I will always be Your Invisible Friend

By: Breannah Paola S. Puntanar

“Standing in front of a mirror, examining every detail of his body but his eyes are full of
unexplained sorrow of tears and his heart full of doubts for who he is. Then laid on his bed
and ask himself, am I still the person who our society deserve to live? Am I still the person that
they expected? Or is this the day am I going to end this kind of fearful battle?”

Ladies and gentlemen, imagine a person saying those things? Are you not going to
do something about it?

Discrimination, discrimination, discrimination whatever kind it is, it is still one of the top
problems that our whole world is facing. Even though each country strengthens their
campaign against it we still have a very long way to go. Honestly, I lived in a world knowing
that there are only two kinds of gender: female and male and yes it is true with sex but not
with gender, gender is not only revolving to those who are male and female. Gender is
defined as state of mind of a person for who he is and believe it or not even lesbian and
gays still fall as types of gender identity-based culture. I do not want to talk about this kind of
issues but I’ve realized when I’m choosing a topic that I have to because there are lives at
stake and it’s not a joke anymore.

A study done in Victoria group of LGBT found that nearly 85% of them had been
experiencing homophobic violence meaning they are discriminated by those people who
are afraid or can’t accept homosexuality or the attraction between the same sexes. They
are also believed that they are pedophiles and mostly of the people in the LGBT society are
the ones who caused many molestation cases but you know what is true behind this? 90% of
these cases were caused by heterosexual males. What a shame. Let me take this
opportunity, for me to clear that being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender is not a mental
illness. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association officially removed these from being
psychiatric disorders and in 1975; the American Psychological Association adopted a similar
resolution. In addition to, the American Medical Association and the Society for Adolescent
Medicine shows on their study that people’s sexual orientation has no effects on their mental
health and emotional disability unless otherwise they experienced such violence and
discrimination in the society. According to a study 59% of people believe that LGBT people
should be accepted because they are perfectly fine they just have a different perspective of
themselves while the other 41% still believe that it will never be accepted- a very alarming
result. But with all the people teasing, saying something that they do not deserved you know
what’s really killing on their part? That is when even their family can’t accept them and
mostly half of their population said that they have been put down by their family members.
With such discrimination they are experiencing from getting a job, from getting and giving
education and from marriage they got an invisible scar that even them, do not know how to
get rid of it.

Well, let’s face the fact that we are all prejudice of one another and in some different
ways, denying such thing is useless. But let’s try to be open, let’s understand where they are
coming from because we are all God’s children and we do not on the right position to judge
someone, look at them just like the normal ones rather looking them like you are spotting their
flaws. To all the people, I’m facing right now, let’s all be considerate of each other’s feelings.
Let’s try to hold the hands of LGBT people who are experiencing discrimination, foul words
that they do not even deserved and those eyes that are slowly killing their confidence. To
end my speech, I would like to ask the people who even in their life once discriminated a
person with different gender identity are you the person the society deserve? Are you the
person that is worth living? Are you sure that you are the person that we expected to be?

Let’s all stop the hate. Let’s spread love and peace. Just for once, not more or less,
just you, approach a friend that is crying and say to him that both you and I, no matter what
circumstance comes our way we will get through it.