Out of the Straight White Male Closet at Last!

            According to the very reliable source of a couple of Facebook posts I have seen recently, I cannot live a full, proud and honest life unless I make a public declaration of my pride in being a straight white male.  I cannot tell you what a huge burden this has lifted from me and what an enormous difference it will make in my life.

            No, really.  I can’t tell you.

            Actually, I have known that I was a straight white male since I was just a child, and let me say, I have been tormented by that knowledge.  As a young boy I would force myself to play with dolls or take up games like chess or scrabble; or basketball; when I really just wanted to go outside and play football, or watch boxing or professional wrestling on tv; every night I would dream about growing up to be one of those guys who is the embodiment of the American cultural norm, even though I understood that I would suffer terrible reverse discrimination.  In high school, I hid my orientation and identity as well as I could.  I learned Spanish, took home economics, developed a fashion sense and learned how to match my socks to my v-neck sweater, but I secretly kept a set of L.L. Bean clothes in the back of my closet.   I also teased my hair way out, and learned to eat non-white foods like watermelon and fried chicken; and gay foods like quiche.  When I went to college, I majored in theater and would tell everyone what a great actor Sidney Poitier was and how we shouldn’t judge Pee Wee Herman.  I kept not one, but two Little Richard albums next to my stereo; and I would laugh hysterically just at the mention of Lily Tomlin.  I talked all the time about my admiration for Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eleanor Roosevelt and how I thought that Amelia Earhart was a much better pilot than Lindberg; and I had pictures of people like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Chief Joseph on my walls, but longed to have the courage of my roommate, who put up posters of General Patton and George Wallace. 

            It was all a lie, of course, and I hated my fake life.

            But it wasn’t until I left college and started a career that I really understood the straight white man’s burden.  Since I was a theater major, I had to apply for jobs that didn’t use any of my actual skills; but as soon as the employer began to suspect that I might be a straight white guy, I would get an interview and a job offer.  How could I try to pass as non-white if I was always having to pull myself up by my grandfather’s bootstraps?  How could I pass as gay if I kept getting offered really good jobs in prestigious companies?  I’d go out partying at night and drive home; and I can’t tell you how many times I got stopped and was so afraid that I wouldn’t get roughed up or searched or referred to with vile slurs and epithets, or even that I might just get sent home with a wink and a laugh and be told to be more careful next time; just because some racist cop saw that I was a straight white male.

            But now that I have decided to embrace my straight white male identity and declare my straight white male pride, I realize that I am going to have to deal with some prejudice.  I will have to live with the pain of never being looked at with disgust when I and my girl-friend (There, I said it!) show affection, hold hands or kiss in public. We plan to marry some day and I just know that we won’t have the least bit of trouble finding a church to marry us or a clerk to give us our marriage license.   Did you know that gay people actually think that my marrying my girlfriend won’t threaten the sanctity of their marriages at all?!?  I need to accept that people simply aren’t going to ask us which one is the woman, or how we “do It.”  As an out-of-the-closet straight white guy, I will have to deal with the burden of no one ever asking me what “people like me” want; and if something happens, I know that I will be identified as a man, or an American, without any qualifiers.  I will never have the opportunity to be the first straight white guy to do something.

            As a person of no particular color, I believe that we should all be color-blind.

            All I, and people like me, are asking for is to be treated just like everyone else, to know the joys of being denied service; harassed by bosses, random strangers on the street, and the police; thrown out of the military or the Boy Scouts, a job or my church; not represented in our cultural messages, such as advertising, film, or television, except as stereotypes; paid less for the same work.  Let’s face it: white male privilege sucks.

            I suddenly feel so free and strong. Since coming out as a proud straight white male, I can feel my courage rising.

            I think I may be almost ready to come out as a Christian.