First off, I had no clue where to put this, so I'm sorry if it seems like the wrong area. Secondly, a woman I went to school with came out as a lesbian. A woman who, not ten years ago, went out of her way to make my life hell. She was so unbelievably homophobic. And now she's proclaiming she's a lesbian on Facebook and sort-of apologized to me for what she did. I don't hold it against her by any means, really, but holy cow. I've had about a dozen people who were terrible to be in high school later send me a message telling me that they're queer and they're sorry for being nasty to me for being out. Am I the only person to have this happen. It's like every major homophobe from high school is queer and picking on me was a way to cover it up.
Well, there was a recent study which suggests that many of the most virulently homophobic people are homosexual themselves, and that their homophobia is a form of self-hatred. This could explain what you're experiencing with former bullies coming out.
I havent experienced this myself but then I only came out when I was a bit older. I think its fairly common though.
I can remember when other people at my school came out as LGB about 2ish years ago, i was like 'eww that's disgusting' and all those other childish things. I was never purposely hateful towards these people but was really homophobic towards them. I also did this in front of my family to see how strongly they defended homosexual people. So i knew they weren't homophobic if i ever had to tell them, didn't think i really would though. But i did this when i was still in the stage of denial. I didn't accept myself as a lesbian. I thought if i acted this way then my own feeling towards girls would disappear. Of course that didn't work. Now that i have matured from that and fully accept and like being a lesbian. I deeply regret ever making any remarks about someones sexuality, and know no matter how i treat other people about sexuality it isn't going to change my own feeling towards girls. hope that kinda explained it to you
Someone I went to high school with who gave the only openly gay person in our school an immense amount of shit recently came out as bi.
My psych teacher addressed this same kind of incident--extreme homophobes actually being queer themselves and looking for the part they hate within themselves in others so that they actually have someone to take out their frustrations on. Knowing that, I'd assume that it may be commom. O-o
Yeah this is so true. I acted myself, so therefore inflicted this hate onto any other gay or lesbian people. I girl picked up on this while i was in the middle of going on about how being gay isn't right and kissed me. Ahahaa. That was extremely funny.
Yes, this has happened to me before. When I was in high school there was a boy who was notoriously hateful to just about everyone but went out of his way to harass obvious minorities. I was best friends with what was realistically the only black girl in the entire school, who also has two lesbian moms. She's adopted. He used to shout really horrible things at her, and I'm sure he's said a lot of despicable things behind my back about me. The foreign exchange students also sat at my lunch table, and he was cruel to them as well. This guy has a swastika tattoo, and he also has 666 on the back of his neck. That should tell you a lot about him. One night I got really bored and I started browsing a gay dating site because I was curious to see who was in my general area, and I saw his profile there. I really couldn't believe it. Not too long after that I ran into him at a gas station and he tried to talk to me and I decided to ignore him completely. I acted like he wasn't even there. I wrestled with it for a long time but I outed him to my friends and others. A right to privacy is not a right to hypocrisy. In my opinion, once you begin attacking the LGBT community, you're fair game.
We've had a few kids come out in the high school recently and the boys have been beat down and teased nonstop to the point where two of them moved to different schools to get away from it. My son is friends with one boy and he's also bullied. He told one of the bullies that he-the bully-was just jealous that his friend had the courage to come out and be himself. My son was the one that got in trouble, not the bully. The school actually told my sons friend to not act so gay and the kids would leave him alone. I went the the board meeting and the board decided that the reason some of the kids think they're gay is because of the music they listen to and have banned mp3 players on school grounds. I don't understand why it's so hard to accept that maybe, just maybe these kids know who they are and deserve respect.
Well, I was never bullied in school for being queer, but I was made fun of for my weight. Just the other night, I found the Facebook profile of one of those bullies, and it turns out he's gay and seemingly proud. He still sounds like an absolute prick though, so any sympathy I may have had that all this time, he was just feeling insecure about himself, is nonexistent. I guess some people are just nasty.
I have never had this personally happen to me and I'm fairly sure everyone who I used to go to school with who were dicks are straight, but it isn't surprising for someone who bullied someone else for their sexuality turned out to be gay themselves. Bullying sometimes is affected by their personality in terms of how someone else might appear to them. Still, irony and karma come to kick them in the arse, how nice.
