6.9.13 Adam's Voice

AMW, love your post. So sad not to feel comfortable holding hands in public. My nephew, who just moved across country to be with his boyfriend, asked me recently if they were to come out here to visit, would it be acceptable to hold hands in public. All I could tell him is that I don't see it done. I don't know what the reaction would be. We have quite a mixed bag of people around here--very liberal and very conservative--in a lightly populated area. Too bad people have to think about simple hand-holding.

I'm watching too and also doing what your doing. I see him in every part, singing every song and yes, dancing all over that stage. I have never been so singularily minded in my life, always open to all things. Adam is just IT for me! I  know I'm a little too!

I just want to say that I'm so glad that I don't watch Idol anymore...

My first time seeing men hand-holding in public, was in Cairo, Egypt. Circa 1975. I was young, and I talked to my father about it, because I was so astonished to find this in a culture that I did not perceive to be open towards homosexuality.
The scene was middle of the city, right in front of the Egyptian Museum, two policemen in full uniform, pistols in halter, walking or more like strolling hand in hand, totally comfortable with the gesture. Over my two week stay in Cairo, I saw that similar scenes repeat itself multiple times, perhaps 10 times in total over my two week stay, with common folk, police, military, it did not seem to matter. Of course, you also saw many females hand-holding, but in stereo-typical manner, this did not send off the same alerts in my mind, as the male physical interaction did.

But given that I was glad to see men holding hands, and was astonished about it, we had a discussion about it. Here is what my father shared with me, and it was a very important lesson for me as a student for the rest of my life, and in many ways.

My father made me aware that, as expected, homosexuality is normally culturally frowned upon in Egypt, but that this situation is just not seen as such. The lines of perception of inappropriate physical contact are just drawn differently than they were in my culture.
Just like I watched females walking hand in hand and did not automatically assume it to be a lesbian relationship, if there were not other elements present to signal that to me, then clearly, in Egypt, people did (at least in 1975) not see anything gay about two men holding hands.
I do believe that the more recent availability of satellite TV in Egypt may have destroyed an initial innocence here, and I am not sure whether things are still this way in Egypt today. Was not there since that time.

The important part though that ended up being the big learning experience for me, was that I, of course talked with my dad about the different perception we Westerners tend to have about physical contact between women versus how much quicker we assume it to be sexual when we see in with men, as exemplified with that hand-holding situation. One thing, my father talked to me about how our brains are trainable. Retrain your brain to see things differently. Whether there was a sexual relationship associated with this or not was ultimately of no concern to me, so behaving more like an Egyptian and not assuming anything was much healthier thinking than the Western alarm bells that I had been culturally trained to see in such a gesture. Neither was I opposed to homosexuality in general, nor was their life my business in any shape or form, so why the knee-jerk reaction? The reaction made no sense, so it had to go.

Was a big lesson in my life, not only in questions of homosexuality, but beyond that in my understanding on what is trainable versus instinctive in our minds. This lesson was used on many different occasions throughout the years, and very much increased my appreciation and understanding for my dad too.

Our brains are re-trainable. We are not stuck with our natural or supposedly 'instinctive' reaction. And many things that we might perceive as instinctive, are actually learned behavior and can therefore be unlearned.

It is time, as a US culture that has in recent years been transitioning to more openness and awareness on many LGBT related topics, to begin to advance in our perception too. To move away from ideas or perceptions that don't allow gay people to just live among us naturally.

In this list belongs:

- hand-holding
- invitation to parties (i.e. the corporate summer party, Xmas party, etc)
- the shared grocery cart
- the casual kiss

etc.

It is a next step, beyond legalizing gay marriage or eliminating job discrimination, etc., to go there and take the necessary steps in our own mind and in our own spheres of influence (kids, students, friends) to fight these supposedly 'natural perceptions', that ultimately put limitations on those that we want to see treated as equals.

And while I read with sadness, but of course also realism, amw's report about how she is restricting herself to not offend, I do also see that there are two sides. One, the brave parties who dare to do occasionally 'offend' (like Adam does) to move the mile markers out. And then, the other side, that needs to create awareness that as a straight culture this is a next step we do need to take. Of course, this will take a few generations, and I am the first to admit, that I am not always brave either, but the process needs to start somewhere, so that in 20 something years, a publicly visible gay couple finds itself, for example, in the same spot as the inter-racial one does today.

It's a process that starts with relearning perceptions, and that is something our children, friends, students need to hear about, instead of fear of change being cemented into them instead.