Yan's story

Growing up as a gay person in Japan By 'Yan' When I was 12 years old, I entered a junior high school, where I started to learn how to read and write the ABC. Everything was new there. Before I finished mastering the 26 letters, I noticed that I fell in love with Yoshi in our class. He was so cute and lovely as well as boyish. But we were just classmates and nothing more, and so the only thing I could do was to talk with him occasionally and gaze at him time from time to time.

At that time, I only knew that there were such men who wanted to have sex with men, and that they were called ëhomoíand were gloomy. They existed somewhere in our world but I had no idea where they were. One day I consulted a dictionary which defined homosexuality as ëabnormal sexual desireí,ësexual perversioní, you name it. Though I vaguely anticipated that sort of explanation, I was quite baffled. But on the other hand, though this might sound absurd, I simply thought that the dictionary makers didn't know who we really were. This was because there was nothing wrong with my body and soul and I was attracted to boys naturally. What's more, masturbating while thinking about boys was just pleasurable...! So in my case, I came out to myself pretty easily, but not to others. I pretended to be heterosexual. I even jokedëI'm homo!íto indicate that I was able to make fun of ëhomosí, to make my friends think I was heterosexual.

Even after entering a high school, nothing had changed. I fell in love with a classmate, but he liked girls. We were kind of close friends, but I could not tell him my gayness. I was simply irritated. There was no information around me and though I hadn't had any qualms about loving boys, I was not strong enough to tell others about my gayness. The reason was that at that time, I knew that the medical criterion classified homosexuality as a mental illness and didn't think I could answer back when people taunted me about my homosexuality by saying phrases such asëHey homo, you need to be cured!!í. (Now I believe even if homosexuality were an illness, nobody is entitled to taunt us! Don't you agree? Suppose I had HIV. Who is entitled to taunt me about it?) 

It was only after I entered university when I got to know where to turn. I was a fourth year student. When I was wandering about in the book store, my eyes settled on one magazine, The Sexuality Education. Until then, I wasn't interested in sex education, because only heterosexual education existed. I had always been ostracized in class. But this magazine was different. It had an article, which was written by a gay activist explaining how homosexuals were harassed in a heterosexist society. I was so excited! One after another these articles led me to the knowledge I had craved for and then I started to live my own life. I entered the postgraduate school, and my supervisor there has been really liberal, open-minded, and even innovative enough to enable me to read (homo)sexuality studies in the field of education, which is what I am doing now. 
 

Now I research (homo)sexuality studies, make presentations at conferences and write articles in the magazine. Occasionally I am indirectly harassed because I am doing ëQUEERí studies, but who cares? I am doing what I want to do and I can be the person who I really am. Thanks to the people around me, including you, the persevering reader, I am fully enjoying my own life. Though sometimes my life as a gay man is a bit tough, I can now be confident and satisfied that I am leading my own life, not anybody else's...