What have you learned from being a minority/in the minority?

This past weekend, my partner and I went to one my close friend’s b-day parties and the crowd was overwhelmingly queer and transgeder and pretty urban, progressive thinking. We got to talking about relationships, difficulties of finding exactly what we’re looking for, etc. A long-time friend of mine from college was updating me (she lives in D.C. and doesn’t come here often enough) on all her shenanigans and finding her current partner and all the CraigsList dates that never amounted to anything and the one that did. We discussed becoming self-actualized first and in need of companionship second. We looked around the room and heard people discussing their open relationships with each other. It was just the kind of crowd we felt ‘right’ in.

A lot of discrimination, rejection were also discussed (part and parcel of having minority identities) – yet a wonderful epiphany washed over me: because of the many years we spent being outsiders for our race or sexuality or gender identitiy or our relationships, we have learned how to articulate our desires so much more, we have learned to have quite high standards, we have learned to seek out other means of connecting than what’s available to the majority.

I realized that we were all happier than some of my other friends (still struggling with adulthood, chasing the ‘usual’ trajectory of ring, marriage, child and…? hell, I’ve been there) because of the struggles we faced – we have been (for better or worse but I think for better) forced to reconsider all of society’s norms and reject what didn’t feel right leading us to become our own advocates, leading us to become open to more than the available options. Therefore, even though sexuality and polyamory aren’t inherently linked, queer people are used to hearing about open relationships because they’re used to viewing the world through a ‘fringe of society’ lens and are therefore (well some of them, anyway) less judgmental. Many of us find it works for us because we are not afraid of exploring other ways of interaction (we have experience with that from our pasts).

So I thought to ask you (given that all of us, at some point, have experienced some sort of discrimination or rejection based on our decisions, beliefs, identities, etc.) about the benefits you have gained from having a difficult journey in connection to something others consider ‘abnormal’. What have you learned and what have you gained? It’s time to find the positives in our experiences with the negatives.