From: cliveg@cix.compulink.co.uk (Clive Grace)
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: Anger
Date: 21 Jul 92 15:17:00 GMT
Reply-To: cliveg@cix.compulink.co.uk


I'm angry

This is a [not] very quick posting to say that I'm feeling angry today. It's okay to feel angry, but I've just come to realise that some people whom I've confided in are not as supportive as they really say they are or appear to be. I had a nice chat with a guy whom a few months back split up with his wife. The rest of the office was (and still are) fairly negative towards him because he had missed a few deadlines, but I sort of just kept quiet and offered him work on an non-time dependent basis -- I like 



to be nice to people, and his problems echoed some of my own albeit in a different manner.

I told him he needed to eat and that I was happy to give him work if he produced the goods without becoming counter-productive, i.e. my having to  edit his work longer than it took him to write it. I trusted him and he pulled himself out, and is happily stabilized. He appreciated that and when his life settled down, he remembered what I did for him and we've become friends as a result. Now my life is a little unsteady at the moment, and I've just been busted down at work, he's offering me some really good 



freelance stuff and has put me in contact with people for whom I can write and design and earn extra money.

This guy, (who lives in the south of France) rang me up last night... I don't tell him the details of my problems, but nevertheless he offers some really supportive words. I also find out from him that my boss isn't as bi-positive as he really lets himself out to be. In my absence he makes jokes about "shirt lifters" and can't handle my looking (note: not comments, not statements, not "out" behaviour), but my fucking LOOKING at another man in an appreciative manner.

If any of you have read C.S.Lewis' "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" you may remember the bit where Lucy goes into Aslan's garden and reads the book of spells and listens in on a conversation between two friends who are talking about her behind her back. If you know the bit, then you might know how I feel, at the moment.
John Writes

> But there are heaps of lesbian and gay people who are happy
> to accept bi people as bi people, and conversely, are proud to be 
> welcomed into bi space, as I was at Dave's party, for 
> example. 

John, I know you were a bit offended by my comments about stereotypes. What I ommitted to say is that I too have met some amazing Gay and Lesbian and Straight people out there. My comments were restricted to a small group of 15-17 people that basically saw me coming and thought (for whatever reason), "this person's happines lies with us", and they took no notice of my particular needs as I was battling with my identity as I was coming out. I am now letting myself feel angry, I have every right to feel angr



y, at people who talk behind my back, and at people who will not accept myself as an individual.

John, you've made me realise that I have yet to let go of that particular memory, and that I shall have to if I intend to progress as a person, and forgive the people, but not what they tried to do, (it reminds me of the old Christian adage to forgive the sinner but not the sin).

I never want to talk behind people's backs, all I ask is that they do the same for me. It won't work in every case, but on the whole I think the world would be a better place if dishonest people didn't feel the need to be false, especially my boss, who I think is missing out on a whole opportunity to learn about working with bi people.
Newsgroups: soc.bi,soc.motss