Thank you, that was very nicely said.

It's distressing the degree to which people want to blame others for their identities while regarding their own as some kind of fundamental default of nature. It's only "identity politics" when it's somebody else's identity.

Thanks. I think that gets lost easily in these discussions. This is my family. My partner, my mother and father-in-law, my sister-in-law, my nephew, my home, my plans for the future. It's connected to everything I might tell you about my life over the past 14 years. Having someone label all that as "awkward" or "political" is pretty extreme, especially when the person suggesting it doesn't even have a hint at the enormity of what they just said. It's the very definition of "casual erasure", something that sounds political and till someone comes up to you and tries to erase you.

Edit: to the people down voting my mother-in-law, she is a kind and caring woman!

I don't think you deserve to be downvoted but I don't believe having a conversation about heterosexual relationships is somehow free of consequences. Even if I had a conversation about a partner who is straight, people are going to make snap judgements about the their appearance, what they do for work, what religion they belong to (Be prepared to be judged if it is the wrong one!) etc.

Many children have been disowned by their parents because they fell in love with someone from the wrong family. There is no shortage of thousand year old stories and plays describing this exact situation. So, the idea that "Like the fish, you can't even see the water because you have always been in it." doesn't really resonate with me. That doesn't mean our society is free from discrimination and unfair treatment, but painting people with a broad brush serves to alienate those who might be your allies, and is ironically the very thing you are advocating against.

I think you need to experience some discrimination to see the "water." It gives you an ability to better understand what other people deal with, even if you don't share their identity. I absolutely think experiencing religious discrimination, gender discrimination and so on can give you lots of empathy for a person not like you, but dealing with similar challenges.

To me it's pretty clear the person I was responding to had zero frame of reference to what discrimination feels like, which is why I said so. I really don't know how to get that through to a person with words alone. I think there needs to be a parallel experience to build on.

It's no broad brush to say that a person who thinks sexual orientation has no bearing on identity must be squarely within the favored majority.

> To me it's pretty clear the person I was responding to had zero frame of reference to what discrimination feels like, which is why I said so.

I sympathize with you here, I really do: but making such broad assumptions is a bad way to foster real, productive conversations. Identity and queerness are deeply personal topics with all sorts of nuance and interplay between them. I appreciate that you're living your truth, but coming off with this "scorched earth" rhetoric isn't going to win you any fans.

Can you unpack "scorched earth rhetoric" for me? I am clearly upset that someone tried to stuff me back in the closet, but isn't that a natural reaction? I think it's fairly generous to share my personal experiences in the hopes that someone out there might learn how to better respect others.

Well, it starts from your first line.

> It's only weird to you because you are almost certainly straight, cis and male. Let me explain.

I don't think that's a fair assessment, and it's certainly not a true generalization. I'm not cis, but I completely understand how weird the concept of "coming out" is. Nobody wants to put you back in the closet, we just want to discuss how much the current paradigm surrounding sexuality sucks.

My priors on who is most likely to have low empathy for minorities are pretty strong. I bet I am right, but could be wrong:)

I agree that "coming out" takes some explanation. You're going to have an easier time explaining it to some people than others. A shared experience certainly helps! Otherwise you're left trying to explain what blue looks like to someone who's never seen it.

Why does the current paradigm suck? There is unprecedented LGBT acceptance, and that does not suck. There are no sucky paradigms around jeans vs. khakis because there isn't a cohort of people who would prefer if khakis were banned in public.

> Why does the current paradigm suck?

From great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent post:

> This was ironically one of the things that was hardest about coming out as gay, for me. Nobody ever treated me the same way again. I was either uncomfortably praised or silently judged, with practically no in-between. Suffice to say, my sexuality is on a need-to-know basis, now.

That does suck, but isn't this exactly why LGBT stories need to be shared instead of hidden? I have lived in more and less accepting places. In the less accepting places, I have experienced the unwanted praise and judgement. In the more accepting places I have been treated as a regular old person with a regular old life. And I think the world is moving more and more towards that place of boring acceptance, and that is just an awesome thing. I am forever grateful to the people who put in all that hard work so I can go about my life. And in gratitude I will keep talking about mine, and keep helping other people who aren't being heard to be heard as well.

For what it's worth, I didn't read any "scorched earth" rhetoric in dougmwme's original post. I thought it was a reasoned argument, well-explained, in a way that gave me a really interesting perspective on the situation (as someone who has heard and thought about these sorts of perspectives often).

Maybe read it after applying the principle of charity, without assuming the writer is angrily banging on the keyboard, and instead is being thoughtful and trying to teach?

Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

I wasn't thinking as much about normal conversations - "I was at lunch with my boyfriend", etc. It's one thing to say that, it's quite another to make statements to people about what sort of sex you want to have -- that's what I find awkward.

I guess the takeaway is that sex is pretty central to civilization and society, as it's a prerequisite to and determinant of family structure. It really is part of our identity.

I think the issue is that a gay man or a lesbian does not yet know if it is safe to even have those normal conversations with some person they are just getting to know. If they're asked a question that would lead to "I was at lunch with my boyfriend/girlfriend", they might get a homophobic response.

Directly coming out to you, when they are comfortable and emotionally prepared for it, is a way to avoid a traumatic reaction during normal conversation.

Beyond that, when you've been forced to repress some part of yourself due to social expectations, it can be a big relief to be able to specifically tell people about that part of you, rather than just letting it come up obliquely during conversation when you happen to refer to a same-sex partner.

I really do appreciate your response and glad I got through. And yeah, sex is pretty foundational to society. As I get older I see that more and more. Just know that the next time a person comes out to you explicitly and says "I'm gay!", they are not trying to awkwardly insert their sex lives, they are doing the best they could to get through a potentially difficult moment with a person they had to come out to. This is especially true when a person is at the beginning of their journey to accept themselves and find acceptance in others.