Got a question that would scandalize your group chat? That’s what this column is for. Go Ask Alex is an anonymous space for queer readers to ask the questions they’re afraid to ask anyone else — about sex, love, life, and everything in between. It’s judgment-free and completely anonymous.
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Hello dear Alex,
I was reading your column and it seems like you give really good advice. So I was wondering if you could give me some advice too.
I am a 22-year-old gay guy from the Middle East, literally the worst place that you can think of for gays, so I am obviously not out. But even though I have never said I am gay out loud, people tend to think I am, and I don't deny it. So I am not denying who I am. I love myself just the way I am. In fact, if I could design myself, I would choose to be gay. So the problem here for me is that I am so proud of myself, I have never hated myself because of my sexuality, even though I have been constantly told that I am going to hell, not even when I was being bullied.
But sometimes, in some situations, I have to deny myself. I have to say I am not gay. I have to deny who I am, and it hurts so much. It just does. Call me crazy, but it does. It's like I am killing a part of myself.
How can I still love myself and be proud of myself if I have to deny who I am every now and then?
Sincerely, Ahmad
Hey Ahmad,
I've been writing advice for a while now, on a personal blog for over 10 years, and more recently here in Out. Most people who write in with questions about identity are struggling with self-acceptance.
You're not. You have it. That is your great fire, your totem, your talisman, your guiding light, the most important thing you have. Hold on to it.
I've gotten questions from gay and queer people three times your age who haven't been able to find that. Indeed, some are never able to. You did.
I feel like it's important to say something here, since this question touches on broader political forces in the world right now: I support the people of Palestine, and with daily news of the genocide happening in Gaza, I fear for humanity a little more, and my picture of all of us, all people, gets a little darker. The actions of Israel will go down as one of humanity’s greatest evils, and the world will — in the best-case scenario — spend decades grappling over how we let it happen.
Saying that matters, because when a gay writer addresses the dangers faced by queer people in Muslim-majority countries, it can too easily get twisted and weaponized by those who use gay rights as a bogus shield for the violence in Gaza — and Iran. Those using gay rights to justify bombing hospitals and torturing children do not actually care about gay people. I do.
In any case, the danger you describe is not uniquely Muslim or even uniquely Middle Eastern. That danger exists in any conservative religious family or community. I have gay friends who grew up Catholic in rural Ireland, who hail from small towns in Poland, who grew up in evangelical communities in Brazil, and who escaped Mormon homes in Utah. They all left, and some never went back.
The specific flavor of antigay belief and abuse varies, but the damage is the same. The fact that you found self-love and self-acceptance in that is remarkable and beautiful. You’re further than many of us ever get.
Now, to your question. You want to know how to maintain self-love when you are forced, for safety, to deny who you are. Babe, the denial you're describing is not self-betrayal, it's self-preservation. There is a difference. When you say "I'm not gay" to avoid arrest — or worse — you're not killing a part of yourself. You're protecting your one beautiful gay life so it can go on.
When you're forced to do it, try to hear your words for what they are: a performance for a hostile audience, a mask worn by someone who knows what's beneath it and is purposely keeping that beautiful person safe.
But the work of self-preservation is hard. As someone who had to do it myself, who survived in the closet, in enemy territory, for years, I can tell you that you need an objective, an end goal, a way out, a roadmap to someday living a life in which that performance, that mask, is no longer necessary. It is a big world. There are a lot of places in it, indeed, an ever-growing number of them, where that life is possible. You deserve to be in one.
Related: I'm lonely but afraid I'll go to hell for being gay. What do I do?
I once got into a debate with Dan Savage on his advice podcast about whether it's "urbanist" to advise gay people living in small, conservative towns to move to a city. I decided, and he agreed, that even if it is — even if it is unfair to tell someone to leave their home and family and life — that doesn't make it bad advice.
It is, in a sense, the classic gay story: small-town queer kid escapes to the big city to find a new family and love. It is a sacred journey made by every queer generation before us.
For you, that might be more than going to a city. It might be going to a whole new country, which demands a whole different level of money, access, and luck. I acknowledge that. I'm sorry. But the advice holds.
I say that with full awareness of what I am, a white American man living in Berlin, someone with freedom of movement that many in the world do not have. Even so, I believe the most important thing a gay or queer person in a dangerous place can do is leave it, even and especially when leaving means leaving their family, their friends, their support, everything, behind. Sometimes you have to abandon the life you have for the one you want. For people like us, that's often what survival is.
Survival is escape. And it's a blunt fact: Escape requires money, connections, risk, documents, opportunity, and timing. And still, I think it's the most important thing you can do. I had to. You do too.
Related: Can I DM a guy I haven't seen in years?
You are 22. You have found a self-love that men many times your age still search for. You will be OK, more than okay. But I hope you find your way to somewhere you can be fully yourself.
Self-love is a good engine, the most vital and necessary one, to get you through the hard work of getting out, but it is not, in the end, enough to build a full life on. We need the love of others. People like us need a community that sees and loves us as we are, so the hardest and most important work of our lives is finding one.
One day, you need to live somewhere you don’t need to deny who you are — because, yes, the pain of doing so, especially over an extended time, is too great. It will wear you down. That careful self-love you’ve built is important but fragile; at some point, it won’t be enough.
Love yourself enough to work on getting somewhere safer, and until then, wear the survival mask; it, too, is an act of self-love, not self-denial, if it keeps you safe.
Alexander Cheves is a writer and former sex worker who spent more than 12 years in the adult industry. He writes Out’s sex-and-culture column Last Call and is the author of My Love Is a Beast: Confessions (Unbound Edition Press), which Kirkus Reviews called “not for squeamish readers.” In Go Ask Alex, he offers candid advice for readers with real questions they’re afraid to ask anywhere else. Send your question to askbeastly@gmail.com — it may be answered in a future column.
