Healing the Homos

"If we bury our history - especially the minute physical history of how we responded to an environment that didn't have a space for who we actually were - then it generally bites us in the ass."

Do we have gay bodies? George Russell has some interesting insights, not to mention clinical experience, about that question.

via Gay City News

Excerpt:

"LGBT people generally have a history - or a present, alas - of trying to deny aspects of ourselves as they manifest in our bodies. And the habit of holding a space between our spontaneous sexuality, gender, and social orientation really dies hard, no matter how much we've come out. It forms a part of our subcultures, our psyches, and, certainly, the way we hold and move our bodies.

"Imagine the way you walked down the hall in eighth grade. The awkwardness, the hiding, the pretending, the sense of disconnect between what's required to survive and our spontaneous impulses have effects that often last throughout life.

"Did you ever see a big bodybuilder - and when you looked closer you could still see the frightened scrawny kid inside the shell of muscle? Sometimes what looks like our strength is really our armor, and a suit of armor is heavy to carry around. Of course, the way we've overcome adversity also provides us with tremendous physical and character strength as well."

Read the whole thing.