God, that sounds awful.  I'm so sorry.

My first real experience with gay-bashing happened when I was sixteen or so.  (This was the first time people got physical- before that there'd been rumours and words and snide remarks, but I mostly ignored those.)  I'd just gotten with my second girlfriend and we were in that lovey hold-hands-all-the-time stage; we were sitting together in an alcove at school, close but not even touching, and these two people (a guy and a girl) started walking past us, staring and whispering.  We ignored them, kept talking, and then they started throwing food and open cans of pop at our heads.  When we confronted them about it they just laughed at us; the girl asked, "What were you DOING?" over and over again.  The boy and one of his other friends followed me home on the bus that day, talking about how they wanted to hold me down and take off my pants to see "what" I was (I present pretty androgynously).  They didn't do it, but I was pretty terrified- I didn't stop shaking for hours.  I still feel sick thinking about it.

Funnily enough, I saw the girl who threw stuff at us marching in a gay pride parade a few months later.  I guess the lady did protest too much. :)

I hope you're ok now :)

And don't be silly 'It might not sound like much', I think sometimes the littlest things are the worst.

And aww to Gee. Don't you think it's funny how people can be homophobic because they're in denial? Did you go up to her? I would have, and been like 'fancy seeing you here!'

For some reason, I get a lot of shit when I'm out and about. Almost every day, some dude harasses me from a car, or a group of guys try to call me out. Most of it has to do with me being androgynous - sometimes they just yell 'faggot' or 'dyke', but I get a lot of 'are you a boy or a fucking girl?' and "sir! hey sir, what's your problem, sir?" Maybe it's the town I'm living in, though it's a Canadian university town, and you'd think it would be a little ahead of the game.

Thankfully, I've never been physically attacked here, but a gay male friend of mine was. He was beaten, and the cops who showed up on the scene didn't know how to treat him and my other gay friends at all, treated them as if they weren't even human, and let the guys who did it get away without any investigation. Without even pursuing them, even though they had just taken off running from the scene, and my friend tried to tell the police which direction they had gone.

I know what you mean about being scared out in larger society, and only really feeling safe around other queers. I get pretty scared walking home alone at night, but a part of me is thinking 'Really? Would some drunk guys really pick out a small, lone queerling to harass or attack?' The answer is, yeah they would. It's fucked up, but for a lot of queer people I think that's the way it is right now.

I've been lucky enough to never experience anything physical. My high school is quite close minded and ignorant though so words like "fag, queer, dyke, ect." got thrown around in conversation like it was nothing.  I didn't realize it untill close to graduation but apparently I had quite the reputation around school for "bein a big ol' lezbo" which i find funny because I didn't date or anything of the sort throughout school. According to most of the student body though I was quite experienced with the ladies. I did witness quite a bit of harassment and bullying to the kids who tried to be proud of who they are, most of them got fed up and transferred schools. I also got to sit in the back of class  and eavesdrop on the rednecks and hear what they would like to do to "them queer kids" which was quite horrifying. My school was a breeding ground for ignorant behavior so I do get paranoid when I'm out with friends and I see a truck full of drunk rednecks. I try not to let it get to me though, they don't get to control my life I do. 

Thanks for posting this topic and your experience, burton2070.  Also thanks to the other AE members' experiences as well.