Guest Editor: Advice To My Younger Self

Founder of?‘How are you feeling’?Journal, Max Hovey, tells us his journey from feeling shame to owning it, and shares his advice on embracing queerness…

Advice to My Younger Self: Embracing Queerness

Sometimes I forget how far I’ve come. When I think back to the younger me, I was one of the most shy, embarrassed and insecure little boys. The thought of holding hands with a guy in public filled me with dread, and the notion of femininity in men had been shamed out to me to the point I struggled to be around it. I was full of internalised homophobia.

Today, it’s a different story, this is what I look like now.

The advice will come a little further down, but first I want to talk about why this advice is so important. Within the LGBTQIA+ community, internalised homophobia is one of the biggest battles we face. We have been brought up in a society designed to make us feel completely inadequate in who we are and we handle this feeling in different ways. Some of us fight hard, determined to push boundaries as much as possible; some of us feel so attacked that we retreat and hide the things that make us unique to make us less of a target. Both are valid responses, but one makes me sad.

Growing up, I loved make-up, dresses and Barbies; I was a happy feminine little boy. Children are carefree and just do what makes them happy. Looking back at the way that little feminine boy started suppressing that side of himself honestly makes me want to cry. Kids at school started chanting “Max is a girl, Max is a girl!” when I put a dress on once… we were only 5 years old. I didn’t get it, I was just happy dressing up. But we’d all been shown that dresses were for girls and not for boys, and so, they instinctively thought it was wrong.

Children act on what we teach them, and ’we’, being society, teach our kids to fear what they don’t understand and to ridicule what is different. Unfortunately, this isn’t something we grow out of. When from a young age we are taught that men wearing a dress is something to be ashamed of, that evolves from being something to pick on someone else for, to something much darker. It evolves into political opposition to queer rights, or into verbal or physical hatred to strangers. In some cases, it evolves into the abandonment of our own children.

It isn’t the kids' fault that they grow up with these views. No one is born with prejudice, we’re taught it. Children are the most accepting and loving individuals in our society, until they fall under our influence. My internalised homophobia stemmed from the way other children treated me; I learnt to fear being different because of the way other people reacted to me. I left primary school having had seven years of girls there to support me, to go to an all boys school for the next five years. Femininity was no longer something to subtly mock from ignorance, it meant you became a target and you were completely ousted. I stopped embracing the things I enjoyed and pretended to like sports (unsuccessfully I might add, I was never good at them). I think the worst part was how the ridicule I had experienced for femininity, had led to me projecting those insecurities onto others. People saw femininity as a weakness in me, so I saw femininity as a weakness in others. It’s just a continuous spiral where we’re made to feel insecure about who we are by society, and we then project this onto our own queer siblings.The representation I had growing up was minimal. Yes, there were gay men who told me being gay was okay, but they were still pretty masc-presenting. There was no one for me to look up to who told me that femininity was okay, that androgyny was okay, that liking all the things I liked growing up, was okay. So, I gradually accepted my sexuality, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I began to regain the confidence to embrace what I truly enjoyed, once again.

I have gone from being someone who suppressed everything about himself that was different, to now doing everything I can do EMBRACE being different. I have fallen back in love with makeup, skirts, crop tops, cute little bags, exaggerated mannerisms, my little belly, standing out, and being ME. Internalised homophobia isn’t our fault, it truly isn’t – we’re taught it. What is our fault, is not recognising it and taking active steps to work on it. My younger self couldn’t help the way his mind worked, but I and I alone were responsible for my actions and my treatment of others. As a society, we need to work towards better representation of diverse queer people, so the next generation doesn’t grow up feeling that what makes them who they are is something to be ashamed of. We need to lead by example. By proudly walking down the street being exactly who you are, you could be inspiring a younger person to grow out of their chrysalis of shame into a beautiful queer butterfly. We’re not just fighting for now, we’re fighting for our community’s future.

My advice for anyone who is battling with internalised homophobia is to look internally. If you feel uncomfortable around expressive and effeminate queer people, ask yourself why. If you still believe masculinity equals superiority, ask yourself why. I wish growing up someone had simply told me this:

Being different isn’t a weakness, it’s a superpower.