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When I first heard about Jussie Smollett the beginning of the month, I didn’t know who he was. I don’t watch a lot of ‘popular’ tv, and I don’t tend to give anything on Fox the time of day. However, the idea that someone both of color AND LGBT being victimized, for being those things left me pensive and frankly, vulnerable. Finding out the actor’s father was Jewish and from an immigrant family didn’t help.
I’ve experienced discrimination, both for being Jewish and for being gay (though not simultaneously) and while neither were physically violent, both left emotional scars. Part of that scarring, helped cement my identity as a minority person, and not in a good way. Hearing about that alleged assault, left me shaking my head. Still? Yeah, it’s still going on. At least, Smollett didn’t seem to badly damaged, at least physically. The spate of killings of LGBT folk, of synagogue goers, of people of color over the last decade have left me feeling marginalized and yes, at risk. How much at risk? Just an underlying feeling of dread; what if? A sense that safety is tenuous.
In my teens, I was sexually assaulted. No, I doubt my attacker knew either my orientation or my ethnicity. I was simply a convenient victim, a teenage kid, heavily under the influence, in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been anyone. Unfortunately, it was me. In 1973, I didn’t have the ability to find help. I turned it all inwards. Vulnerable. Hide that vulnerability at all costs.
The idea that Smollett may have staged it all, incenses me.
And for now I’m just going to shake my queer, minority head in frustration and anger.
I’ve experienced discrimination, both for being Jewish and for being gay (though not simultaneously) and while neither were physically violent, both left emotional scars. Part of that scarring, helped cement my identity as a minority person, and not in a good way. Hearing about that alleged assault, left me shaking my head. Still? Yeah, it’s still going on. At least, Smollett didn’t seem to badly damaged, at least physically. The spate of killings of LGBT folk, of synagogue goers, of people of color over the last decade have left me feeling marginalized and yes, at risk. How much at risk? Just an underlying feeling of dread; what if? A sense that safety is tenuous.
In my teens, I was sexually assaulted. No, I doubt my attacker knew either my orientation or my ethnicity. I was simply a convenient victim, a teenage kid, heavily under the influence, in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been anyone. Unfortunately, it was me. In 1973, I didn’t have the ability to find help. I turned it all inwards. Vulnerable. Hide that vulnerability at all costs.
The idea that Smollett may have staged it all, incenses me.
And for now I’m just going to shake my queer, minority head in frustration and anger.
