About Being Special
Tim Cook publicly acknowledged his sexuality today. Good for him. For the rest of his team and probably most of the rest of the world, it was back to business — it wasn’t exactly groundbreaking news.
Yet public statements like these by powerful and visible people still play their role.
Sometimes, there are downsides: especially when bisexual celebrities come out, there’s a lot of confusion and public backlash from haters as well as from their own communities. Sometimes the community thinks you’re just not gay enough to pass the gay litmus test. These things are unfortunate, but we’ll keep working on that.
One response to Tim Cook’s coming out which I didn’t like, but which I saw too often for comfort, was from mostly heterosexual men with privilege wanting to know why he would do so. Does he want to be treated special? (sic)
And various versions thereof.
I think it took me a long time to understand why someone could or would say that, because that sentiment is so alien to me.
Why would I tell you I’m gay to make men want to be with me more? (Seems like a terribly inefficient way to get laid for supposedly straight women)
Why would I tell you something takes away my privileges and sometimes possessions, just to seem cool?
Why would anyone want to be treated special?
Coming out is an act of reclamation in part.
It is also a statement of intent.
I believe if the people who say such terrible things understand the actual extent of the challenges your sexuality have brought you, they would not say such things. Tell that to the kid I know who jumped and died because his church and his family rejected him. Every single one of them.
The statement tells the unconvinced — it could be your friends, classmates, your family, your congregation, the media, your fans — that this is it, you can stop speculating. You can stop trying to pretend that I’m something I’m not. Not gonna happen.
My not-too-radical theory is that some heterosexual men with privileges who have never had to think very deeply about their attractions and lusts and their loves and their very existence, simply do not know how to process this act of intent. There are exceptions, of course: for example, friends of mine who face very similar discrimination and oppression over their choice of life partners for an array of different issues (people are always finding something to hate, it seems) — religion, caste (yes), age, social status, etc.
But if for the most part you have never had to stop to think about what makes you tick and why you are that way, like the man who used to try to pick up my girlfriend by telling her she just hadn’t met the right man yet (short of beating him up, I just told him to kindly consider the prospect of him being actually gay and that he hadn’t met the right man yet). He stopped and furrowed his brow and was extremely confused — it’s the sort of affront to your concept of a baseline default sexuality which everyone conforms to.
Back to Tim Cook. Why do people continue to say such ignorant things? I don’t know. But I do know that in that universe where everyone is straight and nobody is anything other than white and male, standing out in any way (unless you are the archetype powerful heterosexual white male) is not deserving enough. And perhaps it is precisely because Tim Cook is all of those things, except heterosexual, that makes this piece of news even more difficult to chew on.
