Dear Pigeon Guts: Can "It Get Better" If You Live in Qatar?

Dear Pigeon Guts: I'm a transfer student in the U.S. from a tiny little country called Qatar. Lots of GLBTQ online media is blocked by our government (I was sad when I went home last summer and couldn't access AfterElton.com!), but I've been a good follower of it since I've been able to. My question is mainly towards the type of "it gets better" talk that takes place. Most of what I hear is "high school sucks, stick it out, it will get better after that and your family/friends may or may not be okay with it eventually."

That really says nothing at all to someone from a similar culture as mine, because: 1) Though high school still sucks, there is no "going off to college" or making your own life: most kids aren't expected to move out until they're married, and some don't move at all even after that. Very few people actually get their own place before marriage (and even fewer without ever getting married) but those are "oddballs" everyone stares at, talks about, and stays away from (and isn't an option for single women either). 2) It's a family-oriented culture. My family, direct or distant, would almost always use "we" when they mean "I" – everything we do has to always be viewed from a full family perspective, not an individual's. It's rarely an option. At the same time, your countless amount of cousins are your friends as well as family, so to come out or pretty much do anything out of the norm is, almost literally, to lose everyone you know.

For someone who has grown up under such a perspective of "family first," it's really difficult to even consider going off on my own. In all honesty, it just sounds selfish to me, especially knowing my siblings sacrifice a lot of who they are as well for the sake of family. During a conversation when my brother visited a few weeks ago, I had told him I marched as a "straight ally" with my friends. His response was that "if a photo of that gets home, you'll give dad a heart attack and I'd kill you." (Neither of that would happen, but that's the general reaction towards coming out/being gay.) Deep down, I know he knows I'm gay, but neither of us can admit it. We're supposed to suppress that and countless of other things for each other. Being gay is forbidden in Islam and unfathomable to people. It might change in the future, but this isn't that future.

I graduate this December, and though I've been able to be me, meet amazing people and have endless amounts of experiences, I have to go back home to all of the above. So my question (finally) is how would you say "it gets better" to someone in this situation? Or even to someone who is from such a culture? Because all the options to me sound like it gets worse. – P. M., Qatar/Ohio

The Pigeon Guts Speak:

Thanks for the extremely interesting, and very enlightening, letter. So much of life is perspective, and all perspectives differ, don’t they?

You have a choice to make: if you choose to return to your home and family, it will be extremely difficult to express yourself sexually or romantically, and the price of being discovered will be high. Maybe this is my American arrogance talking, but having lived in the U.S., I also think going back to a life in the deep, deep closet will exact more of a psychological toll than you think.

On the other hand, if you try to stay in the U.S., you will sacrifice much of your relationship with your family. You’ll probably also feel quite guilty about it – a very different but equally strong psychological toll.

There is obviously no easy answer here: one way or the other, there is pain and suffering. I know you know all this, so maybe the point of your letter is simply to express that pain and hopefully share a little in the suffering.

But you know what? I’m old enough to know that life isn’t all rainbow bracelets and pride parades – just like it’s also more than parental guilt and familial obligation. Sometimes life is some painful halfway point between the two.

Maybe for you the solution is, for the time being, some kind of marriage of convenience to a lesbian, enabling each of you to satisfy the demands of family, but also pursue your own relationships. Or maybe your personal solution is moving to a more-tolerant city like Doha (where I’m told there is the stirrings of a GLBT community), where you can still maintain some kind of relationship with your family, but also pursue a gay identity away from the prying eyes and disapproval of your relatives..

I’m old enough to have learned to hesitate in my judgments of the life-choices of others, to know that people do what they need to do to survive, and that we are ultimately accountable only to our own consciences.

In any event, I wish you well whatever you decide and hope you know the good wishes of the entire AfterElton.com community go with you.

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