Jose Magaña Refuses to Pass On Familial Shame | Living Y Ready

Military staff sergeant Jose Magaña is breaking generational cycles of shame.

The way he was raised in East LA, being anything but straight was not okay. So, he came into his pansexual identity in secret. After being diagnosed with HIV, he had no choice but to confront this shame head on. In therapy and at home, he worked through these feelings out of the closet. On the next episode of Living y Ready, he shares how he discovered self-love without conditions. A father today, he encourages his children to express themselves openly, to talk to him about their feelings, so they don’t feel the shame that stood in his way growing up.

One day, Magaña’s father made it very clear.

Magaña was a teenager, he was hooking up with a boy he liked, and he was nearly caught. “You better not be gay, or I’ll beat it out of you,” his father said.

This pivotal moment made Magaña fear his father—and fear his own desires, too. He felt like something was wrong with him, he didn’t know how to fix it, and he certainly couldn’t talk about it. These suppressed feelings of childhood shame would take years to unravel.

“I was one of those blank profiles that you see on Grindr,” Magaña says on the show. “I would download the app, hook up, and then delete it. But the thing I remember the most is the shame afterwards. I just was really disgusted with myself, to the point where I got really depressed.”

All of Magaña’s queer activity took place behind the scenes.

What people saw was his young marriage to a girl in town and the two kids they had together. What people saw, after their divorce, were the women he dated, the women with whom new relationships didn’t seem to work out.

With a streak of bravery, Magaña attempted a relationship with a man instead. Besides, he enjoyed hooking up with men; maybe he could commit deeper. But when that attempt failed, he welcomed hook-up culture back into his life again—on the down-low, of course.

That’s when he got sick. He got strep throat twice.

At this point, Magaña was already working in the military, so he went to the medical clinic at the VA for bloodwork. A week later, when the results came back HIV-positive, it wasn’t the news that struck him; it was the way his lovers reacted when he shared his status.

“I was going to hook up with someone that I was hooking up [with] regularly, and they completely rejected me when I told them about it,” Magaña says. “That’s when I felt like a walking virus.”

Here, on the secret fringes of ‘queerhood’, the only place Magaña felt free to express himself authentically, he was being rejected. He had no choice but to come out of hiding. He had his life to save, not just physically, but emotionally.

He started HIV medication and enrolled in therapy.

“I think … therapy has made me very independent, because it taught me a lot about myself,” Magaña says. “It taught me to love myself and not give someone the power to judge or determine how I’m going to feel about myself, to love myself regardless, even with my faults.”

Sure, with the right resources, without familial shame, he could have prevented contracting HIV. But the way he sees it, being diagnosed has revolutionized his perspective.

He is no longer the shy boy who hid online.

Today, he is open about his sexuality and excited to share his story. Today, he has served the U.S. military for almost twenty years, and he is proud to talk about that accomplishment. Today, he is a father, and he refuses to pass down any shame, whether his children are queer or not.

“I made a vow to myself as soon as I had my kids never to treat them the way I got treated from my father, never to make them feel scared to be themselves,” Magaña says. “I want them to be able to express themselves … to want to talk to me no matter what.”

Watch the second episode of Living y Ready for Jose Magaña’s full story.