Be Yourself

[gayprojectforum]

Hi Simon,

as I wrote to you last night, I resume the speech to get a little more specific about homosexuality. About the fact that it is not a disease but a normal variant of human sexuality, now, there are no more doubts for years, The World Health Organization has been saying this for decades, but prejudices, despite the practically unanimous opinion of the scientific community, resist and are widespread.

I can tell you that I see things from a European and more specifically Italian point of view, but, also in Europe, local variations in the ways of dealing with homosexuality remain substantially enormous. In Southern Europe, homosexuality is still not accepted as a normal reality and this still causes problems related to coming out, problems that in Northern Europe, where sexual education is serious, secular and obligatory, no longer exist.

A significant thing, which is a very sensitive index about whether or not gays are integrated, is the presence in the various countries of the gay-themed OCD, that is of obsessive compulsive disorder centered on the obsessive fear of being gay and on the tendency to undergo continuous tests. (erection and masturbation) to seek confirmation of one's sexual orientation. In Southern Europe the gay-themed OCD is quite widespread and the guys with gay-themed OCD who have contacted me are many, they are 100% hetero guys but strongly influenced by the OCD. In Northern Europe, where the idea of being gay is not demonized, the gay-themed OCD is practically absent, and the OCD is structured on other cores of obsessive thinking, depending on age and education.

I have seen that you speak of coming out as an important achievement, this means that you feel the coming out as a possible thing, without really serious consequences to the point of being unmanageable, but I have seen in Italy, and moreover in Northern Italy, that is in one of the most economically developed regions in the world, parents who kicked out their sons because they were gay, brothers who didn’t invite their gay brother to their marriage, apartment owners who, once they became aware of having rented a house to a gay couple, have done everything to make life impossible for that gay couple, so as to force them to go away. These phenomena unfortunately exist and so I have to advise the guys who are going to come out to everyone to be extremely cautious. It is not a matter of being afraid but of objectively evaluating individual situations. 

Obviously a coming out aimed only at some people is almost always the best choice. In particular, the coming out in the workplace is risky. To declare yourself gay in the workplace means to deliver a loaded weapon to other people, who probably will not use it immediately and will abstain for opportunity reasons from demonstrating homophobic attitudes, but, if the opportunity arises, they could very well use what they know. There are environments where things are different, and even very different, but declaring themselves gay publicly represents in any case a risk to be valued carefully.

From what I see every day, I’m led to think that for the individual well-being, rather than a general coming out it is useful to have a group of serious gay friends with whom it is possible to be oneself without pretending to be straight.