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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

Fake it 'til you can't forsake it

But I was just pretending!

The expression “You can’t understand someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes” is taken far too literally.

This week, yet another individual came forward to explain his experiences. This time, it was a man discussing what it is like to be gay.

Interestingly, though, the man is not.

Timothy Kurek — a white, Christian, straight man — decided, in an attempt to better understand the “gay experience,” he would come out to his friends and family and claim to be gay for a calendar year.

He went so far as to find a gay friend who would pretend to be his boyfriend so as to convince his friends of the ruse.

At the end of his year, he came out again, telling his friends and family that he was, in fact, simply doing a social experiment and that he was not actually gay.

This was just another ploy in a series of individuals attempting to experience the lives of others.

From pretending to be gay to wearing a fake afro to wearing a burkah and parading around Central Park, attempting to relate to minority ideas by impersonating them so as to get “firsthand” experience has become a growing trend.

Here, though, is the problem.

To be gay is not simply something you can take for a test drive. If you aren’t actually pursuing sexual or emotional relationships with other men, you aren’t experiencing what it means to be gay.

Being gay is not just having a boyfriend and telling your family. It is about the way a person thinks, feels and loves.

Those are things no amount of imitation can truly duplicate.

That said, Kurek also said this experience has allowed him to better understand others and be more tolerant of those around him.

In that sense, although not particularly bright, at the very least this little experiment had some benefits.

By having the ability to interact with the negative stereotypes one has, they are better able to confront and eventually overcome them.

When the woman who chooses to wear an afro to understand black culture comes to terms with her views on race, she is better able to control them.

When a woman experiences wearing a burkah in public, she can better understand her views on religious differences.

When a straight man imitates what it is like to come out as gay, he is better able to empathize with the pain of those for whom these experiences are very real.

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