What are you going to do to end the silence?

Warning: this is only my opinion.

For the past four years (at least), I've participated in the day of silence. It mattered some years more than others (specifically: it mattered in the years when I actually interacted with people on a daily basis), but regardless of whether or not I am participating this year, I think it's something that needs to be talked about. It's an important cause. That LGBT people everywhere don't feel safe enough to come out to their friends and family may not directly touch your life, but it's still important.

I know people wonder about me because I'm so open with my support for LGBT rights and because I'm particularly interested in gay/lesbian fiction. This is the kind of thing that depresses me. I don't care if you think I'm a lesbian or not. Your assumptions don't matter to me, and it shouldn't matter to you whether or not I'm straight. But the very fact that people DO assume these things is a huge part of the problem. Not the assumptions they make but the very fact that they even feel the need to classify people based on their support for a political cause, or based on the fiction they read and write.

There is this incessant need to know whether so-and-so is gay. Does it really matter to you if they are? If you want to be out and proud and tell the world I AM GAY AND I'M PROUD, you will be. If you want to keep your sexual orientation under wraps, then you will. If you're straight/gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered and want to remain ambiguous in order to demonstrate that even for people who think they're totally cool with the LGBT community, there is still this NEED TO CLASSIFY people that is ingrained in our society and will continue to be ingrained in our society -- then you will.

People are so different. I strongly believe that this need for classification is a part of what is bringing us down. On the one hand, I think the LGBT community needs to set itself apart in order to bring attention to inequalities, prejudices and stereotypes that are still so prevalent today, even in a country where gay marriage is legal in four states. On the other hand, I feel that such classification is (in a different way) a part of the problem.

I am definitely not saying that people should withhold their respective sexual orientations. I'm saying that society's collective attitude toward the LGBT community drives our need to KNOW, to classify, to compartmentalize and to set people into different categories so that we all know HE is gay and SHE is a lesbian and HE identifies as fluidly-gendered. There is a certain power in these categories, but I hope that we all eventually come to a point at which we no longer need to know someone's sexual orientation or gender identification -- just for the sake of knowing.