I love you but your homophobia breaks my heart.

So this post is about two different things. One is about vulnerability, friendship and homophobia, and the other is about what I understand so far of being gay in Cambodia.

The first thing;

This is a feeling I get from time to time, with particular friends or places. Friends I would love to feel wholly comfortable with, but there is something, like an edge, a topic I feel I have to avoid because to talk about it brings up this huge gap between us, and reminds me that there are things that feel to me like a part of the core of me, that my friend cannot understand or does not respect.

This occurs about a few different things, my politics, my views in things like racism and abuse and respect, that are things I don’t feel I can compromise.

 And inevitably it occurs with being queer. I love the people that I love in my life who are queer, trans*, and wonderfully uniquely their brilliant selves. I feel that all of the things I associate with queers can create so much joy and celebration and sparkles and growth and challenge and love. And I know that there is also difficulty and often pain involved in being outside the status quo, In being who you are when people don’t understand it and are threatened, disrespectful, angry or many other reactions. I love the understanding I find with many queers, and I feel love and care for the people who are experiencing difficulty and abuse because of it.

It tears at my heart a little to love something or someone but know that we can’t be friends in the way I wish we could be friends. Because there are differences in our lives and experiences that give us different takes on the world, and trying to explain is gruelling and painful and involves being so vulnerable, sometimes for so little pay off. I sometimes try to explain it all, to help someone understand how my life has shaped me into the person I am, and why comments and ways of treating people that seem fine to them are so hurtful to me… but the process of baring yourself to someone you care about things you deeply believe in and can’t change, and them having them not understand or not care is so painful and demoralising that most often I don’t attempt it.

Cambodia too of course has a certain homophobia, It is not something that really makes me feel personally uncomfortable or threatened. I fit into Cambodia as an expat ‘baraang’. Different expectations and understanding apply to me as opposed to someone who is khmer and was raised here. But for Khmer people who are gay, queer, trans*, I can’t imagine how difficult it would be.

Cambodia is a place I am still getting to know, and as far as I understand (which probably isn’t very far) Homosexuality sort of “dosen’t exist”, It’s understood that people might do a bit of ‘searching’ but that eventually they will settle down and get married. Talking to a distressed Khmer friend the other night I realised how good I have it back home, I can hold another girls hand most places, kiss where I want to, live somewhere where there are lots of other queers, live with my partner and probably have kids if I ever wanted to. Here I think that would be a very hard option if you could do it at all.

I’m aware that I don’t know much about Cambodia, I’v only been here a few months, so maybe this is not the way it is, I don’t have much of an understanding of Khmer culture and I think it differs in the cities and rurally and maybe province to province a bit as well. So this is just what I’v heard (and mostly from other foreigners).

Mainly I feel sad for my friend who is having such a hard time here, and I felt shocked to try and imagine how hard it would be to know I was queer if I was growing up in Cambodia as opposed to how it has been the past few years living in Newtown.

And I feel sad when that point comes as it sometimes does when someone I care for and trust says something out of left field that just makes me feel uncomfortable and shocked, and like I can’t be honest and that they don’t understand me at all.

** Also, I know this sounds a bit whingey and I feel weird writing about myself like this, I am sure I have misunderstood people and made them feel uncomfortable and I feel sorry about that. I also think a lot of people feel like this about differen things so… yea…. Disclaimer ! : )