Love’s Great Transformation Begins
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Homosexuality has been present in the society for a lot of time, even before than what we actually think. But with the homosexuality also comes the perception of the society itself, and it is something that has changed a lot as the years have gone by.
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In Ancient Greece it was normal for a younger man to be the lover of an older man, in fact, the older one used to be in charge of the education of his lover. It was less normal to see a proper relationship between two adult men, but it was equally accepted. At war, it was very normal to have sexual relationships with other soldiers, they thought that it would make a stronger bond with their soldier partners.
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For women, homosexuality was not very well accepted. Men said that sex with other men meant pleasure, and with women, it meant reproduction. They used to think that pleasure would only come between men, because for them, men were more perfect than women, claiming that intimate relationships with men were the most perfect union.
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In Ancient Rome, homosexuality was even more normalized than in Ancient Greece. One of the most frequent things that used to happen at that time, was for men to have intimate relationships with younger men or with slaves. Julius Caesar is the most famous person of that time to openly recognise his affairs with other men. He was known as ‘the husband of every wife and the wife of every husband’.
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Homosexuality was very normal in every part of the world before Middle Age. It is known that the Chinese and Japanese were okay with it, the Mochicas, the Quechua and the Aztecs were also fine with it.
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The perceptions towards homosexuality changed drastically in Middle Age, when the cathologic church started to chase homosexual people. They used sodomy as the main accusation to make a justification towards the persecution. Punishment, torture and death, that’s what happened to every person caught and accused as an homosexual.
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Since Middle Age, the cathologic church has been the home of millions of people’s beliefs. Homosexual couples have never been accepted by this religion, so since then, the perception towards homosexuality has been the opposite that it was in the Ancient Rome, for example.
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Nowadays, everything is changing, there are less religious people and more tolerant people. As the years have advanced, homosexuality is more and more accepted by the society, now there are more countries that have legalised gay marriage. Homosexual people are feeling more free to express their feelings without fear of feeling apart. Obviously, there are people that do not accept homosexuality, but they are starting to be a minority.
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LGBT Community
This community stands for “Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transexuals” and it represents every person who identifies itself as some of these different sexualities. This acronym was created in the 90’s and was created by the English language, but it hasn’t changed because it coincides with other languages.
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As the years have come by, more and more sexualities have appeared, adding more letters to the acronym. But as there would be a lot of letters in this acronym, the original four are the ones taken as the official.
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This community is having more and more people feeling part of it, or at least supporting it. It is a sexual diversity and gender identities community that include people idetifiy themselves with a sex, a sexual orientation or a gender not accepted by the traditional heteronorm and binarism.
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The most common identities present in this community are the gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transexuals, queers, intersexuals, transgender, asexuals, pansexuals, polyamorous or omnisexuals.
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With the intention of learning and informing more, but above all with the intention of giving them voice, we have asked different people belonging to the collective to tell us about their experience. How they realized that they belonged to the collective; how did they tell it, if they had to; if they have been discriminated for it…
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Homosexuality
It is the romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender.
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"Since I can remember I have been attracted to men," said
Arkaitz, a 19 years old student of Journalism. Even so, he
told us how at around 12 years old he began to deceive
himself because all his friends had a girlfriend except him.
“ You have to like women and you have to find a girlfriend,
like everyone else,” said to himself. He even had a girlfriend,
until one day he decided that it was over and that he “liked
what he liked, period."
Then he started telling her friends, but not her family because he says he is not in favor of ‘coming out of the closet’. "Why do I have to tell them?” he asked. “My brothers have never in their life had to sit down and talk with my parents to tell them that they like girls.” The problem came when he did not feel comfortable at home, he did not feel he himself. In the end he was convinced to tell his parents. “It was very hard for me to tell it, I was kind of ashamed,” Arkaitz said. Luckily her parents' reaction was “super cool”. But not everyone accepts homosexuality. “Since I was little the word fag has been in my day to day, and as a child it affects you a lot," he said. “Today that they call me fag seems to me the most beautiful thing in the world, it is what I am."
Transsexuality
It is a variant of gender identity in which the affected person believes that he or she should belong to the opposite sex.
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This is Victoria ‘Vicky’, a 21 years old girl. Yes, you have read it correctly, a girl.
Vicky decided this last November to start her gender transition. It was on
TikTok where she made public for the first time that she was no longer Victor,
but Victoria, and where now almost 140 thousand people follow her transition.
In that platform is where she said that throughout her life she has felt a feeling
of emptiness, until now. "I thought it was one more feature of my personality,"
she said.
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Of course, one of the most repeated questions in the comments of her videos was how or when she decided to take such an important step in her life. Her answer was that she taked the decision when she was made a permanent contract at work. And although her answer may be a bit surprising at first, it makes a lot of sense. "Feeling that sense of stability in my life, I raised possibilities that I had never considered before,” she said.
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Although she has the support of many people, she also receives a lot of hate. Especially for her physical appearance, since although she puts on make-up ('something female'), she still has a beard and has a 'masculine' appearance. To a comment that says: "I do not see you as a woman" she replied that no one has to see her as nothing, and that "being a woman is an identity, it has nothing to do with the physical.”
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Regarding her family, she says that her grandmother was shocked when she told her that she wanted to change gender, but otherwise everyone is being very supportive.
Bisexuality
It is the sexual attraction, romantic attraction or sexual behaviour towards both men and women. Or it can also be defined as the romantic or sexual attraction towards people no matter its gender or sexual identity.
Although, as mentioned above, there are many different sexualities present in the collective, many of them are very recent. There are many people who do not know about bisexuality, or even if they know about it, they are not able to understand it.
“I realized that I was bisexual pretty late, a couple of years
ago, I did not know I could feel attracted to women being
that old,” said Naroa, a 19 year old Journalism student. At
the beginning she did not accept it, because she did not
think that it could be possible to like both men and women.
She started to watch videos about people saying how they
found out they were bisexual. “It was a big change for me,
and also a process,” she claimed.
As the days went by, as she started to found out she was a bisexual, she realized that she started to find girls more and more attractive that what she used to. She told us that she had never ‘come out of the closet’ with her parents, not because she feels embarrassed, but because she does not think it is necessary. “My parents told me that heterosexuals never go around their parents claiming that they are heterosexual, so, if they do not do it, I do not have to do it either,”she said. But she told us that she felt the need of making people know that she is bisexual. “I started using the LGTB flag bracelet, or even taking a little bit more manly pictures of myself.”
She wanted people to know about her sexuality because she wanted to show herself just as she is, and to prove people that it is not wrong to be like that. She openly talked about it with her friends and she has never felt discriminated. “I have never had problems with my sexuality, only with one friend that used to say that it is impossible to feel attracted to both genders, claiming that I was a slut,” she sadly told us.
“People do not fall in love because of the gender and the genitals, it goes further than that,” she told us at the end of the interview. She also claimed that being bisexual opened her mind, realizing that things can be different to what society dictates.
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What is our conclusion?
We both recognize ourselves as bisexuals, we feel free to be attracted or to love both men and women. We support this community, because just as us, or you, the reader, every person should feel the same freedom to love whoever they want, however they want. It is very sad and poor to discriminate someone just because he or she does not love the same way we do.
This has to be taught since children are kids, by the parents or the teachers, kids’ main references while growing up. We need to show to the younger generations to be free and to let the rest be equally free.
