Coming Out
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, just officially came out as gay. He wasn’t in the closet, as his friends knew about his sexual orientation, but he felt it’s important to speak out and broadcast this. He said:
I don’t consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I’ve benefited from the sacrifice of others. So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.
Now, those of you who know me know that I have no big need of privacy. I broadcast major aspects of my life over various social platforms, and people close to me know I have (almost) zero secrets. I too have thought about broadcasting my sexual/romantic preferences. I even wrote a blog post about it two years ago … and decided not keep it in my drafts and not to publish it, in order to protect the privacy of the people close to me. But following Tim’s post, I too feel the need to let the world know. If this post can help and inspire others, then I am obligated to write it.
If you have a concept of Too Much Information feel free to stop right here, I don’t want to force this on anyone.
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Still with me? Great. So you will learn that:
- I’m polyamorous. This means I can feel and exercise romantic love and sexual passion to more than one person at the time. This doesn’t mean I have to do this, but rather that I want to do this, and will strive to make this my reality. Right now I am living in a mostly monogamous marriage with my wife, but I definitely see the possibility of this changing in the future.
- I’m somewhat bisexual. I’m mostly attracted to women, by I have felt romantic and sexual attraction to men, transgenders, and people in general, and have had a few sexual experiences with one particular man. Some people like to call this preference “pansexual“. I think I’m about 1.5 on the Kinsey Scale.
- I’m a self-defined slut. This means I enjoy sex and don’t think that sex without love is wrong, and if “in a perfect world” I would have sex with any person I fancy.
- I love kink. Not to say I don’t like “normal” sex, but I also like various types of kinks, including BDSM, humiliation, power plays, as well as more activities that I don’t feel the need to elaborate on here (but ask me if you’re curious). This doesn’t mean I practice all these forms of kink that I enjoy, most of them remain fantasy … but I’m not ruling out anything.
- I think that there is nothing wrong in any exchange between consenting adults. In particular, selling or buying sexual services is ok, and I’ve been on the purchasing end of that in a few strip clubs. Don’t get me wrong, the situation where poor girls feel they have to sell their body for money is bad. I wish everybody had enough money to never do anything they don’t want to (like sell their time and work in a dead end job). But the current reality is that there are people who feel the best thing for them is to strip, lapdance, or even have sex for money. By taking the moral high-ground of shunning these people or these acts, you just condemn them to a poorer existence. Prostitution should be legalized.
- I’ve smoked weed and enjoyed a couple of space cakes, and have lived to tell the tale. Up until a year or too, I was literally afraid of any form of drug including cannabis, and have never tried any kind of drug, ever. In the last 1-2 years I’ve sampled cannabis in a few forms, and it was a positive experience for me. It opened my mind, and haven’t left me an addict, nor did it make me try other drugs.
- I believe that there are no bad deeds in the world. Hitler went to heaven. Love is infinite, and God is infinite love. It’s beyond the scope of this post to explain this, I’ll reserve the discussion to another post (see in meantime on Quora).
I am very very fortunate to live in an environment where I can publicly tell the world all of the above, and still be loved by my friends, still be able to work for a living, still have a roof over my head. Some people out there can’t. If the world knew them for what they are, they employers would fire them, their parents would kick them out of their homes, their loved ones would divorce them. I thank my wife Aya, my family, and my friends for loving me for who I am.
I may attract some heat over this post, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay.