Homophobia and its definition

While reading Hamilton's essay talking about the college scene and specifically the lesbians part, I tried to put myself in those people's shoes. While I think its wrong to ostracize and alienate any person because of sexual preference, I can't help but identify with the awkwardness and uncomfortableness that was talked about by the heterosexual women who were forced to room with lesbians.

I honestly don't think it's fair for anyone to be forced to room with someone that would make the other person uncomfortable. Despite the fact that a big part of college is broadening horizons and meeting new people, dorms/rooms and living arrangements are much harder to manage. That's where one goes to relax and it's hard to relax if one is uncomfortable. While I don't think you can split off the lesbians and straight women into groups because that could and probably would encourage the barriers being put up. There is no easy solution, but many people are against the idea of coed dorms which is understandable. I wouldn't be too found if someone of the opposite sex who was heterosexual was my roommate. It would probably flare up my anxiety attacks, and I feel this correlates to homosexuals living with same gender heterosexuals.

Coping with college life transition from high school can be difficult enough, adding another problem like being self conscious in front of your roommate is not going to help matters. However, I hope I don't come off as draconian sounding by saying that lesbians and homosexuals need to have their own dorms, quite the contrary because I think that just highlights the problem. There were clearly heterosexual women who were comfortable being roommates with lesbians. I think the best system would be matching up the women who were uncomfortable and having them put with other heterosexual women, unfortunately I don't think its legal or politically correct to be able to ask people's sexual orientation before being assigned dorms. So I think the problem is going to persist and this will continue to be an ugly problem for both heterosexual and homosexual women will have to deal with.