Daily Revolution
My name is Yang Kang. I’m a cis-gender gay man who currently studying in the School of Political Science and Economics, majoring Political science. I am a feminist, and I am active in human right movements and LGBTI+ equality campaigns.
I want to write about the concept of “coming out”. As you may know, coming out means make one’s sexual orientation and/or identity overt. But coming out is not simply an instantaneous action, and the complexity of it might be beyond common supposition.
I’m always open with my sexual orientation with my friends since I identified myself as gay in my middle school.
Being in a harmonious relationship with my family, I thought that my family would accept me with love and understanding when I decided to end this years-old concealment. However, when I came out to my family in September 2014, I was thrown out of the house, and had only 8,000 NTD (about 27,000 Yen) with me. Unable to pay the tuition, I had no choice but to drop out of college and get several part-time jobs: interpreter, translator, and clerk of stationery store. I signed a one year rental contract for a room with no stable hot water in a little township called Qidu.
In that year, I got disowned by my family, had to work throughout the night, and have to survive only with gallons of sugared water. But I regard that year in that humid crappy town, is the most important period of time in my life. I chose to honestly handle myself and my life. I decided that I am not going back to my original university and continue the learning of electrical engineering that I had absolutely no interest, and go somewhere preferable to study something I am interested in, and I met someone that truly understand and cherish me as a whole.
The most important lesson that I learned in that year is that, coming out is not just a instantaneous action. Once you come out, there’s no going back. In the society where LGBTI+ community still remains a minority and left vulnerable, we have to continuously manifest ourselves over and over again.
Revolution is a drastic social alternation that is done by the people. Hannah Arendt regarded human is “political animal”: human are the only animal that is able to labor, to work, and to produce action. Therefore, I pledge our allies and those LGBTI+ that are able to safely perform expression: try.
Try to spread egalitarianism in your daily life, transform your state of self-recognition into the thrust for political action.
Revolute. Act. Spread the ideas, and try to achieve a safe, equal, and free society.
Yang Kang
SPSE
