Actress Ellen Page (so incredibly good in "Juno") recently came out during an impassioned and endearingly sincere speech she gave at a conference for LGBT teens. Many readers on an Upworthy website article commented that it's "no big deal" and straight people "don't go around telling people who they are so why do gay people have to?"
Such remarks can show a complete lack of understanding of how hard it is to be gay...even here in the 21st century. Suicide rates for gay and lesbian youth are much higher than for straight youth...not because they are unhappy with being gay, but because of the excruciatingly cruel and hateful way people can treat them, especially their own family and friends.
I remember someone in a support group relating to us that his dad said he'd rather see him "dead than gay." Ellen Page may very well have helped some of those kids by sharing who she is with them. I know I would have loved to have had a positive role model who just happened to be lesbian when I was struggling as a teen.
Things were much worse for gays and lesbians in the past, that's true, whether they were teens or adults. Not too long ago, after I finished reading an exceptional lesbian fiction title written in the early 1960s, I decided to look up more about the author, only to discover she had taken her own life in her 30s because her family couldn't handle her being gay.
Her name was Elaine Williams and she was an editor and writer for Midwood Tower Books, a publishing press that dealt only with pulp fiction.
Under one of her pseudonyms (Sloane Britain) she wrote this passage in First Person 3rd Sex: "All I was sure of was that someday,
somewhere, I would find that woman who would love me as I loved her. I
don't know her name or what she looks like or anything about her, only
that as I write this she, too, is waiting."
First Person 3rd Sex and These Curious Pleasures (also by her) were some of the first lesfic books to show lesbians as being more than sexual creatures. Both novels featured gay women wanting the same things straight people want: love, commitment and (hopefully) the whole growing old together thing.
How my heart goes out to Elaine Williams. I wonder what she was like
as a person. Was she kind? If society and her family hadn’t made
her feel so awful about being gay would she have wanted true love
with one woman the rest of her life? Did she have no one to talk to?
Did she fall for someone who broke her heart or she did suffer in
silence from afar as she mooned over someone who didn’t even know
she existed?
What was the last straw for her? The thing that made her
unable to go on? Research on her is very scant, but one little blurb in a book on pulp fiction history mentioned she longed to be taken more seriously as a writer, that she had more books in her that she wanted to write, not what the publisher wanted her to (most pulp fiction presses preferred the unhappy, stereotypical "lesbians are evil" endings to their books.)
Is it weird to think about someone who died fifty years ago and wonder if, under wildly different circumstances, you could have maybe met and become friends...even weirder to know this someone committed suicide because she couldn't handle being gay and you have a pretty good idea of how she might have felt, that after reading this about her you feel like you want to reach out across time and hug her?
I know how trite I must sound, but I mean it all with my heart. Unless you've spent long nights wondering how you can reconcile who you really are with who your parents want you to be (even as an adult), unless you've lived in fear that someone you care about will stop caring about you if you come out, you might not really know what it's like to completely identify with a perfect stranger who died long before you were even born.
People like Elaine Williams are why I'm glad people like Ellen Page speak out and share their stories with people who need to hear them. Until we live in a world where parents don't kick their kids out for being gay, employees aren't fired for being gay (this can still legally happen in 29 states!!) and a same gender couple can walk down the street holding hands without any fears for their safety..until these things happen, we do still need people like Ellen Page.
Okay, that's it for now. I'm sorry! I just had to get this off my chest and into the universe, even if no one ever sees it or understands.
Welcome to my little corner...All over the map with thoughts, I'm just here to blog about different things: life, music, stuffed animals, restaurants, shops, dreams, film, books, magazines, short stories, food, the sometimes silly, drink, feelings, love and tons more...
2 comments:
Living in this time, you would think it shouldn't have to be momentous everytime an actor or actress comes out. Or even that the necessity should be there.
But I guess it is. And I agree with what you say, Ellen Page's decision to publicly accept all parts of her is going to inspire however many kids who think they should be ashamed of themselves to do as she does.
And I don't think it's weird at all that you were so strongly moved by Elaine Williams' story. Especially when you look back and realize how it could have been avoided if ppl had just rid themselves of their prejudice.
Thanks for writing! I wish it weren't momentous or even a necessity and maybe I wouldn't even think it were if I didn't understand the feelings behind the actions so much.
Though I'm not out to a lot of people in my life, the ones I have told...well, it's because I trust them and know they accept me. There are still a lot of people in my life who might drop me if I were to tell them. I'd like to think that they would continue to be nice to me, that they would see I'm just a girl longing to meet someone nice to grow old together with...that I'm not really any different than anyone else who longs to meet and fall in love with someone kind and decent. But I've heard what they say and its kind of frightening (though I don't know if they'd be so blunt under different circumstances.)
Geographic region, personal politics and fear of losing family and friends (because of their intense beliefs on certain issues) are all reasons someone might still be reluctant to come out. Yet, these may also be the very reason others do. Sometimes the gay community can put pressure on celebrities and other public figures to "just come already and come out." I think that's unfair and not at all right to do to someone else.
I'm glad you don't think it's weird that Elaine Williams' story affected me so strongly. Even after I wrote my post, I still tried to find out more about her (like what kind of person she was and what moved her as far as books and music goes) but when I contacted a pulp fiction expert (he is very very nice and good in his field) he told me very little is known about her by anyone...so sad that someone who wrote as well as she did has her life reduced to two sentences I found in a book on vintage paperbacks.
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