[Bigi] Intro

[Joe Decker]

Hi Thadd!  Welcome!

One of the BiGi sort of topics I've been thinking about lately is
the coming out process.

I'm curious how other people found the experience of coming out
as bisexual (if you have), and how that relates to being male.

My own experiences as a kid were not very positive.  I got some
amount of emotional abuse and beatings from other kids when I
was a kid, because folks perceived me as queer.  For a long time
(e.g., my 20s), I'd acquired a fear of coming out from those
experiences, and while I was out to my primary partner, discussing
my bi leanings with other folk was just something I wasn't comfortable
with.

About five or six years ago I started really going down the
track of coming out, and I've come quite a ways, I think you could
fault me for not coming out to my parents, but in many other ways
I'm extremely out, to my friends, coworkers, acquaintances, and
just random people in my life.  I think adults deal better with
it than teens, I think I choose who I spend time with more selectively,
and I think that time has improved things as well.

As far as the impact of being male, I do sometimes think that
the gender roles that man are expected to live to today in straight
society are more constraining and painful than the expanded gender
roles women have won through the efforts of the feminist movement.
In many ways I found my emotional desires to be emotionally close
to men were more stifled by gender roles than even my sexual ones,
in my experience society is poor at allowing men to relate to one
another on an emotionally close and intimate level.

Anyway, sort of an early-morning blather, I apologize if this isn't
going anywhere, or is a bit incoherent.  Maybe it's time for coffee.  :-)

--Joe

PS:  To all of you who've joined BiGi since
      my last message, Welcome!  --j