Tag: america

Okay real talk for a minute

I don’t make a habit of talking about current events or politics on here, and I also normally don’t talk much about my personal life or feelings because I see Tumblr as more or less a public place and I’m just not altogether comfortable with that.  However, if you’ve been paying close attention to my rambling nonsense for a substantial period, you might have picked up that I am a gay foreigner living and studying in the United States of America.  And unless you’ve been asleep for the past two days, you’ve probably heard something (perhaps courtesy of this very website) about this country’s new “high score” for mass shootings, which took place on Sunday morning in Orlando, Florida at a gay nightclub.  So this is one of those times when not talking about it feels, in itself, like taking a position, and it’s not a position I like, so you’ll just have to put up with me for a minute.

Continue reading “Okay real talk for a minute” →

Cell Block Chacha asks:

So between your experience in New Zealand and what you’ve got so far here in America, which place would you say is more LGBT friendly? Just asking out of curiosity as a gay American myself.

Eh.  I don’t think I’m really the best person to ask.  Like, I come from New Zealand’s biggest city, so I grew up in an environment that was quite socially progressive even by our standards, and now I live in Ohio, which is… probably not the very best America has to offer on that front?  But on the other hand, most of the people I actually have anything to do with are academics like me, and academics pretty much everywhere are overwhelmingly liberal and have no patience for discrimination (my department has… at the moment, I think like seven or eight openly gay or bi graduate students, including me?).  I don’t really get out much, and since I don’t have a boyfriend there’s really no reason a stranger would know I’m gay unless I choose to tell them, so it just doesn’t come up.  That’s… that’s probably not a very good answer.  In strictly legal terms New Zealand is certainly very progressive as far as that goes, more so than most parts of the United States, but I don’t actually know how we’d compare to somewhere like California or Massachusetts.