Following up on the article “Why Do Gay Men Practice Together?“. Here are some of my thoughts…
We have often heard other people or even gay people saying that gay group or women’s group or transgender group are not necessarily. Why can’t they just blend in and talk about their issues together with others. Why do they need to be special or have a special group just for themselves?
In many ways, it is indeed redundant if there is equality in the society and its law and people don’t discriminate against each other. However, for certain groups discrimination is high and can even lead to death, depression and lot of other negative emotions.
Just look the recent apologies by Ex ex-gay ministry personal in the US and look at what is perceived as a higher proportion of drug and alcohol overuse within the gay community and the lack of self-esteem so prevalent with the gay community, including depression and suicide.
As long as there is strong discrimination within society, it is necessary for a group of like-minded people to meet to feel safe enough to talk about their problems without being judged and to share their stories so that at the very least, they don’t think that they are the only ones with such problems. Not only that, because of the lack of visibility and information, being together (virtually or otherwise) helps people to exchange information and to normalise their relationship with the world.
Nam Khim told a story related to him by a monk who has a follower who was secretly a cross-dresser. He has been cross-dressing for a while and always thought it was wrong for him to do so. He consulted the monk, but he told him that it is okay and nothing to worry about. The most that he is, is “strange”, everyone is strange in some ways anyway. That person, did not really take in his advise and continued looking for answers. Later on, he met a Chinese monk in Taiwan and the monk told him that it was wrong. A few days later, the person committed suicide.
It saddens me a lot even as I type this out, to think that there are still people out there who may face such troubles and has not seen the happiness of realization for oneself how okay and normal it is.
Of course, there are always people who just want to seek an answer to confirm their own negative thoughts and give it the justification to end one’s life. I wonder if that person could have been better off if he/she had been in a group with peers and to hear each other out.
Having said that, the importance of forming a specific group, like gay group, women’s group, etc is to normalise one relationship and view with the world and then to reach out to the society to normalise that relationship. Once that has been achieved, we must no longer hold on to such identity but to let go in this normalised settings.
One of phenomenon that I am seeing though is the overly safe environment that is created, such that the participants does not want to break out of it and hang on to a specialised identity instead of trying to normalise it. Sometimes it’s the participants, but sometimes it’s the caretakers.
As I have often said as an example, the only way for society to treat intellectually disabled person better is to expose society constantly to them, so that we can build up the right skills to interact with them. If we keep sheltering them in the homes, worried that people will stare at them or not treat them well, and wait for the day society is ready to accept them normally, it’s just wishful thinking and irresponsibilities from the part of the caretakers. Yes, indeed people will stare and have curious looks initially, this is human nature, we all stare at things unfamiliar to us all, whatever it is. But overtime, if this becomes a norm, then such will be less and less and persons those who stare will become a minority and be told off by the public if they did so. Sometimes, we may have to learn their language in order to interact with them, it’s not a burden for us, but rather an enrichment for us, just like interacting with the deaf community.
However, for that to ever happen, the ball have start rolling from our end, not from society although this would be good, even though it may seem to us that they are discriminating against us against our wills. If we don’t make it a point to normalise our relationship with ourselves as a gay person, nothing will ever happen to our lives to make it better (if you wish it to).
Metta
Kelvin Wong
