I rarely tell my “true” coming out story.
I was forced to come out of the closet when I was 17. I wasn’t ready, I didn’t want to, but I had to.
In the discussions over the problem of sexual assault, quite a few of my male friends have been trying to find some rationale to explain how women are also a problem. The one they seem to fall back on the most is “sometimes women lie.”
I went to Hofstra University, where several years ago a woman accused several men of gang raping her and then recanted the story months later. We saw a similar situation happened at Duke University. As a student, I was taught that journalists never release the name of rape victims or suspects, just in case the rape suspect is exonerated.
What does this have to do with me coming out? Simple. I was forced out of the closet when I was 17 because a female classmate of mine wrongly accused me of sexual assault. Several male friends of mine have tried to use that to get me to be less willing to side with women over the debate on sexual assault.
But they don’t know the whole story. I wasn’t the victim of a lying women; I was the fallout of something much worse.
Let’s call her Gina. Gina and I were friends for a time in high school, but we had a falling out in Junior year. I knew that she had a crush on me (she didn’t know I was gay). She asked me out at some point Junior year and I politely turned her down. but didn’t say why. I was not ready to come out of the closet. I attended a conservative Catholic high school in outer borough New York City in the late 1990s. Gay was not a thing, unless you wanted to be isolated and spend half your day in the counselor’s office talking about how gays always end up in jail on accusations of being pedophiles and don’t go to heaven with their relatives. I had made the decision to come out publicly (a couple of close friends and cousins knew) after high school.
Gina took my rejection to heart. She thought I had rejected her because she wasn’t pretty. Gina wasn’t ugly, but her weight and some of her physical attributes made her a target of pretty girls’ bullying. When word spread that I had turned her down, the girls ramped up the bullying and torment. That led to our falling out.
May in New York City means time to take off the coats and turtlenecks and show some skin. But for Gina, that meant showing off her scars. Gina’s mother spotted some black and blues on her arm and neck. When asked what happened, she panicked. Her mother searched her room and found contraceptives. Eventually, Gina said that I had been sexually assaulting her and had threatened to rape her.
The next day was my birthday. I got called to the Dean’s office. Without even giving me a chance to talk, the Dean of Men, with Gina sitting there, laid out what she had said. That since Freshman year, I had been sexually harassing her, grabbing her inappropriately, then drugged her and attempted to rape her at a party. I was threatened with expulsion and told to go back to class.
My birthday was ruined. I spent the rest of the day meeting with a few of my friends to figure out how to prevent getting expelled. There was no evidence obviously since I didn’t do anything, but it didn’t seem to matter. Both deans sided with her over me. Over the next few days, dozens of my classmates were summoned to the office to explain what they saw or heard, but none were able to offer any evidence except that Gina and I were friends and then suddenly we weren’t.
Then they called in Danny. Danny hated me. He had tried to bully me, but didn’t get the response he wanted from the other students, so he stopped. But he would constantly try to mock my voice in the hallway, he would call me “faggot” and make me uncomfortable in the locker room before baseball practice.
Danny told the Dean of Men that Gina and I had been in a sexual relationship, and that Gina tried to call it off and I got mad and raped her at a party neither of us were actually at.
I was done for.
The day before my parents were to come in to discuss my pending expulsion, I sat with a couple of my friends in tears, and my friend Jess suggested a Hail Mary.
“Why don’t you tell them about you?” she suggested.
It was the only chance I had.
At 17, I had to tell the Dean of Men, who drove around in a Toyota Camry with “Jesus is Pro-Life” and “I’m Catholic and I Vote” bumper stickers, that I was gay. I could feel his disdain flow through me like an electrical current. I knew then that my counselor would find out, and because my school saw “homosexuality” as the same as “suicide risk,” my parents would find out.
I was angry. I was angry at Danny, at Gina, at the entire situation. I just wanted to run away. I dreamt of getting on a bus and going to live with family in Colorado or California. I hoped for death.
I could be mad at Gina. I could use this story as an example that women are also the problem. But there’s a big factor in this that must be taken into consideration.
As it turns out Gina had been a victim of sexual abuse for years, perpetrated by a close family friend and neighbor. Her abuser intimidated her into submitting and then keeping quiet about it. He told her that her family wouldn’t believe her, that he was “beloved” and she would look like a “slut.”
“You can’t tell anyone, it will ruin you,” he convinced her.
I can only imagine what effect mentally the years of abuse had on her self-esteem and self-confidence, and how that may have effected her response to my rejection.
So when this appeared on my Facebook status the other day where I said “Men need to start listening to women and procuring an environment when women aren’t afraid to speak out,” I was shocked:
This is something coming from someone who was nearly expelled from high school and had his life ruined over a girl who cried rape
My response:
I’m really shocked that you would bring that up, considering the subject of the matter is a mutual friend of ours on Facebook. The truth is not mine to tell, but I will say this. If you knew the whole story, you would see how it only reinforces my point — that toxic masculinity and the power men yield over their victims infects more than just the victim.
In a surprise move, Gina stepped in today. Here was her comment:
#MeToo XXXX, what DTOzone is referring to is the fact that I was a victim of sexual abuse in high school and when my mother discovered I was being abused, I pointed the blame at DTOzone because I was too scared to say who it really was. I was mad at DTOzone at the time and figured he [would get] just detention or something and that would be the end of it. Not a day goes by that I don’t regret what I did, and how it played out. I never intended on hurting DTOzone as much as I did, or that it would lead to an expulsion or force him to come out of the closet, but I didn’t do it entirely out of spite. I did it because I couldn’t tell the truth. I was too afraid and intimidated.
I forgave Gina long ago for what happened, but I don’t blame her. I understand now how afraid she was that her parents wouldn’t believe her, that she felt she had no other choice.
Who knows why the Hofstra girl or the Duke girl lied about being gang raped. Who knows what their life circumstances were?
But one thing is for sure...just because those situations end up being untrue, does not take away from the real and toxic problem with sexual assault in our society.