{"id":4387,"date":"2008-05-05T00:39:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-05T07:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/05\/05\/portlydyke-on-staying-closeted-even-after-coming-out-of-the-closet\/"},"modified":"2008-05-05T00:39:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-05T07:58:48","slug":"portlydyke-on-staying-closeted-even-after-coming-out-of-the-closet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4387","title":{"rendered":"PortlyDyke on Staying Closeted Even After Coming Out of the Closet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/shakespearessister.blogspot.com\/2008\/04\/take-my-arm-my-love.html\">PortlyDyke wrote<\/a> a beautiful post about reflexive, safety-making cloaking:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I doubt that most straight, cisgendered people think about, or notice, how frequently they touch their partner in public in ways that are <em>not <\/em>necessarily &#8220;sexual&#8221; (in addition to kissing, cuddling, and the odd bum-squeeze) &#8212; ie. holding hands, walking with an arm around the waist, smoothing the other&#8217;s hair back out of their eyes &#8212; nor do I think that most straight, cisgendered people are probably aware of the fact that when I touch my partner in public, it&#8217;s <em>nearly always<\/em> a <em>considered act<\/em>. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>So, I issued her and her husband a challenge (and I&#8217;ll issue the same challenge to any straight coupled allies here who want to raise their awareness of LBGTQ issues):<\/p>\n<p>Spend an entire week pretending that you&#8217;re not a couple. Don&#8217;t write a check from a joint bank account. Hide all the photographs in your home and office which would identify you as a couple. Take off your wedding rings. Touch each other, and talk to each other, in public, in ways that could only be interpreted as you being &#8220;friends&#8221;. Refer to yourself only in the singular &#8220;I&#8221;, never in the &#8220;we&#8221;. When you go to work on Monday, if you spent time together on the weekend, include only information which would indicate that you went somewhere with a <em>friend<\/em>, rather than your life-mate. If someone comes to stay with you, sleep in separate beds. Go <em>intentionally <\/em>into the closet as a couple. For a week.<\/p>\n<p>They took my challenge.<\/p>\n<p>They lasted exactly three days.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There&#8217;s lots more, and I recommend <a href=\"http:\/\/shakespearessister.blogspot.com\/2008\/04\/take-my-arm-my-love.html\">reading the whole thing<\/a>. Curtsy: <a href=\"http:\/\/teaotter.livejournal.com\/59494.html\">TeaOtter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PortlyDyke wrote a beautiful post about reflexive, safety-making cloaking: I doubt that most straight, cisgendered people think about, or notice, how frequently they touch their partner in public in ways that are not necessarily &#8220;sexual&#8221; (in addition to kissing, cuddling, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4387\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lesbian-gay-bi-trans-and-queer-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}