On my way home, I passed by three teenage hecklers. I was in an eccentric korean-styled outfit, while I passed those idiots. When I crossed the road after passing them by, one of them started chanting out: ‘homo… sexual… homo… sexual…’.

I had half the mind to stop in the middle of the road, turn towards them, glare and shout ‘shut the fuck up!’. But I did not. As it was, I was on the road with my night vision impaired due to wearing non-astigmatism lenses. My verbal confrontation would surely result in a physical fight. I would have been at a disadvantage of having three person against one of me and my eyesight might not be sharp enough to take on three attackers.

While my Aikido is far from flawless, it is good enough to break someone’s arm or back when I execute  an arm lock or throw. I would gladly accept punches for the satisfaction of paralyzing those fucktards temporarily. Clearly, I’m not as peaceful a person as an Aikidoka ought to be. I’m not some eccentric person in the street that you can bloody pick on. Because of my past of being heckled in school for being less masculine, I get very affected and offended when people do such things.

On the note of what those hecklers chanted, I do not believe that homosexuals are sinners or deviants. They are normal individuals who seek love from the same gender. But we as a society, use words like ‘homo’, ‘fag’ and ‘gay’ to insult people and more recently, the word ‘gay’ is used to say that someone or something is stupid. Compassion and self-reflection dictates that we should look into ourselves. Will we accept it if someone uses our own names or identities as a way to insult others?

I’ll make this clear… I HATE it when people make discriminatory remarks/jokes on race, the way someone behaves and sexual orientation. You are disgusting if you do it. This applies to my friends as well.

Just because I keep quiet when discriminatory racial remarks are made on Indians, Malays and Bangladeshis, doesn’t mean I condone it. I find it a waste of time and breath to confront and enlarge narrow minds.

Logen L.