Please, do say gay

Thought journal

an open letter to Emmanuel Macron

Mr Macron, Mr President

When I can’t sleep, I write, and today you are the pea under the mattress, the reason why I ache, why I bruise, why I’m angry.

While your first mandate reaches its twilight, and as Americans struggle with the same questions, you said things that are both dated and dangerous.

In a recent interview, you said that you were against talking about LBGTQIA+ people in school, skeptical about addressing them in high-school and might only be okay with it at the end of high-school. Your arguments : “you don’t have sex ed in 4th or 5th grade” and “Zemmour is worst than I am”.

Mr Macron, you graduated with honors and were rated 5th coming out of ENA. Results that you would never achieve by settling for being better than the worst.

When it comes to sex ed, it is not indeed taught in 4th and 5th grade – not that it is often taugh afterwards either, let’s be honnest. But when I hold the hand of the person I love, when I kiss them, it has nothing to do with sex, has it? Nobody is asking you to teach sodomy, oral or doggy to a 7 year old.

But it is important that our young understand that LGBTQIA+ people exist and are valid. Nobody had the courtesy to let me figure out who I was before using it to harm me. And nobody took the time to explain to my harassers that what made me “different” was only a part of me and that we are all different in our own ways.

Discrimination ends with education.

And while you refuse to talk about us, you are once again making us invisible and abnormal.
Will a straight based fiction be forbidden in school because “there’s is no sex ed in 5th grade”? I doubt it.
If it’s the word « sexual » that bothers you in “homosexual”, simply replace it by “romantic”. I assure you, most of us are both.

Teachers need to be trained, on that we agree. They need to be able to help a student that might feel lost or is being bullied. They need to be able to reassure and educate on those topics, when needed. Of course, it is not about giving full lectures about gender and sexuality, but it is about relieving, integrating and even at times saving children’s lives.