For the GLBTQ on Fluther, what did you do for National Coming Out Day yesterday?

Yesterday, I put a status update on Facebook saying “Happy Coming Out Day.” I also shared on FB some interesting articles about the fight for LGBTQ rights. Everyone on FB knows I’m gay already.

Today, I am remembering that 13 years ago Matthew Shepard died. His senseless murder sparked an international crusade against hate crimes of all types.

Not much. I had to go to school. I wore purple and changed my profile picture to an imagine that reads “Are you a boy or girl? No, are you?” I didn’t realize it was National Coming Out Day until late in the afternoon (which is strange because I thought I marked my calendar.) My heart goes out to those who were brave enough to take the step to come out (and to those still too afraid to follow.)

I started mentoring a 14 yr old gay kid that my friends told me had no one to really talk to or turn to. He now has over 25 gay adults in his life at his disposal. Several positive websites have been suggested to him since than. Happy about that!

Also remembering when I came out in high school. I went to a school with over 2000 kids and one day, I was tired of them asking if I was gay, so I finally said yes. Since then, it has been a battle, but one worth all the fight. I got to go to my 1998 senior prom – in a tux, with an ex-girlfriend. That was a night I could never forget. I didn’t just do it for me. I did it for all the gay kids in my school and surrounding areas. The moon was surely over Parma that night ;) Also thinking about when my arsehole parents finally let me come out to my little sister. All I wanted to do was tell her about me and many of my friends. More importantly, I needed for her to know that because I am gay, it doesn’t mean she needs to go out and prove that isn’t or is. I think that was probably one of the best pieces of advice I could have given her. Too many people have made that mistake in the past and I couldn’t let her even think about looking down that road.

Cleaned out my closet (really).

Nothing specific to NCO day. I did live my life safely as a queer person, which is a win. I also taught gender and sex in a lecture to my students and got them to understand why it’s important to fight gender binarism.

@spykenij, if by Parma you mean the one in NE Ohio, I admire you!

@GracieT – That’s the one :) Class of 1998.

I am not sure what I should classify myself as, except that I am definitely a libertarian when it comes to the subject of who someone else chooses to make love with and what they do when they get together—so long as it’s consensual, it’s no business of mine. I was a highly sexed child, thinking about it when I was really little. From the time I became aware of the difference between boys and girls, I knew I wanted to be a girl. I loved their clothes and their beauty and voices and everything about them. When I was 4 I asked my mom for a nightgown to sleep in. I am sure my dad was mortified, and I guess she convinced him that they should give me one and embarrassment would make me give it up, but that didn’t work. I loved that gown and would only part with it so it could be washed and returned to service.

I think that set the stage for a bad relationship with my father right from that point. When I grew out of that gown, they refused to allow a replacement. I still remember the sense of loss, and how that baby blue gown looked and felt. I struggled with gender identity up into my mid twenties. I got every close to undergoing transsexual surgery. As a requirement for approval by the psychologist monitoring my case, I lived and worked as a woman for nearly two years. I wrote a column for the LA Star. But when I learned that I could never be a real woman, could never have XX chromosomes, a uterus, ovaries or the extra layer of fat that makes women so soft and cuddly, I switched course. I decided I’d just learn to use what nature decided to give me to the fullest of my ability.

Now, I’m 67 years old, have been married (yes, to a woman) for 33 years, work out every day and have rippling muscles and sport a close cropped beard that’s almost all white. While I am fully faithful to my wife, in my heart of hearts I love making love with women or men. I fully support @Simone_De_Beauvoir‘s assertion that enforced binarism is wrong headed and we would all be better off if we’d lose the uprightness about gender issues and realize that there are as many answers out there as there are people to come up with them.

But to answer your question, I didn’t even realize that yesterday was National Coming Out Day. So to make up for that oversight, this is my coming out on Fluther. I’ve never shared these intimate details with the community before, and it feels good to let you all know that I’m just who I am, and if somebody wants to call that queer, that’s OK with me. I’m unique enough to proudly own that epithet.

Good for you, ETpro!

@ETpro : Thank you for thinking highly enough of us to share your intimate story.

@ETpro Wow, thank you for that.

BTW, while we are celebrating all the human rights we have gained over the last 50 years, let’s not forget that one of the very first advocates for treating gays like human beings, Frank Kameny, died yesterday at 86. He served with distinction in WWII. When he came back he used his GO Bill to get a PhD in Astronomy and with those credentials in hand, he went to work for the US Government. He was fired in 1957 when the Government discovered he was gay.

He took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, and when they followed the prevailing political winds instead of the Constitution, and dismissed his case in 1961, he founded the first Gay Rights Organization and kept up his work. Like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks as tireless fighters for human rights for all humans.

I watched lesbian porn last night. It wasn’t for national coming out day (I didn’t actually know it was national coming out day), just because I wanted to.

Mmmm…^^ (hot coming from you).

@Leanne1986 – Out of curiosity (worked at a fetish shop), what was this flick called?

@ETpro, thank you for feeling comfortable enough with all of us, warts and all, to come out and share your transsexual identity. A person I’ve become close to recently is a trans, and she rarely feels comfortable enough with people to let them “in”.

@GracieT People who aren’t in sync with the gender of the body they are born in may be the last bastion of prejudice in America. Chas Bono is doing us a great service being out and on national TV. I don’t really care if he’s a great dancer or not, he’s teaching people that he’s a human being just like they are, and that it isn’t such a horrible thing that he isn’t a carbon copy of their “ideal man”

I stayed in.

@Jude I have my moments ;)

@spykenij I couldn’t tell you what it was called. I just found it on line (I think it was on a site called pornhub though)