Thread by @jaythenerdkid, so I've been thinking about this since I wrote it and I [...]

so I've been thinking about this since I wrote it and I think the reason I'm so uncomfortable with LGBT gatekeeping in creative spaces is that we don't all have equal access to the relative privilege of being safely out https://twitter.com/jaythenerdkid/status/1304119395946385409

https://twitter.com/jaythenerdkid/status/1304119395946385409

I think about how lucky I am to be out of the closet every day

I also think a lot about how when I lived in a US state where I could be fired from my job for being gay, I effectively had to stuff myself back in the closet and it sucked

I have family who don't let their kids talk to me because I'm gay, by the way

I don't feel safe going home to visit the family members who do accept me because they might love me but our societies do not

I'm an LGBT muslim, people regularly want to see me dead for this

when I wrote that tweet in response to TEDx using "womxn" about half the quote tweets were muslims saying I was going to hell or calling me haraam or saying I wasn't muslim at all

all I said was that trans women are women, something the qur'an doesn't even touch

but I'm out and I still think that's a joy and a privilege and I'd rather have the target on my back than have to pretend to be something I'm not, which is not a choice a lot of people get to make

the thing about this, the really shitty thing about this, is that being out or closeted should be a personal choice and you should never have to explain yourself but we live in a society that hates LGBT people so it's not that simple

like I said yesterday, this is a stick with two short ends:

stay closeted, maybe be safe, never find the place where you belong

come out, maybe find your community, put your life in danger

I think it's natural for people who are out to feel a little resentment towards people who aren't, and vice-versa, but can we just sit for a second and acknowledge that the only reason that resentment exists at all is that society makes both being closeted and being out untenable

there's no winning move here, LGBT people suffer either way, and I understand why we take our anger out on each other, I really do, but ultimately the oppression is not coming from inside the house

you can be fired for being gay in more than 50% of US states

it's illegal to be openly gay in about 70 countries

you can be murdered for being LGBT and in far too many parts of the world, your murderer can blame it on you and get away with it

and I think that's the bigger story, that whether you're closeted or out you're still *some* kind of unsafe and most people don't even have the luxury of choosing which kind of unsafe they want to be

I wish my identity was nobody's business but mine, but that's not the world I live in

it should be the world I live in - my being bisexual or non-binary should be as incidental as my being 5'9" or having brown eyes

but it's not, is it?

and doesn't that just make you want to scream? and if it doesn't, why not?

I don't care that a closeted woman made money writing stories for young LGBT people - I'm glad those books exist, they seem to have helped a lot of young people and that's a net good imo

I care that if she'd made the decision to come out before she became a successful published author, she likely wouldn't have been given the chance to tell those stories at all

I care that so many people never get to tell their stories at all

and I care about the people who are angry and resentful, but I also care about the people who never have the option of coming out at all, because what kind of world is it that we live in where these are our options?

like, put the keyboard down for a second and think about the fact that this is the world we live in, where you can be relatively safe or you can be yourself out in the open but you can't be both, where you have to do the math and decide what to sacrifice so you can stay alive

LGBT people should be so accepted that having LGBT characters in your book is a non-story

LGBT people should be safe to come out or not come out in every corner of the world and it shouldn't be a story, it should be just another thing about you, like a haircut or new shoes

you shouldn't have to choose between being out and being safe and I'm angry that anyone has ever had to make that choice

I was angry that I had to make it and I'm angry for every person who's had to make it

I don't care, I really don't, who writes gay people if they do it well

I care that you have to choose between being gay and being successful

I care that some people don't even get that choice, that they never even get close enough to success to get to choose what they'll sacrifice to have it

I understand the anger because so many people never get to come out at all and for those people, the fact that some people choose to stay closeted must feel like a slap in the face

I need you to understand that it's not

I need you to understand that there are no good choices

I need you to understand that as long as it's illegal to be gay, as long as you can be fired for it, killed for it, denied housing or education for it, be targeted by the cops or denied medical care for it, there will never be any good choices, just a series of bad ones

and no amount of closeted bi women writing stories for gay teens is going to change that, so feel angry if you need to, I get it, but holy shit, y'all, they're waging genocide against us and in a lot of places they're *winning*

I will never be able to go home because I made the choice to come out

there are people in my family, people related to me by blood, who would kill me for the choice I made and feel like they were doing me a favour

they are waging genocide and they are WINNING

so if one closeted bisexual found herself by writing some books, you know what, good for her and I hope she's not made to suffer for it the way so many of us are because I wouldn't wish this on anyone

none of us should be wishing this on anyone

these are choices none of us should have to make and if you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the people who made it legal for you to marry your same-gender partner and legal for your boss to fire you the day after the wedding

be mad at conversion therapists, be mad at hate preachers, be mad at gay and trans panic laws, be mad at how many young people are homeless because they dared to come out to their parents, be mad at gay-bashings, be mad that there are no good choices here, none, none at all

save your anger for the people and institutions who want us dead, not the people stuck with a series of bad choices who pick the one that's going to hurt them the least

dear god, we are dying out here, we are being killed and we are dying, there are no good choices

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