I’m not 100% sure why I thought of this, but I remembered tonight how in college, we had a sort of ‘awareness’ event where they’d present scenarios and try to take you through what it was like to have people treat you like a marginalized person. In one scenario, we were supposed to take a test in Spanish, and the ‘teacher’ treated us like we were very not smart because we couldn’t complete it. I think there was an activity or two where we wore certain glasses that impaired our vision, and we’d have to do something or other. 

But like, walking into the scenario for gay people was just strange. We were told that if we openly identified as gay, we could go to that side of the room, and I was like… well… I’m bisexual? And they were like, ‘okay, just, pick whatever side you want.’ And I was in this  for the experience and all, so I sat on the ‘straight’ side. And it was literally a bunch of, ‘why do you have to be so open about your straightness in public. We don’t need to see you kissing someone of the opposite gender’ and a lot of ‘how do you even know what your parter wants? They don’t have the same stuff!’ And just, like a complete reversal of how queer people are treated by cis straight people. 

And it made me really uncomfortable. At the time, I wasn’t aware of how transphobic some of this was, but it also was strangely very bi/panphobic. I’m pretty sure I kept my mouth shut (it was interactive) because I just didn’t know how to even engage with that? I mean, I’m fine with people getting a little taste of the medicine back, but way to fuck up with the other minorities. 

I bet some of the other scenarios were terrible too and one day I can look back and go ‘yeesh’ (like I’m doing for this one), but yeah. It came to mind, and ¯_(ツ)_/¯