Note To My Younger Gay Self During Pride Month
starobserver.com.auIt was April 1968, and as an awkward young adult not long in the city from my rural upbringing, I was having an employment interview for a foot-in-the-door office job.I expected empathy from the young male interviewer as he also had a small-town upbringing.Eventually, he said I had the job, adding with a somewhat threatening tone, “You’re not a poofter, are you?” That ended any imagined empathy.
He had carried his rural homophobic bias to the city and wasn’t afraid to use it. Back then, homosexuality was illegal and rarely spoken about.
Gay men were never visible to straight society, and especially not to employers. Discrimination was a fact of life for all sorts of reasons, not just sexuality.In those younger days, with no visible gay role models, I thought I was one of the few who felt like I did.
There were no support mechanisms, no one to talk to about my feelings, and few places to find other like-minded men. “You’ll grow out of it,” I was told by a family doctor.
