My experiences with homophobia..

It’s shocking the amount of homophobia someone can experience even before they are out of the closet. It’s terrifying when you’re stuck in the closet and you’re surrounded by homophobic people.

You feel like you can’t be yourself at all. Because according to homophobic people, you’re a disgrace and were never meant to exist in the first place. I grew up with a lot of that, but of course no-one ever said anything about it.

Anything related to the LGBTQ+ community was never mentioned. And if you did mention it you were immediately shut up. Homophobia doesn’t have to be directed at someone for someone to know that it exists.

Everyday when I go to school, well when I was at school, I would hear at least one person say something homophobic. After I came out at school, there was a lot of people who came up to me and said “Oh my gosh…I am so proud of you” and I couldn’t tell you how much I appreciated that.

But there was also a great deal of people who stopped talking to me, I don’t know if it was because of that, but they did. I’ve had people come up to me and say things to me like:

“You’re so disgusting..” or “Oh so you like d*ck? Oh you’re a bottom aren’t you? You must like..” “Oh you fa**ot..”

..and a bunch of other things like that.

It really did get to me at first, my initial reaction was like, yeah? Do most people even know what that word means?

It’s worse because the school does nothing about it. I see people at school who are bullied for being gay, or called gay as an insult.

I’ve mostly seen straight guys doing this though. Which I want to know why they think it’s an insult. Is it because it’s always had a negative connotation associated with it? Is it because their masculinity is so fragile?

I wish people who were gay, myself included, didn’t even have to think that they could be hate crimed simply for being themselves. For exercising their human rights. For simply existing..

But apparently some people believe that depending on what your sexuality is, that also determines what rights you will be guaranteed.

Or even on how you decide to identify, gender, self-expression, whatever. I don’t know about you, but I think Harry Styles looks fucking amazing in a dress.

Yes he looks amazing but that’s also besides the point. And also…what is gender anyways? I’d say socially structured.

The people at school bothered me at first but after a while I just got used to it and I started ignoring it. But what to bother me the most had to been my dad. I’m pretty sure he knew I was gay when he found me looking things up on my chrome book…if you know what I mean.

After that I wasn’t allowed to be left alone with anything, I always had to be within his eye of sight, he always took away my things for no reason as well. If there was a reason, I don’t know what it was.

Let me just mention that he was abusive, and he also happened to be homophobic.

I’m not throwing this out there to be like: “Oh so you’re accusing your father of being homophobic because he was abusive?” or “Oh you’re just calling names now aren’t you, because you want attention, huh?”

The amount of times I’ve gotten that is..disgusting.

Since I know there will be people who will assume things like that, completely ignorant to what they are saying. See, I come from experience, I don’t just throw things out there to say them. I have a reasons behind my words.

All those days, when I was yelled at and screamed at, I knew it went deeper than just him disliking me. I knew he was homophobic all along, and I don’t think I even need to explain why.

See, you know someone more than dislikes you when they go out of their way to make you feel miserable. Thats exactly what my dad did, and I think he did that because he knew I was gay.

Anyways I should probably cut this story right about here.

I’d like to say that I grow from these type of things and I’d like to make it clear very early on that I do not post these things seeking attention. I post because I feel that someone could see this and maybe not feel as lonely as this dark scary world.

We are in a dark scary world, that can also become a bright welcoming world. We’ll get there one day..

~Matias Sebert