If We Were All The Same, Would We Hate Ourselves?

Homosexuals are regarded by and large as liberal. This is not a choice many of us have made; it was instead made by the liberals. They chose to accept us into their fold when most more conservative thinkers were busy staring at their cufflinks or looking at their polished shoes. Liberals are the open books of the political spectrum, they aren’t racist, homophobic or sectarian. But is it fair to tar us all with the same brush? Are gays the most –phobic of all?

I know many lesbians who will not by principle knowingly date a bisexual girl. Common comments include ‘That’s just being greedy’, and ‘You just can’t have the best of both worlds.’ Surely this is biphobia?

And what about the straights? ‘They’re all just teases’, ‘Straight girls can’t jump’ and ‘Remember – they can’t help it.’ We may be a minority – but boy can we do snide comments well.

So what is it that makes us so afraid? I don’t believe it’s just a splinter of our culture. I believe it’s deep and engrained, it runs deeper than just peer pressure or superficial appearances; it’s a fear of falling in love.

Most of us will have fallen for a straight girl at some stage, and probably that unrequited love was smashed by the arrival of a man, trampling through our daydreams and starring in our nightmares. It is this same fear, not of women, but of male interference that sets in place our phobia of anyone who isn’t like us.

It is somewhat foolish of us to imagine that a partner is more likely to cheat on us with a man than with another woman, but then if your relationship is going to be riddled with these insecurities, it’s maybe best not to enter into it at all.

Perhaps it’s time to live by that Mark Twain quote I keep seeing everywhere:

“Dance like nobody's watching; love like you've never been hurt. Sing like nobody's listening; live like it's heaven on earth”