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Capitol Pill | Silence = Death

silence

We’ve asked Karyn Schwartz, owner of the Sugarpill apothecary on E Pine, to contribute to CHS about health and Hill living on a semi-regular basis. If you’re an expert and want to share with the community in a recurring CHS column, we’d like to hear from you.

In 1985, my best friend and roommate participated in a medical trial, giving blood from his 19-year-old gay body to see if a new test for a still mysterious but very frightening disease could be detected and understood. He would become the first young man in our little college town to receive a phone call telling him, “You have tested positive for this. We are not quite sure what that means. Take good care of yourself and let us know if you ever feel sick, and don’t have sex with anyone, because they might die.”

He took their advice. He told me and a small handful of other close friends that he was “positive,” and terrified, but determined not to let this stop him from living his life. He went to Italy to study art history. He came home, caught a cold, and decided to go to therapy so he wouldn’t suffer overwhelming anxiety every time he got a sniffle. Three weeks later he called me from the hospital where he was being treated for a rare strain of pneumonia. That was the last time we spoke. He died shortly after, quite possibly alone because his family hated that he was gay.

At a routine visit to my own doctor in the months preceding his death, I was told that I should move out of the apartment we shared, so that I would not catch this disease. When I pointed out that that both my friend and I were both gay and, therefore, not terribly likely to be swapping body fluids, my doctor told me that I could get this illness by sharing the same kitchen and bathroom. She suggested that I reconsider my “lifestyle” because it was going to kill me, and recommended that I make new friends who were “normal”. She asked me if I would like referrals to some “resources.”

If I could find her, I would like to thank her for the important lesson she taught me…

It’s hard to tell a professional person, who currently has their hand inside your vagina, that they are a danger to the public and should reconsider their career path. It’s hard to tell them, while you are splayed open on an examination table wearing nothing but a paper gown, that you cannot simply decide to be someone other than who you are, or that you would never be willing to live a lie even if it were something you could choose to attempt. Yet, that is exactly what I did, and she politely told me that I was basically committing suicide for insisting on being so deranged.

Thankfully, I had so many supportive people in my world, and the ability to shield myself from some of the more frightening people who would hate me for who I am. As well, honestly, as the ability to CHOOSE whom I revealed my identity to, so I did not have to feel constantly in danger as a queer person. It was enough to feel frequently in danger as a woman; it was a privilege to walk the world in a white skin so that I was not also targeted for my race. 30 years after this uncomfortable exchange, I do wonder if that doctor is one of an incomprehensible number of people in the country still parroting what they are told on FOX news, or if she ever reconsidered her opinions. If I could find her, I would like to thank her for the important lesson she taught me, which was to reject prejudice and willful ignorance, and to speak up even when it is unspeakably difficult — because actual lives do depend on it.

A lot has changed since 1985. Being a queer person, at least in this corner of our world, is quite a lot easier than it used to be. And yet members of our community are still being discriminated against, physically attacked for walking down the street looking however they choose to, being ridiculed for claiming their own true identity, and having to face subtle and overt hurdles to safety, freedom and opportunity that straight folks never have to contend with.

If you are a queer person, you know the fear that comes with wondering if your own family will reject you for simply being or becoming who you are; you know the exhaustion of having to explain yourself to people who will not make an effort to understand; and you know the heartbreak of being maligned (or worse) in any of a million ways by people who cannot see you for who you are, or will not accept or speak up on behalf of what they do see. And you know the toll it takes on your spirit, your heart and also your physical body to have to constantly educate otherwise caring and intelligent people about their misconceptions, their prejudices and the internalized hatred of who you are.

But to say nothing is to continue to participate in the long legacy of racism that prevails in this country…

There is absolutely not a linear comparison to be made between the struggles of queer people and people of color in this country, but there is an obvious parallel to be drawn about the need for “allies” to take up the burden of educating themselves, and, more importantly, others, about the violence that is endlessly born of making people invisible by a refusal to see who they are and what that means in a society with such a deep history of discrimination, brutality and hatred towards anyone who is not white, straight and male. I have been as unsure as any white person in the wake of the hideous, racially motivated mass murder in Charleston about what to say that won’t sound woefully inadequate, that won’t reveal my own internalized prejudices, or that won’t break the heart of someone I love even as I try to make their heart hurt less than it already does. But to say nothing is to continue to participate in the long legacy of racism that prevails in this country, and it is, frankly, unforgivable.

Nobody who walks through their own life wondering if they will die, or be killed, simply because of who they are, should be expected to forgive the perpetrators of hatred. Nobody who has carried the burden of living with that fear should be expected to do the hard work to change that on everyone else’s behalf.

Silence DOES equal Death. It kills a person’s right to expect to ever be treated fairly and with the same respect that another person receives; it damages a person’s ability to trust and to feel safe in the world; it robs a person of the freedoms and the ease and mobility that other people take for granted; and it dishonors the uncountable number of lives that have been lost to the endless struggles for freedom and equality that have been fought, as well as distorts the very concept of freedom and liberty and justice for all.

Silence kills people. All the time.

Speak up.

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3 Comments
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Jeff E.
Jeff E.
8 years ago

“parroting what they are told on FOX news”

I wish I could make you understand how incredibly ignorant you sound and how this really takes away from your otherwise great and thoughtful piece. I’m not here to defend FOX News per se, only to suggest that by making such a sweeping generalization, you sound an awful lot like that ignorant doctor in 1985.

Chris
Chris
8 years ago
Reply to  Jeff E.

“make you understand”

mansplaining.

Joseph Mills
Joseph Mills
8 years ago
Reply to  Jeff E.

Hi Jeff – It has been widely reported that FOX News viewers are the most consistently misinformed about what is happening in the world by people who form a twisted narrative to fit their political agenda. The only ignorance is coming from you.