2015. június 30., kedd

Idea for a Blog: Questioning Experiences

Hi r/ainbow. I am cross posting this to a few Reddit communities. This post comes in three parts. The first part is the motivation for the idea. The second part is what I think the broader problem is. The third part is what I propose to do about it.What I want is criticism of the idea. Is it helpful? Am I proposing solving it in a sensible way?1) What led me to this?A friend of mine 'came out' on Facebook as, for lack of a better word, questioning. He's not coming out as bi or gay. He's said that the best moniker he can think of is '?', followed by 'not straight'.2) The wider problemThis got me thinking. He's literally the only person I know of who has told the wider world that they are questioning their sexuality. I know a number of people who are. Most people just announce one day they've figured it out. At most, some will (drunkenly) tell a few close friends they've having difficulty working out what their identity is.I remember the period of questioning my sexuality. It was very lonely and isolating. I think others have the same experience.I can contrast that to when I came out. Then there was no end of communities I could access. Being out might feel lonely, but there's a lot of communities, online and IRL, to make it feel much less so.Even the concept of LGBTQ (q for questioning) is alienating. Resources and communities are focussed around the idea that you'll eventually figure out your latent queer identity. This makes accessing LGBTQ resources problematic. People who are questioning often don't want to access LGBTQ resources: because they're not sure that they are. LGBTQ starts with four defined identities: concrete ideas of who you are. Questioning people are not even sure they're queer: they might be straight. LGBT resources are definitionally shut off from them. That's a strong psychological barrier towards joining forums for most people.There's almost nothing for questioning people. /r/questioning is largely dominated by people who are probably fairly rapidly going to identify as bi or gay. Literally the only community I've ever come across largely for questioning people is /r/totallystraight (deeply NSFW). This isn't anyone's fault, it's because people tend to resolve these questions fairly rapidly. Even if people are only questioning for a year or so, that's not enough time to build and identity, and become part of a community for questioning people.I think we're unlikely to develop a strong community where people who are questioning can go.This is a large segment of the population. Almost every bisexual, lesbian or gay person will, at some point, have been questioning. A decent whack of straight people have at some point questioned their sexuality.3) My solution.If we can't create a questioning community, what can we do to support questioning people?As I said above, a core problem is isolation and loneliness. Second only to forming a community for support, the only solution I can think of is to stop people from feeling alone.We often like to share our coming out stories - I think because they come from a position of strength. We don't often share our questioning stories, because they're from a position of weakness. I think as a result, people can find it hard to find kinship when they're questioning. They find it hard to talk about, because no-one else does.I am considering making a blog of stories. This would have contributions from bi people, straight people, gay people, asexual people, and if possible, people who are still questioning.Tl;dr. I want to start a blog of people's experiences of questioning their sexualities. I think it would make a period of time spent questioning less isolating. What do you think?

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