Very moving: A gay man from Morocco writes about the high price of surviving village homophobia and rape

This piece by Abdellah Taia reminds me how I, too, have killed small parts of myself that I considered to be too effeminate for society, and realize now that there is a personal price in authenticity for eradicating these aspects of my boyhood personality -- something that I think many gay men have done. Society's homophobia and strict gender roles are harmful to so many people, both victims and enforcers.

By Abdellah Taia, "A Boy to Be Sacrificed", from the New York Times

The whole neighborhood. The whole world. These men, whom we all knew quite well, cried out: “Abdellah, little girl, come down. Come down. Wake up and come down. We all want you. Come down, Abdellah. Don’t be afraid. We won’t hurt you. We just want to have sex with you.”

...They kept yelling for a long time. My nickname. Their desire. Their crime...

But my brother, the absolute monarch of our family, did nothing. Everyone turned their back on me. Everyone killed me that night. I don’t know where I found the strength, but I didn’t cry. I just squeezed my eyes shut a bit more tightly. And shut, with the same motion, everything else in me. Everything. I was never the same Abdellah Taïa after that night. To save my skin, I killed myself. And that was how I did it.

I began by keeping my head low all the time. I cut all ties with the children in the neighborhood. I altered my behavior. I kept myself in check: no more feminine gestures, no more honeyed voice, no more hanging around women. No more anything. I had to invent a whole new Abdellah. I bent myself to the task with great determination, and with the realization that this world was no longer my world. Sooner or later, I would leave it behind. I would grow up and find freedom somewhere else. But in the meantime I would become hard. Very hard.

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