From: STella@thelema.uucp (STella)
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: Re:  Outing at the Oscars? (Was: Why are you all so nice?)
Date: 9 Apr 92 10:21:50 GMT
Organization: Idiosyncratic Anarchic Order

In article <rhialto.0024@falu.sneakernet> rhialto@falu.sneakernet (Olaf Seibert) writes:
>The fundamental problem is the contradiction between everyone's privacy,
>and the fact that it is a Good Thing if the whole world knows that the
>"default" orientation isn't really the only thing there is.

What's the problem?  I'm out.  This is MY choice, and I've made it,
and I am quite happy about it.  I don't need to out others.

If you think (and I would agree) that it's important to break the
power of the heterosexual default, that's great.  But what gives you
the right, or our struggle the necessity, to out others?

When I was much younger, I had a friend, much older than I, who was so
far back in the closet sie couldn't even hump the doorknob.  What I
got from hir was not merely an example of being closeted, an
illustration of being ashamed of what one is, but a determination
that, by the time I was hir age, I would be not only OUT, but flaunt
it.  (Made that deadline with years to spare, actually.)  When sie
finally, timidly, came out to me by mail (you know, that old-fashioned
stuff on paper), I called hir up, and said "Look, I knew _that_ years
ago -- one of the first things I noticed when I saw your house was
that you and Lee shared a room -- why you telling me NOW?  Can I
help?"  What I didn't tell hir (why should I blame hir for being who
sie was?) was that it would have meant a great deal to me to have an
out queer for an example when I was younger, because I KNOW how much
harder it would have been to be out in 1962.  Sie felt that sie could
not -- and had sie attempted to come out, sie would NOT have been
allowed to teach, at that time.

If, for any reason, someone isn't comfortable being out, why should I
force hir?  I can certainly make the het default visible as the shoddy
lie it is by my own life.  Why hit someone else with what they fear?
It may be that I'm right in seeing the closeted life as a fate worse
than, but similar to, death, but the only person I have a right to
choose for is ME.

And I'd rather that queers be represented by people like Elf!!, like
Jeff Dauber, like Harry Ugol and Tsilke Pearlman, who are gloriously
OUT as what they are, than by some poor wounded soul with
closet-splinters tangled in hir matted hair.  I don't want to be
represented by Roy Cohn, or Liberace, or Rock Hudson, but by people
who are so little ashamed of who and what they are that they can say
"I'm here, I'm queer, Yougottaproblem?"

>Given this, choices need to be made. Which is more important? It's a
>choice. A very difficult one, since I always have valued privacy, but I
>have become to value visibility more and more. I wouldn't have a simple
>answer, and I also wouldn't expect one to exist.

For me, there is a simple answer.  I will be private about the things
I choose to keep as secrets.  I will be as honest, as open, as
assumption-breaking as I can be about others.  And I will respect the
right of others to likewise make their decisions as they see fit -- if
I knew Jody Foster personally, I might tell her how glad, how free, I
am to not have that secret to keep.

STella@xanadu.com	1016 E. El Camino Real, #302, Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Newsgroups: soc.bi