Charlie! Posted June 16, 2023 Share Posted June 16, 2023 Quick warning this has mild abuse This is going to be my second year of gay pride, this has always been a really rough month for me as slowly figuring out who and what I am has been a horrible journey that I honestly can say that I never want to go through again. Last pride pictures of me were taken with another person of the same gender as myself and were kind of used as black mail. I won't lie, I'm scared. Those pictures severely messed my everyday life up and I'm about to go to a similar event tomorrow with some fellow queer people from school. I'm so unbelievably scared that people will harass me in public for wearing a flag or rainbow stuff ect or that more pictures will be taken. What do I do? I want to go with these new friends as I have a hardtime making them and I want to celebrate and be comfortable with my sexuality as I can't change it or fix or repress that part of me forever as it's really downgrading. How do I combat this? MultiQuote Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monsoon Posted June 17, 2023 Share Posted June 17, 2023 17 hours ago, Charlie! said: Quick warning this has mild abuse This is going to be my second year of gay pride, this has always been a really rough month for me as slowly figuring out who and what I am has been a horrible journey that I honestly can say that I never want to go through again. Last pride pictures of me were taken with another person of the same gender as myself and were kind of used as black mail. I won't lie, I'm scared. Those pictures severely messed my everyday life up and I'm about to go to a similar event tomorrow with some fellow queer people from school. I'm so unbelievably scared that people will harass me in public for wearing a flag or rainbow stuff ect or that more pictures will be taken. What do I do? I want to go with these new friends as I have a hardtime making them and I want to celebrate and be comfortable with my sexuality as I can't change it or fix or repress that part of me forever as it's really downgrading. How do I combat this? Hey @Charlie! Welcome to the DTL community. I'm one of the digital mentors here and I give advice to those who reach out to us :) I'm really sorry to hear about the bad experience you had with the pictures being used as blackmail. I can totally get why this would make you scared of going again given that your presence was used against you beforehand. Reading between the lines, I'm wondering, are you not out and was it that someone was threatening to out you? Your fears make total sense and are a perfectly normal reaction to being blackmailed in this way. However, I imagine that this sort of thing is very rare, and the chance of it happening again is likely to be very low. I think that in this kind of situation, you have to feel the fear and do it anyway so that you can live a life that is authentic to you. What do you think? On the other hand though, I'm thinking that if you are not out and there is potentially a risk of danger if you were outed, then it might be too risky. I don't know enough about your situation yet though to reflect on that, so please let me know. Take care and speak soon. MultiQuote Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie! Posted June 17, 2023 Author Share Posted June 17, 2023 2 minutes ago, Monsoon said: Hey @Charlie! Welcome to the DTL community. I'm one of the digital mentors here and I give advice to those who reach out to us :) I'm really sorry to hear about the bad experience you had with the pictures being used as blackmail. I can totally get why this would make you scared of going again given that your presence was used against you beforehand. Reading between the lines, I'm wondering, are you not out and was it that someone was threatening to out you? Your fears make total sense and are a perfectly normal reaction to being blackmailed in this way. However, I imagine that this sort of thing is very rare, and the chance of it happening again is likely to be very low. I think that in this kind of situation, you have to feel the fear and do it anyway so that you can live a life that is authentic to you. What do you think? On the other hand though, I'm thinking that if you are not out and there is potentially a risk of danger if you were outed, then it might be too risky. I don't know enough about your situation yet though to reflect on that, so please let me know. Take care and speak soon. I wasn't out at the time and those pictures essentially outed me to close friends and parents, I'm not really out to other people In my family as I wasn't sure how to and didn't really decide it was necessary at the time. I'm about to leave now for pride, I think I'm just going to do it. 17 hours ago, Charlie! said: Quick warning this has mild abuse This is going to be my second year of gay pride, this has always been a really rough month for me as slowly figuring out who and what I am has been a horrible journey that I honestly can say that I never want to go through again. Last pride pictures of me were taken with another person of the same gender as myself and were kind of used as black mail. I won't lie, I'm scared. Those pictures severely messed my everyday life up and I'm about to go to a similar event tomorrow with some fellow queer people from school. I'm so unbelievably scared that people will harass me in public for wearing a flag or rainbow stuff ect or that more pictures will be taken. What do I do? I want to go with these new friends as I have a hardtime making them and I want to celebrate and be comfortable with my sexuality as I can't change it or fix or repress that part of me forever as it's really downgrading. How do I combat this? MultiQuote Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monsoon Posted June 18, 2023 Share Posted June 18, 2023 On 6/17/2023 at 10:27 AM, Charlie! said: I wasn't out at the time and those pictures essentially outed me to close friends and parents, I'm not really out to other people In my family as I wasn't sure how to and didn't really decide it was necessary at the time. I'm about to leave now for pride, I think I'm just going to do it. Hey there, I'm really sorry to hear that. You should have been the one to choose when you shared your news with your close friends and parents, not someone else. It should have been on your terms and I'm sorry that that control was taken away from you. How was that experience for you? I can imagine it was really hurtful for you. Also, I can see that you posted this comment yesterday which hopefully means that you went to pride! If so, how was it? :) MultiQuote Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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