved and there needs to be a lot of visibility for LGBT families in
Greece, the so-called hidden families among us. And the younger generation
needs to teach their children that there are families with two dads, with two
moms, and that all these families are equally valid and love their friends equally,
there’s no difference.

Athens has definitely played a role in my identity today and shaping who I
am, because I have continued to learn things about myself here. While I had
thought that I already knew everything about who I was, what community was
like, how lesbian community works, I discovered an even bigger world here that
I didn’t know in my little provincial town. And I’m still learning. Lately I’m starting
to read more things about the LGBT community, different identities, about
concepts in Gender Studies, and I’m starting to understand the role that Athens
played, how the community here started to become more visible, how we got
to where we are now. Because things may not be perfect but we’re not at zero
anymore. And so, I’ve started digging around, learning as much as I can, and
talking to older people who tell me how they experienced things, how their
generation grew up, how they started to rebel against the expectations of their
time. And we got here, through magazines, posters, books, through all the
places that were created for people to gather. Places that were safe, and we
still have those but you don’t have to be limited to them, you can be who you
are elsewhere too. So definitely, Athens is part of my identity and it’s my home
now, no doubt about that.
The best parts of this journey are that I’ve discovered myself. I feel safe, I
feel that I’m not alone, and of course, all the love and respect I have for women
and the security I feel with my partners. Thankfully, I’ve never been in an
awkward social situation where a friend of mine said something to me like, “you
made me feel uncomfortable,” or “I felt like you were hitting on me.”
Fortunately it’s clear to everyone that if I’m complimenting my female friends it’s
done from a place of respect and joy, I’m saying something that any friend
would say, and it doesn’t matter that I am a lesbian. No one has accused me
of making them feel uncomfortable or speaking in a vulgar way. And so that
makes me feel good, accepted, because I see that my friends see me for who I
am.

The biggest fear I have is that we may never overcome the hatred, the
attacks, the homophobia that is directed towards our community and that we
may never see 100% acceptance, at least not in my lifetime. Maybe people will
indeed continue to see love between two people, or to see someone’s true
identity, as wrong or abnormal or a problem for society. I want to believe that
this is just ignorance and that in the years to come there will be much more
acceptance and people will have changed, they will have become better
informed, and that it’s time to put an end to all of the se myths that circulate
around homosexuals, transgender people, and asexual people.
In closing, I wish–and I think a lot of people who have grown up in the
country will identify with this feeling– I wish that I could say to my
thirteen-year-old self, “you know what, just be patient because you’re going to
get to 20 and all of this is going to seem unbelievable to you.” Back then when I
was thinking, “and what; and how; and what is this ? And what is a lesbian? and
what is gay? And is it wrong? And how can someone feel that way? And no it’s
abnormal, it’s wrong. I don’t really like this girl. I have to find some boy to like
instead, I have to pretend.” And when you think back to your little self, you want
to grab them and say, just be patient, things will change, you’ll be yourself, you’ll
find people who accept your identity and most importantly you’ll feel safe, you’ll
feel like this is who I am, this is who I am and okay, it’s not the end of the world.
You just like women, that doesn’t change who you are and how much you can
love people and care.
So, if anyone listening to us is suffering right now, and thinking that it will
never end, I want to say that it’s not permanent. There will come a time when
you will feel safe, you will feel welcomed. There will come a time when the
suffering about your identity is a distant thought in your past, you will have
optimism for the future and what it brings. At some point you too will meet
someone who makes you feel everything, you will be in a relationship one day in
which you feel safe, in a city and a country where you feel safe being yourself.

Eventually, no one will point fingers at you anymore. And all of this suffering will
end and it will be a very bad memory, but it will end. That’s my experience and
how I see it, and I just wish I could grab my little self and say, “Listen, at 20 you’re
going to be very happy.”