Nour
I have a challenge with society and people, because until now there are still people around me who aren’t supporters, and there are people who criticize me for being one. I have the belief that a lot of people have an acceptance towards the queer community when someone from it is close to them, and I have seen many examples for that.
My first experience and the one that gave me the freedom to talk about this and accept it, was with one of my close friends, we never talked about it but I knew it and he knew that I knew, and we were very close and had known each other for a long time, and his sister was close to me as well. Since I was young I didn’t understand this, I grew up as a heterosexual woman and couldn’t comprehend the other sexual orientations, so I started to search, know, and teach myself about the topic because of this person.
When I first got to know I was shocked, and it wasn’t heavy for me because I knew, but because this person had died, he knew that I knew but we never personally talked about his orientation. Hence, I took an oath to myself to accept all people. I was shocked at first, I won’t lie, until I started reading and listening about it and listening to many stories from different people, and I started to understand them, understand their desires and everything within them. And this made me accept all people with all their differences not only the different sexual orientations, and since then I accept everyone being themselves, and all that I’ve got to do is listen to them, because everyone has a story, everyone has a different experience, and everyone has emotions and things they want to say and don’t know how so far; because they’re not out of the closet, and although living in a country like Egypt is hard, it’s even harder being gay here. I told myself, I won’t be the person that pushes people to be something other than their truth, no, I want the person to be in total comfort with me, and lets out all that is within, because honestly it won’t be me and the country against him.
I started reading researches and articles about sexual orientations, and I wanted to know more about the religious debate in the matter but I decided I’ve got no business to do at all with religion and I will leave it aside, and this was weird to me because I am one of the people who are a bit conservative, but when I decided to put this part away I was able to acknowledge from the things that I have read that this is not a disease, and no one’s required to be treated.
Generally, when I tell people that I support the queer community it’s catastrophic to them, and if I said this in front of my parents it’s even more catastrophic! It’s not acceptable to them at all, so it makes this a challenge for me until today, and people use offensive words to describe the queer community in front of me. But I haven’t faced challenges from members of the queer community themselves, on the contrary, whenever I take a job, the close people to me are from this community, because I support them and give them the freedom to be who they are when they’re around me, and space to tell me about their stories and feelings, and a lot of the times I listened to very personal things from them, I listened to them talking about their sexual lives… It was bizarre for me at first, and I couldn’t grasp it fully, but later on it wasn’t challenging at all anymore, and I became able to understand that it’s totally natural, like I have my own stories and sexual life they do too.
In my previous job, one of the very close people to me was gay, and all of the people in the office were straight and conservative, so his presence wasn’t welcomed. I used to fight with the whole office because although he wasn’t out but it was obvious that he is gay, and they kept criticizing him all the time and he didn’t talk back or respond, so I talked, responded, fought, and always said it’s shameful and unaccepted, I clarified to them that this is like mocking a person because he’s different in body shape or color; but people saw that being different in body shape and color is one thing, and sexual orientation is another. I felt I am responsible for clarifying the idea that if you don’t accept someone it’s your right, but it’s not your right to judge or treat someone badly, I tried at least to deliver this point… I won’t try to convince you to accept them, but at least don’t treat them in a bad of demeaning way in front of the whole office. In the end, because I was in a managerial level in the company, I deducted money for those who said unacceptable comments, because these comments are bullying, and nobody understands that a word can hurt a human being and make him feel insecure for the rest of his life on many aspects, you harmed someone and hurt him, and he might have suicidal thoughts and tendencies because of something like this.
In my current job, we have more than one gay guy but the work environment is more accepting, everyone accepts them even higher management, and I consider people of them of my close friends, and I got my boyfriend to meet them and he liked them very much without even letting him know they’re gay.
I want to ask people to remove the religious part totally from your mind, unfortunately until now I haven’t read much religiously about sexual orientations so I can’t benefit people in this part; but all I can say is that they’re human beings… listen to their stories, listen to them, and put in mind that they’re not sick. And for those who think it’s just a trend, no one decides this whether gay or straight, God has created us this way. Again, people! Listen to them and their stories, because when I did that I understood better.
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