Job Discussion Forums

[Brynita]

I just saw a similar topic on one of the other country forums, and I thought maybe people would appreciate such a discussion here.

I remember how things were for gay people when I was there a few years ago, but I imagine things have progressed since then. Anyone who's there now want to give their perspective?

I'll write more later on my own experience/perspective, but for now I just wanted to get this discussion going...

[JonnytheMann]

I guess no one's going to comment, Brynita, but I am interested to hear your experiences.

[matttheboy]

Still very underground (from what i see- or more to the point, from what i don't see), homophobia very common and about as liberal as a cross between GWB and Hitler.

[JonnytheMann]

Yeah, I honestly cannot imagine any gays wanting to go to Chile, when Buenos Aires & Rio exist.

It'd be like a gay man choosing Little Rock over San Fransisco.

[Brynita]

Well, it may not be as open as Rio or Buenos Aires, but when I was there I still found Chile (or Stgo. at least) to be more open than I had expected. And I think it has been slowly improving over time. It's still better than Lima, apparently, since I met more than one Peruvian gay couple vacationing in Chile.

The hardest part is knowing where to look for gay culture when you first get there, especially if you don't speak much Spanish. Even if your Spanish is good, though, it's not like you can just ask any random person you know where the best gay bar is.

When I first got there, it took me almost 4 months to meet gay people. My Spanish wasn't great, my internet access was limited to very public university computer labs, and I just had no idea where to look. In fact, if it hadn't been for another American I met (who happened to have had the guts to run up to a random pair of women at 3am in Plaza Italia, tell them she was gay, and give them her phone number), who knows how long I would have had to wait.

Anyhow, once I found the scene, I made friends quickly. I learned pretty quickly that most people were out only to a few select friends and family members; never at work. I also learned that although the police used to raid gay bars a lot under Pinochet, it happens a lot less often now. Most of the gay people I met were fairly into the whole butch/femme dichotomy, and had a hard time accepting bisexual people as anything other than people too scared to be fully gay. They especially didn't understand why I insisted on identifying as bi even though I was dating a woman. However, that didn't stop them from being friends with me; it just meant that we had many a heated discussion about the issues over endless piscolas.

As for discrimination, yeah, it happens. It's worse for men than women, and I had it even easier because I'm both a foreigner and relatively feminine looking. In the beginning I made the mistake of telling a few overly-interested straight guys that I wasn't interested because I was dating a woman, and each and every one of them had the same reaction "Well, I'm sure that's just beacuse you haven't met the right man yet, and that right man is obviously me." However, I should note that even when I started telling this type of guy that I had a boyfriend, many still persisted, so it might have been more a stupidity issue than a prejudice issue.

OK, this is getting long, and I should get back to work. I'll come back and write more later, maybe.

Here is a good online resource to check out: http://www.gaychile.com/eng/index.php

If anyone has any specific questions for me, you can always PM me.