09-03-2017, 05:17 PM
Dear Project,
I’m very happy to have spoken to you last night. I have found confirmation that the situation of gays is objectively changing and that the idea of homosexuality as normality is slowly breaking. I thought I would summarize in a short writing my experience on this subject, which then I think is not at all a rare thing.
After graduating from a university in the South of Italy, I I changed my university to attend higher level courses in one of the North. In the new university I found that didactic and research are of medium level, I actually expected something better, what literally shocked me was the level of normal life of gay guys within the faculty, something really unimaginable in a southern university. Here where I am now, being gay is no longer a taboo, the guys are not hiding, or at least there are many that do not hide and they are not just the extreme defenders of the gay movement, here do not even hide the normal gay guys” (it looks like a strange association of words). I was determined to safeguard my privacy, but then, without the need to admit or declare anything, a little group of guys (at least a dozen) has been created who were mutually sympathetic and understood each other at another level. After about six months I had a clear evidence that the guys in the group were all gay and here, dear Project, I have to say that it was far beyond the classic 8% that you consider the percentage of gay guys on the total population. Our graduation course was attended by 51 guys, and more or less from about twenty girls, out of 51 boys 11 are gay! More than 20%. And I’m sure they’re gay because they told me that. I wonder how these abnormal gay concentration could be possible in a specific degree course, which is of a purely technical-scientific orientation. Perhaps the explanation is that gay people are far more than 8% and that their number is largely underestimated just because, apart from the gay friendly environments, gay guys do not go out? I wonder if, in other gay friendly contexts, there are percentages close to 20%, that is, essentially the same of my faculty.
But there is another thing to note: gay dialogue is becoming more and more free and spontaneous. The burden of erotic chat and dating sites, at least at the highest cultural levels, tends to decrease, slowly, it is true, but progressively. For so many good hetero guys, the fact that a friend is gay does not devalues the friendship, But there is something else, in the surrounding social environment there is no gossip about homosexuality, here at least, the topic of homosexuality is perceived as absolutely neutral. The gays themselves have the pleasure of being together but do not lock in a ghetto. Their being together comes from sharing their experiences and feelings in some way homogeneous and is not aimed at sex. Gay friendships last in time. Gay couples last in time. The break of a gay couple relationship does not diminish the relationship of esteem and friendship; solidarity is perceived very strong. I also can see something else, within the gay group of our degree course, the boys talk very little about sex, not for embarrassment or self-repression, but because they consider sexuality a private dimension to be preserved, but if we don’t talk about sex, we talk about love using typical categories of affective life and couple relationships. Today a gay guy, at least in my faculty, does not feel embarrassed when talking about gay love. I met several couples, and were couples who, at least at the origin, were born as couples destined to last. Relations with the hetero world are here, at least, never in terms of contrast, and the strong friendships between a gay and a straight guy is by no means a rarity, and I speak of friendships in which the straight guy is aware that his friend is gay. Even relationships with girls are very quiet and it happens quite often that a girl does not matter if her boyfriend frequents a gay friend. I have the impression that the person is evaluated as such, and without any reference to general categories such as heterosexual, gay or bisexual. Another thing struck me too much, here almost a half of my group, 5 out of 11 gay guys came out with their parents and, more surprisingly, they did not find any obstacles on the part of their parents. In my city of origin gays are completely invisible and the coming out in the family is an absolute rarity. In these things the North is actually at another level. Being gay for so many guys is not a problem. Living for many years in the South I did not realize how much the situation of gay guys was different in different regions of Italy and I did not even think that there could be so favorable situations for gays. Here the places labeled gay are very few, I didn’t imagine such a situation, there is no separate gay subculture, but among the elderly people there is still the apparent tendency to ghettoize gays as a group, I say it’s apparent because elderly people make strange talk but only occasionally when they feel more or less compelled to do so, that is, when there is social expectation in that sense, but also grandparents who make statements of greater closure about gays, in the end have gay nephews, love them and no problem is created for that, but in public it’s hard to avoid the homophobic comedy. Among the guys in my group (the eleven gay guys in my course) I did not even find one objectively concerned or distressed by his being gay, but for the truth I did not even find one special proud of being gay, they are all absolutely quiet guys and they live in a very natural way. One of these guys, when I still did not know he was gay, had sent me an email that I think is very interesting. I copy it down here in full with his permission:
Hi A.,
I was very happy to talk to you this morning, I would bet you were a smart guy, as well as a phenomenon in the studies. There are so many universities in the South but, seeing you, I guess they are not so bad, you have a very theoretical and scientific training, we are much more engineers, you tend split hairs over and build precise mathematical models, we linearize everything, and at most we do some laboratory tests. I (Fabio, called Failed genius), Andrea (called the Minister) and Marco (said the 1st Thin) began to study together and we are very well. If the thing for you is fine we could even study in four rather than three, they all agree. We are all gay guys, but we do not have any prejudices against intelligent straight guys. Let me know what you think about.
Fabio (Failed genius)