Where is my mind.

[baratron]

Sad, stressed and profoundly sighy. Got about 15 minutes of useful work done today. Blah. Have cleaned the entire flat as a displacement activity. Hrm.

As procrastination, I have been reading A Straight Person's Guide To Gay Etiquette, as linked by j00j. It's very funny - I gave up trying to quote salient parts of it because I like all of it. The bisexual page in particular is brilliant, and the Weddings and Other Nightmares page was thought-provoking. I am so completely unsure about whether or not I want to get married...

Gah, well, I've wasted enough time without writing up a ramble about marriage.

Comments

[baratron.livejournal.com]

My lack of response (to this and to your email) is not me ignoring you so much as me not knowing what to say. Thought I should make that clear.

Mind you, you mentioned the misconception that "your outcomer is telling you this because s/he wants your body". I've only had two people come out to me in person (as opposed to other cases where it was common knowledge), and in both cases the outcomer was a significantly older man (a stranger) who was propositioning me at a bus stop, and was reluctant to take no for an answer.

I think I would not call that "coming out". To me, coming out is when a person tells someone else that they already know about their sexuality. A person might come out to their family, friends or work colleagues. It's a case of "you already know X, Y and Z about me... now I want to tell you this other thing that might not have been obvious".

Having a stranger at a bus stop tell you that he likes men is not the same thing as your best friend that you've known for 5 years telling you that he does. Plaid Adder's advice is supposed to apply to the sort of coming out I have described above, when the outcomer is someone you know. A lot of people think that when a friend comes out to them, it means that friend wants to make a move on them - when actually, it's just supposed to be information: "for your knowledge, I might want to bring a same-sex partner to some social event sometime in the future, are you going to freak out?"

Whereas if a stranger at a bus stop tells you something, either he's bursting with happiness having finally told his parents something he's been trying to say for ten years, and thinks he might as well now tell the entire world, or he's got designs on you. The latter situation is much more likely than the former ;)