The human brain is amazing. It’s a ticking time bomb of info ready to explode, Ready to take charge, Ready to blow the walls down and take over anything and anyone who gets in its way. It also is one of the most fragile parts of the human body. So can something so strong be so soft? How can something with all the power in the world break so easily? I guess that is what a compromise truly is.
Webster defines compromise as “ a settlement of differences by mutual concessions; an agreement reached by adjustment of conflicting or opposing claims, principles, etc., by reciprocal modification of demands..” I will give up being indestructible as long as I am powerful. Sometimes I wonder exactly what is going in some people’s brains. Sometimes I feel like I am the only one who uses clear, logical thinking. I have also been told I am a self centered sociopath with no remorse who lives only for his hedonism and himself.
Is it so wrong to strive for justice and never compromise who you are? The word comprise does not exist in my vocabulary. This is word is foreign. At least in the understanding I have of up. See I have a problem, I have to be right. I don’t mind being wrong but if I know what someone is saying is wrong, I will fight with them because I am right. I will never compromise who I am or what I stand for the sake of justice. This revolution that we are all apart of deserves its revolutionaries to live life and work for the cause without compromising who they are. I am a queer, Christian, bear, man. Queer because to me, who I fall for does not need to have a clear black/white yes/no m/f on the gender binary. Christian because I love Jesus and believe that he is all he is meant to be and more. Bear because I am large and in charge and could easily make two wigs out of my body hair. Man, simply because it’s who I am. It’s funny that as a world community we take very little pride in who and what has made us since birth but the second we find something of our own we hang on to it as if we would die if we did not have this, identity. Identities, such weird things you are.
See I have been told that my identities clash with one another and therefore I have pick and chose. Compromise like the brain does. I have told I have to comprise by Christian identity because I am queer, my queer identity because I am a bear and my male identity because I am queer. It all comes back to who and what I do in the bedroom. Why is who I sleep with such an issue? Why do people feel the need to be the self appointed sex police? Why is how I have sex anyone’s business but my partners and mine? I will tell you why, it’s because in American culture today we don’t talk about sex.
My sex education came from someone from the Ross County department of health in the 8th grade. That would have been fine and dandy, expect for the fact that it was a very hetero-normative lesson. All I heard about was what a man and woman do together. Thank God two men or two women can’t get pregnant or else I and all the other budding queer kids would be screwed. Sex education in this country has had to compromise. It has forgotten that the most recent study of adolescent youth states that there is a significant jump in youth who I identify as LGBTQ today than there was 5 years ago. So why are we not meeting the needs of the people we serve? Why continue to use the same 1980 abstinence only, safe sex if you must routine? Lucky for me I was an audacious little prick and flat out told the lady from the health department that I was gay and she needed to let me know how to be safe when I fuck. I was then asked to leave class for the rest of the period. I made my point though. I called her out on how the system had comprised and was not marginalizing a community that needed served. I called her out and was banned.
Well you know what, its time more of us get asked to leave. LGBTQ people have been around for a LONG time. Called by many different names in many different times but we have been here. It’s time we stand up, and reclaim our place in this world. Not on the side lines or behind everyone else, but right beside them. That is what not compromising is all about.
