The personal is political

Many of you have brought this up in recent months, but I am currently wrestling with privacy/discretion issues with regard to this medium. Thus, I will prosthelytize on the topic for a bit.

I have a desire, as quinnclub has also expressed, to have my life be an open book. To me, one of the most damaging things people do to themselves is to hide themselves away, to repress their emotions and desires, in the name of prudence, or propriety, or tradition, or fear.

This behavior not only closes people off from one another, but perpetuates the keeping-in-the-shadows of what mainstream society deems "deviant" or "self-destructive" behaviors. I've always believed that the best work a single person can do to further visibility and acceptance is to be visible him or herself. Whether this means showing same-sex affection in public without fear, going to a romantic dinner with two other people, writing your life in an online journal or fiction that reflects the deep-seated truths of the author, it is fearless honesty that makes movements work. How else, after all, did homosexuality finally get removed from the DSM as a mental disorder? (It didn't happen all that long ago, folks.) Visibility forces acknowledgment; acknoledgment eventually forces tolerance.

How much air would have been let out of the tires of the impeachsarios of the Clinton administration, if Clinton had just said, "Yup. Me 'n' Monica were doin' the nasty. Sorry y'all had to find out this way"? Was not that entire witch-hunt built around the legal technicality that he had lied? It completely took the focus off the fact that what was happening was a bunch of fundamentalists moralizing over points of adultery, that Clinton was being character-assassinated, not for being a liar, but for getting a BJ under a desk. Many have theorized that Bill and Hillary had an open relationship, a marriage of convenience. All of his affairs would seem to bear this out: they were so obvious, and public, yet Hillary never divorced him, not even after they left the White House. What if this were true, and they had shared that fact with the world?

That point aside, what would happen if most people were open about the things they desire and do? If I present myself always as I am, and don't hide aspects that some might consider shameful, wrong, or even insane, then how can I be persecuted? If someone says to me, "You're too aggressive / queer / slutty / confused" or whatever, I say, "Yes. Yes. Yes, though I have a different definition of that word. And no, I think you are." Tolerance, and, later, acceptance, can only be built if people present themselves as they are.

And yes, I wrote an essay in my Northeastern application about this very issue, and got in in a flash.

There are caveats to this, of course. To bring it back to this medium: many have asked, "How do you decide to post something friends-only? Or keep it private? What do you reveal publicly, for anyone to read?"

I was looking through my public entries last night, for a particular reason I won't go into, except to say that I was looking for things certain people might find shocking or objectionable. Ordinarily I keep the nitty-gritty details friends-only, and try to keep the public entries less personal, more conversational and political.

But as someone said long ago, the personal is political, and if I'm not speaking my politics as the person I am, then what the hell am I talking about?

I noticed a pattern, though: my public entries tended to tell the general truth about my life. The fact that I'm bisexual and polyamorous; the fact that I'm sleeping with someone, what I do, what I plan to do, and how things are going with all that.

Friends-only is reserved when other people's privacy is being protected, or when I'm protecting my emotional privacy: the details, the characters, and the feelings that I may not want to reveal to the world just yet.

But the basic fundamentals of who I am and what I believe in are right out front, and that's the way I like it.

I know that I am blessed to live in one of the most liberal cities in this country, and that the love and acceptance I enjoy here is a great priviledge. But that doesn't mean I don't know the evil of the world, and the line of fire I place myself in by declaring myself, as myself.

But the other option is hiding, and that, I won't do.