All wounds hurt when pressed.

In recent days I’ve had two unpleasant experiences. Usually, I can shake these off and push it to the side, cancel it out and calm down. But I’m getting tired of doing that, pretending that each insult isn’t like being lashed with a whip, leaving scars. 

 I’ve been called a faggot, while with my friend in Gesundbrunnen, walking from his place to the station by a group of Turkish lads. Then three days after, looked at angrily while said person glaring at me spits on the ground, evidently disgusted in something or another. Now, in this case, I didn’t know if it was my race or sexuality that caused discomfort/anger or maybe both? In any case, these incidents highlight that there’s still so much hatred in our cities streets, hidden under banners of liberalism and open arms slogans. 

It’s been easy to rise above this and brush off the verbal attacks, happy that they remain just that. Yet in any Case, they still unsettle me. They awaken this fear, the same fear that makes me shy away from holding my dates' hand or going for a kiss in public. Then there’s the shame the same shame that existed in the younger me, wondering was it ok to be this way, be attracted to who I was attracted to and love who I love - men. 

I was attacked once before in London, on New Year’s Day. My friends and I were on our way to a party and ended up being heckled, verbally and then physically abused. I ended up with a deep cut to my eyebrow while my friend had several teeth knocked out, all because we were gay.  

It’s sad that society still harbours such hatred for people different from themselves. And even sadder that most verbal and some physical cases go unreported, meaning the perpetrators are free to continue their reign of terror with no repercussions. The best thing is to not pretend that we’re past discrimination, it exists in people in alarming numbers.

I want to go to the next-level the next time this happens and report it, I don’t know the laws and rules in Germany but I know that in Britain, such malicious crap can go down as a hate crime. Either way, I’ll do my research and find out how to do so, as silence is no longer an option.