It is scary to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in our country. Of course it’s not so terrifying as in Iran. Fear is a natural human reaction to any threat to his existence as biological or social being. There is an easy mechanism of survival instinct and it works in both cases.

Fear drives a person into a corner or some sort of ghetto, fear takes away any power to struggle, fear has it’s own perverted logic alien to any courage.

It is scary to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender   in our country. We are terrified by the fact that somebody would realize what we are, that somebody would discover our sexual orientation or gender identity. Because nobody knows what could happen after.

LGBT are people like everybody, people who have families, friends, and social activities. They also have to work to earn money and they need an opportunity  for self-actualization in their professional life.  By other words, like every human LGBTs have needs, according to Maslow’s hierarchy.   Mostly, LGBTs prefer not to come out and keep this aspect of them private. They don’t think that coming out is necessary because of straight majority who say something like: “We don’t care if they do everything they want at their place,  but they must not make THAT public” or something like  “We love  Tchaikovsky not because of his sexuality”.

We have come to spend our life “in the closet”: a life of seclusion and lie, controlling and correcting your speech and views, a double life, some sort of inherent schizophrenia. We hide because it’s a shame to be LGBT in the “respectable society”. We get terrible fear of losing relationship with our friends, trust of our parents, good job, and social position. For the idea of social prestige we accept rules created by somebody else, we propagate values alien to us, we praise things we consider disgusting.

We are afraid to fight against injustice and discrimination towards us. In order not to be suspected of the same “crime” we are afraid to give support to a person who was exposed of having a sexual orientation or gender identity considered wrong by a certain transitory majority.

At home everything changes and we relax. At home our homosexual partners love us and we may live according to the gender role with which we best identify. At home we feel safe.

But just on condition that our curtains are tightly drawn and our happiness don’t fall into the spotlight.

At all times the lack of honesty was called hypocrisy. And we are glad to play the hypocrite using  “our good intentions” as a cover. But in fact, we are just afraid, and nothing more than that.  We shrink in the face of any danger that’s why we are treated as cowards. We lie and that’s why we are treated as liars. We fear and so are ignored, humiliated and oppressed.

Fear, hypocrisy and cowardice are signs of lack of self-esteem.  As LGBTs we  always seem to be ashamed of our existence in this wonderful world and the  majority condescend to us, by their gracious permission to have our little corner here. But freedom established by somebody else will never fit you, and this off-size freedom always will shackle and restrict you. Freedom for some “chosen” people and not for everybody is no good and it’s not freedom at all.

People can be free only when they have no fear to be themselves always and everywhere.

Valery Sozaev

St Petersburg

translated by Dinara Sultanova