So, I know you got a lot of replies to this already (probably more than you expected lol) but I’d like to throw in my 2 cents.
For me, there’s two big reasons to be public about your sexual preferences. The first of those is awareness. For me, I grew up homeschooled in an extremely rural area. My parents did their best with the whole ‘birds and bees’ thing and gave me books to handle puberty stuff (which worked really well for me since I read an insane amount back then). But none of those really went over anything about different sexual preferenes, leading me to waiting my entire teenage life for that point where I’m supposed to suddenly start being into girls (or guys, bc that had enough media attention at that point where I was dimly aware lol).
It was only thanks to the internet- I think posts about it during pride month- that I even learned about asexuality as a concept. If nobody talked about that kind of stuff at all, I’d still probably be feeling like I was supposed to feel physically attracted towards people yet for some reason didn’t.
The second reason, is for equal rights. We don’t live in a perfect world, and people discriminate against others. And you can’t just hide everything- you can be quiet about it, sure, but for example: if you’re gay, and in a committed relationship, people are going to notice it the same way they’d notice if you’re in a committed relationship with someone of the opposite gender. And many people have backwards views that would cause them to discriminate against you for that. One shouldn’t have to be afraid that if their boss finds out they’re gay, they’ll lose their job.
We have protections against discrimination for that, but those protections didn’t come into existance because people were quiet about that. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, so to speak. And same goes for gay marriage- that was only a relatively recent change, but it would not have happened if not for gay people making their presence known and demanding they should have the same rights to marriage as hetero couples.
As much as I’d love to be in a world where we don’t need to worry about all that anymore because we have those rights now, there’s still a lot of people in positions of power who hold a lot of unjust prejudice against lgbtq folk. Especially with the current state of politics here in the USA. And I don’t see that changing anytime too soon, either.
So, I know you got a lot of replies to this already (probably more than you expected lol) but I’d like to throw in my 2 cents.
For me, there’s two big reasons to be public about your sexual preferences. The first of those is awareness. For me, I grew up homeschooled in an extremely rural area. My parents did their best with the whole ‘birds and bees’ thing and gave me books to handle puberty stuff (which worked really well for me since I read an insane amount back then). But none of those really went over anything about different sexual preferenes, leading me to waiting my entire teenage life for that point where I’m supposed to suddenly start being into girls (or guys, bc that had enough media attention at that point where I was dimly aware lol).
It was only thanks to the internet- I think posts about it during pride month- that I even learned about asexuality as a concept. If nobody talked about that kind of stuff at all, I’d still probably be feeling like I was supposed to feel physically attracted towards people yet for some reason didn’t.
The second reason, is for equal rights. We don’t live in a perfect world, and people discriminate against others. And you can’t just hide everything- you can be quiet about it, sure, but for example: if you’re gay, and in a committed relationship, people are going to notice it the same way they’d notice if you’re in a committed relationship with someone of the opposite gender. And many people have backwards views that would cause them to discriminate against you for that. One shouldn’t have to be afraid that if their boss finds out they’re gay, they’ll lose their job.
We have protections against discrimination for that, but those protections didn’t come into existance because people were quiet about that. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, so to speak. And same goes for gay marriage- that was only a relatively recent change, but it would not have happened if not for gay people making their presence known and demanding they should have the same rights to marriage as hetero couples.
As much as I’d love to be in a world where we don’t need to worry about all that anymore because we have those rights now, there’s still a lot of people in positions of power who hold a lot of unjust prejudice against lgbtq folk. Especially with the current state of politics here in the USA. And I don’t see that changing anytime too soon, either.