As we pondered our apparent problem of chronic singlehood, my friend and I started talking about where one would meet gay people if you don't want to look in the clubbing scene or take the obvious route of getting involved with the local LGBT organization. Or online. "Where do you meet people the way normal people do, the normal way?" Like in class, or I don't know, at the gym.
I made an observation that there seems to be more queer people involved in the "activist community," at least proportionally. Not necessarily just in the gay rights movement, but also in environmental groups, or humanitarian and human rights groups. At first it just seemed like an interesting phenomenon. Could it be coincidence? I think not.
In another conversation with another friend, I theorized that there are two parts to coming out: the first part where you come to terms with your sexuality, and the second where you consider the social implication of that and make a conscious decision about whether you can live with it or not. Living life being gay and living life as gay, in my opinion, are two different things.
Referring to one of my ex's, my friend asked, "Do you think she's actually gay?" I said, "No, for all practical purposes, she isn't." My friend protested, saying that just because she's currently in a relationship with a guy not a girl doesn't necessarily make her not gay. "But exactly that," I insisted, "hence the 'for all practical purposes' part." I mean, things could have changed, but last I heard, she told me she couldn't live that way (unless it was just a convenient excuse), "that way" being having to confront society, her peers and her parents. I don't blame her for a second -- it's hard.
It's one thing to realize that you are sexually attracted to people of your own gender, and a whole other thing to deal with looks you get in the streets holding your partner's hand, tolerate bad jokes about dykes and plastic penis from drunk guys on the night bus, and worry about whether you will be allowed to marry your partner or not. You go from figuring out that you're different, to figuring out that all the little things that people take for granted -- social status and privilege -- will change for you. You become aware of the fact that yes, the "normal" majority of society that you once belonged to will treat you differently because you're gay.
And this process, I think, is what makes you ever more cognizant of the injustice that exists in our society. Then if you should be motivated to get to the end of that (which many of us are), you inevitably find yourself delving into structures of power and oppression and their expression in gender and racial relations, in historical terms and economic terms. Suddenly, it's everywhere -- sexual assault, poverty, HIV/AIDS, environmental degradation, systematic discrimination -- and the most striking bit about it is that on some level, there's something common to all these problems.
So we are compelled to do something. Having personally experienced injustice and bearing witness to it, very few can stand to do nothing about it. Everything's related, but we can't be everywhere at once, so we pick an issue close to our hearts. Coming out publicly and the necessary steps involved in it act as a catalyst to our entrance into activism; hence we appear to swell in numbers as you venture into the "activist network."
That's my theory anyway.