wdc@mit-eddie.UUCP (William Cattey) (02/17/84)
This is a re-submission of my long article on coming out. This version has not tab at the beginning to command buggy news systems to chop the head of my article off, and it gets Sophie Quigley's name right, and it gets my usenet address right, and it adds my new work address. Sorry to have been silent for so long, friends. The machine I read my news on went down to bring up 4.2bsd. They flushed a lot of net.motss that I have not yet read, so there is a gap in my knowledge of what has been happening. It has been hard for me to communicate because, on the one hand, I did not have a reliable communication path to my favorite mail forwarder, and on the other, I have been settling down into a new job. The two articles I have read in most recent history that had the most profound effect on me were Robert Debendictus's "Looking for a boy" and Sophie Quigley's "comming out". (Please forgive me, Sophie, if I got your name spelled incorrectly.) I will be replying to Robert by personal mail. I am one of the aforementioned "friends in Beantown". I did not know that he felt as he did. I think that points out the ways people can be friends, talk a lot, and still miss important communication. Sophie, please continue to write. I saw something of your's in net.singles (I think) and I was impressed by it too. Your style, and choice of topics leads me to believe you are a sensitive person, who is telling the truth when she says she is interested in all different sorts of people. I hope that I and the other contributers to this group can help you feel comfortable as a contributer. Someone commented on your submission saying that lesbian submissions were ok too, and then mentioned "fruit flies". I am not sure what his intention was, but it was, in my opinion, not written carefully enough. I hope the mention of fruit flies was intended as a joke. Although lesbian and gay issues and submitters are fine, it seemed to me that Sophie was raising an issue that was not gay or straight or lesbian, but human. Although this newsgroup is for things having to do with members of the same sex, I prefer to see topics, like Sophie's that reach beyond. My own articles have been about my experiences with motss and how I fit them into the larger picture of relationships with all people. I want to hear more about feelings from people who are people, regardless of whether they are gay, straight, lesbian, confused, or other. I think it is vitally important that people feel comfortable with each other. Here I see that Sophie is a little uncomfortable writing into 'that gay news group'. I hope that she becomes comfortable, and that more people feel comfortable in general. I find the focus of net.motss to be better for me than net.singles. I learn a lot more about people here than there. But I don't know why that is. Now to the question that Sophie addressed: comming out. A number of important points have been raised. I would like to bring them together. The question was asked: should one tell one's sexuality immediately, or save it for later? On the one hand, there is the risk of the person panicing and leaving what might have been a good friendship. On the other hand, there is the risk of hiding a vital aspect of oneself. A valuable insight into this question comes from Sophie who points out that there are times when it is awkward to hide one's sexuality. Someone else pointed out that they chose to be casual about gay aspects of their social life when asked about it rather than bringing in sex. The conclusion that I draw is that there is a time and situation appropriate to each person we meet. The simplest case is when we can speak plainly and directly about people we love and people we have sex with. Then comes the harder case of those we will never be able to tell about our sexual history or behavior because they would be hurt. If we care to stay with them, then their notions about sex must be respected. If we don't care, then it does not matter whether they know or not. The hardest case comes in getting to know someone for whom it *might* be important to discuss sexuality with. Then we have to get to know the person, and find out if it is possible to do so, and then find out how to do so while they remain comfortable. In my own personal efforts to answer this question on a person by person basis, I have added the notion I mentioned earlier, that people might feel more comfortable hearing that I went dancing with Mike last weekend, than to hear me talk about who I had sex with afterwards, and that I can use this difference to gently reveal a new aspect of myself. I also see now that people will get uncomfortable if I get uncomfortable hiding aspects of my sexuality. I want people to know who I am as I am as well as they are able. Some people can never appreciate my computer skills as an artistic gift. Some people will never appreciate the homosexual aspect of me as a diversity of my humanity. In both cases, I am not going to try and force people to think about aspects of me that they cannot appreciate, but I will watch for opportunities to comfortably share these aspects in their appropriate times and situations. Now I move to an appropriate time and situation. I have, individually and in groups, been telling people, in person, that I am Felix on net.motss. Everyone has been supportive. It turns out that some have been able to see me in a new way by my writings under the pseudonym of Felix. My major reason for anonymity, as many will remember, was that places that I have been interviewing at for jobs have netnews, and I was afraid of people seeing me the wrong way because of my writing in net.motss. Some time ago I began thinking about telling who I am. I thought to ask for people's opinions pretending that I was still unsure of whether to reveal myself. Now I see this is the appropriate time. People who have read things from me know me pretty well. They are not, as I feared judging me by my newsgroup, but by my ideas. I stand by my ideas, and I now give them a name, my real name: I am Bill Cattey, a recent graduate from MIT who has recently settled into a wonderful job at Bolt Beranek and Newman in Cambridge. I would like to hear from people about people. I have several network addresses, but I have not decided on one to use as my 'home'. Write to me at: ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!wdc (uucp) wdc%oz@mit-mc (current favorite) } wdc%eddie@mit-mc (mailer being fixed) } wdc%ccc@mit-mc (favorite but mailer being fixed) }(arpa) wdc@bbn-unix (New mbox at work) } wcattey@bbnf (work) } As you suspected, the new person forwarding for "Felix" is the real Felix. Thanks Steve. Love, Bill