Another Closet
(Note: This was formerly a friends-only post but is now public.)
Today is National Coming Out Day. This is the first year I've actually remembered on the day, so it's the first time I've had to decide what to do about it. I could make a public post about sexuality in my journal. I have been somewhat circumspect about that issue. (For instance, my belated NCOD post last year was friends-only.) In my most recent multifandom bingo post, though, I used the phrase "as a queer person", so I suppose I've more or less exited that closet without having to wait for the designated day.
Applying the idea of coming out more broadly, there are other things I've been vague about that I could make explicit. Yet, while I think there is value to "someone you know is X" efforts, that stuff doesn't feel relevant enough to my participation in fandom to make the complicated and painful explanations worthwhile for me or for others.
Yet there is one thing that is relevant, that as far as I recall I have never hinted at in any fan space, and that I think might be liberating to make known. That is that I am dyslexic. I find reading slow, laborious, and error-prone, and I do much of my reading of fan fiction using text-to-speech software. That doesn't, in my opinion, mean that I am "not really reading" it. The use of adaptive technology doesn't make an activity less meaningful, it just makes it possible for people who would otherwise be excluded.
Today is National Coming Out Day. This is the first year I've actually remembered on the day, so it's the first time I've had to decide what to do about it. I could make a public post about sexuality in my journal. I have been somewhat circumspect about that issue. (For instance, my belated NCOD post last year was friends-only.) In my most recent multifandom bingo post, though, I used the phrase "as a queer person", so I suppose I've more or less exited that closet without having to wait for the designated day.
Applying the idea of coming out more broadly, there are other things I've been vague about that I could make explicit. Yet, while I think there is value to "someone you know is X" efforts, that stuff doesn't feel relevant enough to my participation in fandom to make the complicated and painful explanations worthwhile for me or for others.
Yet there is one thing that is relevant, that as far as I recall I have never hinted at in any fan space, and that I think might be liberating to make known. That is that I am dyslexic. I find reading slow, laborious, and error-prone, and I do much of my reading of fan fiction using text-to-speech software. That doesn't, in my opinion, mean that I am "not really reading" it. The use of adaptive technology doesn't make an activity less meaningful, it just makes it possible for people who would otherwise be excluded.