ESTRANGED/ ZICO
When I walk hand in hand with my boyfriend on the street, people often shout something at us.
On holiday abroad, I was very aware that I could not be 100% myself. Beforehand, I looked at the foreign travel advice. This explicitly stated that, as someone from the LGBT+ community, you had to be careful. I also read that a gay couple there had some bad experiences during their stay. For instance, they were continuously ridiculed by the staff.
Within my group of friends, they know that I like boys. We often joke and banter among ourselves, but I did explicitly ask them at the time not to bring up my homosexuality during the holiday. I preferred that people there did not know that, because I wanted to avoid problems.
In the Netherlands, it is sometimes no different. When I walk hand in hand with my boyfriend on the street, people often shout something at us. The amount of these kinds of incidents still surprises me sometimes. I try not to care too much, which unfortunately doesn't always work. I have been pelted with snowballs by complete strangers, for instance, and I was yelled at by men in their 50s sitting in front of a bar.
In the past, there was a period when these kinds of comments made me not want to walk hand in hand any longer. Those kinds of interactions really shocked me. I talked to my boyfriend about this at the time. Together we decided to stick with it.
This is necessary, because we are still in a society where if there is a homosexual in a series, you immediately get comments on Facebook that we are trying to force our "ideology" down their throats. Also, I still often hear in the news and online about other gay people being harassed. This needs to change.