I was a girl scout for 13 years,
from kindergarten with almost 30 girls in my troop to graduation day in high
school when only six of us were left. We called ourselves the inseparable six
back then and though it’s been over ten years (that’s right I’m older than
Professor Dan), and we have been separated by distance from England to Alaska,
we remain close. When one of these friends, whom I’ve known since age four
(let’s call her Asha for the Indian name meaning hope), first came out to me a
few years back I was not surprised so much by the statement “I’m gay” but by
the hesitance in her voice and the question in her eyes. You see, Asha was, and
still is, a very strong personality with a strong sense of self and with very
strong opinions, which she was never afraid to share. I always admired this being
rather shy and indecisive. So it was odd to me that she was still weary, after
all these years of knowing each other, of my reaction. Maybe it was growing up
with no religious background, or having wonderfully tolerant parents, or that I’ve
lived most of my life in California but I have never felt uncomfortable about the
many ways love can manifest itself. But it was
a revelation to me that this confident person I knew for so long could exhibit this
level of concern regarding coming out to me.
She and her girlfriend of many
years are now engaged to married, but with Asha’s fiancée in the Air Force
there are still hurdles for them to overcome. I try to put myself in the
situation they are in, trying to be true to each other while still having to
hide from people the true nature of their relationship. When Asha came out she
expressed the wish to stop “living a lie” and she said her first hurdle was
trusting people close to her with the truth. We hugged, cried and talked for a
long time, of the importance of being honest with each other and with
ourselves. But it isn’t as easy as it sounds. How can you be honest with
yourself if you must measure yourself as W.E.B. Du Bois states “by the tape of
a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity”?
I don’t pretend to have personal
experience of what this kind of inequity means, I have been lucky, but
nonetheless I have seen how it turns some of the strongest people I know to
despair, anger and “even seemed … to make them ashamed of themselves” (Du Bois)
at times. The concept Du Bois proposes of a double-consciousness can be applied
to people in many situations. These range from the serious impositions of
racial and sexual discriminations to the more benign situations of adolescents
trying to impress their peers. At some point everyone pretends to be what they
are not, but society has a real problem when an individual is made to feel they
have no other alternative than to exist in two separate often disparate
identities. So as a society we must take the wise words of Master Yoda to heart
and we “must unlearn what [we] have learned” and exhibit greater tolerance
and open-mindedness so that “this longing … to merge [the] double self into a
better and truer self” (Du Bois) becomes a reality.
Du Bois, W.E.B. "Of Our Spiritual Strivings." N.p.:
n.p., n.d. N. pag. The Souls
of Black Folk. Project Gutenberg, 29 Jan. 2008. Web. 14 Feb. 2014.
<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/408/408-h/408-h.htm#chap01>.
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
Dir. Irvin Kershner. By George Lucas. Lucasfilm LTD, 1981. Videocassette.
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