#SilverBeingQueer

For queers, parting forever is just a grim yet common situation we need to face in our daily life.

People are accustomed to seeing persecuted groups suffer beautifully in works of art, but in reality, there is nothing beautiful about this suffering. Pain itself lacks even the most basic decency. On the contrary, it strips you of grace and dignity altogether.

Out of respect for privacy—both mine and others’—I’ll omit the specifics. But I no longer even have the strength to feel angry. All I can say is that persecution against minority groups may appear to the majority as “justified punishment” or “a minor inconvenience.” Yet, in places they cannot see, people are already wounded, or worse—dead. For me and my found family of queers, I’ve heard of far more stories of deaths than stories of romance.

Reality isn’t the only place that such massacres happen. Our space in culture has always been limited, and it’s shrinking even further. As someone who deeply loves languages and literature, I find this unbearably cruel, because when I’m rejected by reality, fictions become my refuge.
Yet even the realm constructed by texts is no haven for me. I’ve read the Four Books and Five Classics, only to find that “improper” is my name. I’ve scoured the sacred scriptures of Bible, only to discover that a child of Sodom like me deserves to burn in fire. I’ve sought refuge in Buddhism, only to find that many eminent monks believe I’m destined for the hell of lust. I’ve turned on the news, only to see that my people, victims of hate crimes, have once again died without justice.

Sometimes, I genuinely feel that when facing such overwhelming despair, optimism borders on cruelty.